Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship

This dual imagination of Indian nation, as B R Ambedkar forewarned, finds its manifestation even on the silver screen. India’s popular imagination of its colonial past has been that of a “haloed” history of Indian nationalism. Ambedkar has not been part of this popular imagination, and neither do the politics, history, and social movements of the marginalised. The assertion of the marginalised has hardly made it to the pre- and post-independence Indian cinema. Largely, the image of Indian nationalism in the popular imagination has been that of M K Gandhi, and Ambedkar and his social justice movements against Brahmanism have been absent from the public conscience.

This gaze of “othering,” silencing, and appropriating the existence of history, knowledge, and symbols of the marginalised communities have been tools employed by the upper-caste film-makers deliberately. Evidently in that process, they have not only capitalised on such discourses, but have also stripped the marginalised characters of their dignity and agency replicating the same hierarchical structures of caste on screen.

Author, feminist, and social activist Bell Hooks (1992) talks about the “traumatic relationship” with “gaze,” and how the gaze informed black parenting and black spectatorship in the United States (US). Her understanding of gaze resonated with my social position, and I began looking through the marginalised history of Buddha, Ambedkar, Jyotirao Phule, Periyar Ramasamy, and others. I have observed that the history documented by Eleanor Zelliot, Valerian Rodrigues, and political scientist Christopher Jaffrelot has been markedly different from the popular discourse sanctioned by the state.

This article is a critical reading of the Indian cinema as an institution and a site of ideological production. An “ideological state apparatus” (ISA) is basically a certain number of realities which present themselves to an immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialised institutions, such as religion, education, family, legal system, political domain, trade union, and communications systems (press, radio, and television). Cultural ISAs specifically include literature, art, sports, and cinema. As ISAs are institutions of private domain, cinema functions predominantly by ideology and impacts people at a private level (Althusser: 16–18). Thus, Indian cinema’s trajectory of expression can be traced one way or another to the sociopolitical ideology of the Indian state.

Indian film criticism has covered major sociopolitical themes of reform, including caste and communal representation, women’s identity and sexuality, as part of its analysis vis-à-vis film theory. The popular gaze, although touched upon caste from a periphery, the depth and reason to understand the “politics of caste” have been missing from the popular discourse. In its study of representation of the marginalised women on the screen, the popular discourse remains passive on the politics of caste and its intersection with gender. The question as regards the genesis of patriarchy and the political quest of a marginalised character on the silver screen remain unexplored. Drawing inspiration from Hooks’ “oppositional gaze,” the article explores Bollywood cinema from the lens of a spectator of marginalised communities, and analyses the trajectory and politics of caste and marginalised representations in them.

Bahujan Spectatorship

The marginalised in India are grouped under a wider Bahujan community. The term “Bahujan” comes from Buddha’s “Bahujan Hitay, Bahujan Sukhay” formulation, which literally translates as the interest and happiness of Bahujans. Kanshi Ram transformed Buddha’s philosophy into a material political identity of Bahujan, and unified Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes of India. In popular discourse, Bahujans are also addressed as Dalits. I am refraining from using the term “Dalit” because it defines itself for being “broken people.” I am using “Bahujan” because of its inclusive identity. For convenience, let’s call this gaze “marginalised (Bahujan) spectatorship.”

So, is there really a Bahujan gaze through which Bahujans engage with the Indian cinema? Or, is there a Bahujan female gaze through which Bahujan women engage with the Indian cinema? What is their experience as spectators when they consume Indian cinema?

The Emergence of Oppositional Consciousness

Sandra Harding’s standpoint theory which provides us with a central argument that all knowledge is socially situated can help us analyse the popular gaze and Bahujan spectatorship in a critical way. Emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, standpoint theory is a feminist critical theory about relationship between the production of knowledge and practices of power. The theory has been presented as a way of empowering oppressed groups, of valuing their experiences, and of pointing towards a way to develop an “oppositional consciousness” as Patricia Collins (1989) observed. It insists that feminist concerns could not be restricted to, what are usually regarded as, only social and political issues but to concerns of knowledge, objectivity, rationality, and good scientific method. As a result, race, ethnicity-based, anti-imperial, queer, and social justice movements routinely produce standpoint themes (Harding 2004: 1–3).

In that respect, standpoint methodology has become a guiding force behind exploring Bahujan spectatorship. In this analysis, we will be looking at the relation between production of knowledge and practices of power, the relationship between ideology and ideological state apparatuses in understanding the popular gaze of Indian cinema’s representation of the marginalised subjects and themes. It also looks at how political context further influences film production, and its consumption by Bahujans.

This “oppositional consciousness” and the political strategy that Sandra suggested is what the marginalised in India have been invoking since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came into power in 2014. Leading this oppositional consciousness is Bahujan leadership from the start. It began with Rohith Vemula’s student movement and then mushroomed into Raya Sarkar’s ‘‘Me Too’’ movement, Rahul Sonpimple’s Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students’ Association (BAPSA) at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Chandrashekhar Azad’s Bhim Army, Sanghapali Aruna’s ‘‘Smash Brahminical Patriarchy’’ assertion, among others. The common thread that runs through all the above instances is an Ambedkarite assertion and an “oppositional consciousness.”