A scene in the recently released Dhadak 2 begins typically like it does in a Bollywood movie. A nervous hero, wearing a borrowed leather jacket and jeans, reaches the heroine’s house. He has been invited by her for a function at her place. Unbeknownst to him, she plans to introduce him to her parents. At the event, a wedding, she dances to a generic party song. Frequent Hindi movie watchers can expect the hero to join, maybe impress her and the family with his moves. He does, but only in a dream sequence. Later, the heroine’s father tries to have a conversation with him, before her brothers barge in and beat the daylights out of him. Nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe the hero is not as rich. Maybe he comes from the village, while the heroine’s family are urban elites. In a Hindi film, when have the heroine’s brothers liked the hero? Then, one of the antagonists urinates on him.
The phantom of caste, hidden under the garb of class, has always loomed over Bollywood romances. This little scene in Dhadak 2 pulls away the veil to expose an unsaid, ugly truth. It isn’t much when compared to more nuanced works that come out of the South but coming from the house of a mainstream production house like Dharma, it is a necessary, solid start. Before this, in a Hindi romantic film, the hurdle for the humble protagonist has always been economical, sans the dynamic of caste. He can be the son of the chauffeur, of the servant or of the manager employed under the heroine’s suit-wearing capitalistic father, but his surname will either not be mentioned or will be that of a privileged caste. Like in the 1996 film Raja Hindustani, Aamir Khan plays a driver and female lead Karishma Kapoor’s family has a problem that he is from a lower class than theirs. His surname too is an innocuous ‘Hindustani’, in case anybody had any doubts. There used to be a standard plot for the Bollywood romantic film in the 80s and 90s: A simpleton hero chasing after a ‘bade ghar ki beti (Daughter from an affluent household).’ He ultimately marries her once he convinces the family about the goodness of his heart. While caste compatibility is the biggest question mark in Indian weddings, they are depicted in Hindi cinema with conflicts only related to either infidelity or dowry. None from the Sooraj Barjatya brand of films touched upon this ugly face of matrimony.
But this hasn’t always been the case, Hindi cinema might not have depicted the horrors of caste as starkly as its southern counterparts but there have been blips. The Parallel Cinema movement gets more credit but the mainstream too has often delved into the issue, if not directly then through allegory.
Achhut Kanya (1936): The earliest depiction of caste can be traced back to 1936’s Achhut Kannya, directed by Bavarian filmmaker Franz Ozten under the fabled Bombay Talkies. The film starred Ashok Kumar and the first lady of Indian cinema Devika Rani. It told the love story of Pratap and Kasturi, a Brahmin boy and an 'untouchable' girl. They get married into their specific castes but still house feelings for each other. The society won't have it.
Sujata (1959): Bimal Roy’s classic, starring Nutan and Sunil Dutt, is about the titular Sujata, an underprivileged caste girl who is adopted by a Brahmin couple. Her adoptive mother Charu (Sulochna Latkar), however, never completely accepts Sujata as her daughter and subjects her to stepmotherly behaviour. It’s only by the climax does Charu come around when an injury puts her in need for a transfusion and turns out Sujata is the perfect donor. Blood ties, literally.
Ankur (1974): Shyam Benegal’s poignant portrayal of social realities marked the debut of both Anant Nag and Shabana Azmi. Nag plays Surya, the son of a landowner, while Azmi is Lakshmi, a Dalit woman. Surya lives alone in an old village house and is sexually frustrated because he is unable to consummate marriage with his wife as she is still underage. He starts eyeing Lakshmi and they end up sleeping together. But once Surya’s wife returns, Lakshmi is cast aside. The film has a powerful scene where a kid throws a stone and shatters the window of Surya’s house. Ripple of a revolution.
Aakrosh (1980): Shyam Benegal’s protégé Govind Nihalani’s first film is an angered successor of his master’s brand of realistic cinema. Naseeruddin Shah plays a lawyer, Bhaskar, who is tasked with representing Om Puri’s Lahanya Bhiku, a tribal man accused of killing his wife Nagi (Smita Patil). Bhaskar tries to obtain information from Lahanya about the incident but he won’t utter a word. Bhaskar’s investigation reveals that Nagi was raped and killed by upper-caste landlords. Puri, without a single line of dialogue, gives a haunting performance as Lahanya. When he finally lets out a scream of anguish, it feels both as a relief and a warning.
Sadgati (1981): Satyajit Ray’s second Hindi outing after 1977’s Shatranj Ke Khilari was a telefilm based on Premchand’s short story. Starring Om Puri, Mohan Agashe and Smita Patil, Sadgati is about an underprivileged caste worker Dukhiya (Puri) who wants to invite the village priest (Agashe) to his house to get a date for his daughter’s engagement. He, however, can’t enter the priest’s house owing to his social standing. The priest makes him do menial jobs around the house and finally agrees to go with him but only if he cuts a wooden log sitting outside. Overworked and starved, Dukhiya dies while working on the log but the priest won’t touch his body. The villagers complain that they can’t fetch water since a ‘lowly’ caste member’s body lies in the way. The apathy cuts deep.
Paar (1984): Goutam Godse’s harrowing film on caste-based atrocities stars Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri. Shah and Azmi play Naurangi and Rama, a Dalit couple in a village. After the brutality of upper caste landlords becomes unbearable, Naurangi hits back and kills one of them. A manhunt ensues for the couple and they escape to a city, only to realise that things aren’t that different there. In a scene, the couple has to drive a herd of pigs across the river and after the ordeal, Najurangi puts his ear on Rama’s belly to ensure his unborn child is alive. It will leave something broken inside your heart.
Bandit Queen (1994): Shekhar Kapur’s biopic of the dreaded outlaw Phoolan Devi had the indie dreamcast of Seema Biswas, Manoj Bajpayee, Saurabh Shukla, Raghuvir Yadav, Aditya Srivastava and Nirmal Pandey. The film stirred a lot of controversy at the time owing to a disturbing, disrobing scene of Seema’s Phoolan by privileged caste men. Her rebellion is more of a revenge against a society that has kept her and her people at the fringes.
LSD (Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, 2010): Superhit Pyaar, the first in Dibakar Banerjee’s deeply political anthology, is a sharp satire of the Yash Raj brand of romance. Rahul (Anshuman Jha in his debut) is a filmmaking student bit by Bollywood’s romance bug. He even makes vlogs addressed to ‘Adi sir (Aditya Chopra)’. In the process of making a student film, he falls in love with Shruti (Nushrratt Bharuccha). She comes from a privileged caste while Rahul doesn’t (“Hum quota waale hain”). Their love story doesn’t have a happy ending and we witness a blood-curdling honour killing via a video camera. A social reality captured in the lens of a found-footage horror film.
Aarakshan (2011): Prakash Jha’s political-drama looks into the policy of caste-based reservations in government jobs and educational institutions and exposes the fissures in the systems. The film had a star-studded ensemble including Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone and Manoj Bajpayee. It also has Saif Ali Khan playing a Dalit student, while Prateik Babbar plays one from the privileged caste. There is a scene of Saif and Prateik debating over caste-based reservations in the canteen, a little on the surface-level but it speaks to the masses.
Masaan (2015): Neeraj Ghaywan’s debut directorial, written by Varun Grover, is a sad poem of love and loss. Affection blooms between Deepak (Vicky Kaushal) and Shalu (Shweta Tripathi). She reads Dushyant Kumar’s couplet to him over the phone, he understands nothing but the sweetness of her voice. But Deepak knows the underlying divide between them. He is a Dom, tasked with cremating the dead at Benaras’s ghats, she is from a privileged caste. Then one day, he finds her ring on an unidentified body he has to cremate. It’s a heartbreaking moment. Vicky’ famous drunken lament (‘ye dukh kaahe khatm nahi hota be (Why doesn’t this sorrow end?’) from the film pierces like a double-edged sword. It’s both the tragedy of his social standing and the loss of his loved one.
Article 15 (2019): Anubhav Sinha’s crime-procedural was inspired by multiple real-life cases including 2014’s Badaun gang-rape case where two teenage girls from a marginalised caste were raped and hung from a tree while they went to defecate in a field. The film starred Ayushmann Khurrana as Ayan Ranjan, a privileged caste head cop who has been deployed to a village to solve a murder case of two Dalit girls. He witnesses caste discrimination in the hamlet and frequently shares his observations with his wife back home in the city. The film was criticised for having a Savarna saviour complex and an urban, upper caste gaze. Anubhav Sinha was also called out for having a Brahmin protagonist while telling the story of the marginalised. But all in all, it did start a conversation.