Filming Caste – I

Rupesh Kumar, dalit documentary director, writes about how he began documentary filmmaking and how he participates ‘both on the screen and from behind the camera, in dalit political debates’…

Like any other film personality, I too had an ambition towards mainstream cinema, but understood that it is hard to get into. Still, I decided to do something with the camera. From that dream and planning resulted my first documentary “Underworld memories of untouchables”.

Peringeel, a dalit colony where my father was born and bought up, has taught me compassion towards humanity and direct experience of agricultural and fishing life, even if I was not involved directly in it. My father told me that in his childhood days, they had to cook even their rice in salt water and walk kilometers to fetch some clean water. My father studied and got first class in SSLC in 1960s and got into a government job. From this platform, I got my English medium and college education and basis for political thinking and film making. The strong urge to move with a camera made me a documentary maker. My mother was also from a dalit colony, Chevidichal – derived from “Thevidichi Chaal”, meaning ‘land of prostitutes’. The name and the colony may be the creations of Savarnas.

In our personal experience, in the Kerala atmosphere, I experienced caste in the psychological realm rather than physically. Caste was experienced in schools and colleges in jokes, nicknames, blackness, body, friendship, language, dialects, etc. It was in questions like, “Are you a reservation student?”, a question asked in classrooms by classmates and teachers. We felt caste, colour and sexuality played a great role in receiving internal marks. And we realized that caste is the main hindrance to love. In campus politics and love affairs, caste played a decisive role. Even when I was working as a lecturer, caste played a great role in the psychological atmosphere of staff rooms and other places.

Though Kerala is archetyped as a casteless society, in different minute and complex realms we experienced caste and debated and tried to theorize it. Out of these complex debates, we reached our documentaries or video productions. After our first production, ‘Underworld memories of Untouchables’ was read as a dalit documentary, we felt it our responsibility to do more dalit video productions. We participate, through our video productions, both on the screen and from behind the camera, in dalit political debates and try to intervene in the critical realm also. It is funny (but also gives us confidence) that the savarna debates purposefully ignore our productions. We still communicate with different political and multicultural societies all over the world through the Internet.

“Underworld memories of untouchables”, our first documentary, was an attempt to politicize and use memory as a tool against the savarna-ist psychological gate-crashing into all dalit histories through their memories, writings and biographies. This documentary is a movement through conversations in which dalits in a village shared memories of caste oppression experienced throughout their life from history to the present. We shot this documentary in my own dalit village, Peringeel, the name which was derived from the term, ‘Perumkeezhil’ meaning extreme lowest.

Earlier, the people of the Pulaya dalit community were brought to this semi-island to work as slaves in agricultural lands. My father and grandparents lived in this village and worked in the fields here. We treat this documentary as a pay-back to a dalit colony where I got my political living as a human being with compassion and positivity. The documentary begins with my own memories of caste experiences in my education and working life that had psychological and structural impact. Our earlier generation had got education, but there was discrimination at the physical, verbal and psychological level in schools and other scenarios. The experiences of those three generations before include a lot of physical abuses as expression of untouchability from different realms. We received some comments from the local Communist leader that caste system has been evacuated and it is not practised in the present. We could not digest that statement, we thought it was funny, given our personal experience as a dalit. Mr. Krishinan, who passed away recently, asked us “What you know about history?” He explained the history of Peringeel and said it was a land of slavery. Mr. Sreejith Paithalen, journalist and my friend, clearly explained how caste is working in new ways in relationships, friendships, and how communists in Kannur play the politics of caste through their ‘love towards dalits’. Mr. Kallen Pokkudan, the environmentalist, spoke about the transformation of the “Communism of Kerala to BJPism”.

Watch Underworld memories of untouchables

“Love stories in Black letters”, our second documentary, was the filming of a travelogue to a tribal organization called Thudi, in Vayanad, to hear a song of love composed by a group of tribal students. We made this journey an enquiry into the politics of inter-caste marriages in India. Caste experiences/inter-caste marriage experiences were brought out through interviews. It was strange to find that dalits blocked inter-caste marriages among themselves. This was a new revelation in our political thinking. There was a clear caste system prevailing among different communities of dalits. Mr. Hanu, who has an inter-caste marriage, opined that there should be an eradication of caste borders within dalits. He strongly believes that there should be inter-caste marriages among different communities of dalits themselves. I – being a dalit married to a Nair girl – admitted in the documentary that I couldn’t perform my marriage in a fully political style. Mr. Ravi, a Professor in Malayalam, said there is a lack of political consciousness even after different inter-caste marriages. Lovers and inter-caste marriage couples mostly take shelter in Hindu life realms and no dalit politics is formatted or developed after their life together and the offspring are brought up in the Hindu style only. Mr. Jayasurya said that in campus life, in politics, in jokes, in love, and in other experiences there is a clear underlying racism, and dalits are the victims. Love affairs are filtered and partners are selected through the norms of the Hindu caste system. Mr. Arun, research scholar in Hyderabad University, explained to us how Ambedkar put forward inter-caste marriage as a tool against the caste system prevailing in Hindu community of India.

Watch Love stories in Black letters

“Caste has been annihilated in Kerala” is the biggest lie that is heard from different social, cultural and political spheres of Kerala. Those who preach that ‘caste has been annihilated’ can’t really understand what caste is. It is the psychological suppression of dalits in various instances, stages and spheres of life and expelling people from power, money and knowledge in the present world. The people who enjoy all the benefits of caste system avoid debates against caste in Kerala and hold the classic idea that “Untouchables are now no longer untouchables”. This has been proved wrong in a Nursery school in Malappuram.

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To be contd.

In the next part, Rupesh Kumar writes about how caste in taught to children, how the media can respond to portrayals of caste, of his other productions – both successful and failed, a documentary that took him back, again, to his village, the resistance encoded in rituals (and how these can be hijacked by Brahminical narratives) and the lessons learnt along the way…