When skeletons tumbled out
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Stalin K's documentary "India Untouched" is all about an India many thought did not exist.
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PHOTO: P. GOUTHAM
OF SEGREGATION Women belonging to the Thurumber sub-caste of the Dalit community, protesting against untouchability in Salem district of Tamil Nadu.
Timed with Ambedkar's 116th birth anniversary, "India Untouched - Stories of a People Apart" premiered at Ahmedabad this past week. Then New Delhi saw a couple of shows this week.A documentary on the plight of `untouchables', the film bares the unabated tales of insult in the 60th year of the country's independence supposedly poised for the big league.
Produced by Drishti: Media, Arts & Human Rights and presented by Navsarjan Trust of Ahmedabad, the documentary opened to an audience left muted by 110 minutes of chilling accounts of segregation, discrimination and oppression, while the urban middle class, now concerned with debates about creamy layers, thought untouchability in caste-ridden India was a thing of the past.
With its footage shot over a period of four years, based on extensive research, the film, directed by Stalin K, an activist-filmmaker, takes you on a revelatory journey to places across eight States , including Kerala with such a high rate of literacy, only to leave you shocked. Ironically, it depicts untouchability through children prevalent in several modes across regions, religions and more pathetically, within the folds of the Dalit community where the artisan or pastoral castes would discriminate against someone from that of the village menials when it comes to pani (water), roti (food) and beti (giving daughters in marriage).
The myth of equality
Even as the film takes head-on the prescriptions in the Manu Smriti for the practice of caste-system and brings forth the unashamed chauvinism of the likes of Batuk Prasad Sharma, the so-called leader of the Scholars' Association of Benaras in so much as dittoing these discriminatory prescriptions till today, it also exposes the myth of equality in non-Hindu religions, at least in India. Accepted by its recipients as `maryada' and practiced by its perpetrators in the name of `shastra', the guna or the karma, the descent or occupation, the bizarre indignity continues to chase Dalits even after conversion to Sikhism, Islam and Christianity, religions that do not profess any varna (colour and caste) system. While sociologists might attribute the phenomenon to the accompanying caste baggage, the inference is that alternative faiths also fail to bind such people in their fold.
In that backdrop, the film aptly captures the anguish of this Ravidasiya Sikh who is an amrit-dhari, recites the verses from Guru Granth Sahib by heart, is no less a Panthic Sikh and is yet made to play a second fiddle to the `mainstream' Panth; of the `lowly' Mohammedans who cannot stand up to Syeds, Sheikhs and Pathans outside the confines of a mosque; and of the convert Christians who are looked down upon by Catholics and eventually, pray in separate churches.
It is claimed that the film has captured several firsts, say, Dalits dismounting from their cycles while moving through the village areas inhabited by Thakurs and Brahmins, even removing their footwear.
The film is a must-watch for every sensitive being.
NARESH GULATI
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