Rose
At sixteen, I first watched the Tamil film Jai Bhim (2021) directed by Savarna Director T.J. Gnanavel. As someone who was preparing to pursue law, I was excited to see the movie on screen, despite the backlash of its poster, the “neat and clean” saviour lawyer towering over the helpless, brown-faced Bahujan people who need justice. While watching the movie, the only emotions I felt were of unease and rage at the sight of the Dalit man, captured by the savarna gaze as a one-dimensional character who is brutalised again and again in a desperate attempt to be heard. He lays himself bare and vulnerable in an attempt to give a 101 introduction of casteism to the audience while also making sure not to enrage his oppressors, who are sitting right in front of them, in the audience.
Victimisation of Dalit heroes is not new. Phoolan Devi, the famous “Bandit Queen” depicted in the 1994 biopic directed by the Savarna Director Shekhar Kapoor, sued the filmmakers (twice) for grossly misrepresenting her life, even threatening self-immolation in protest. In her words: “In the film, I’m portrayed as a sniveling woman, always in tears, who never took a conscious decision in her life. I’m simply shown as being raped, over and over again.” If the very woman whose life the director seeks to portray rejects the film, then one must ask — who, in truth, is the film made for, and whose conscience is it meant to challenge?
Portrayal of one-dimensional Dalit vs. multi-dimensional Savarna
There exists a narrative that portrayal of caste in Indian cinema has been a recent phenomenon; however, that is far from the truth. One of the prime examples of the one-dimensional Dalit character is the “resilient and extraordinary character” that is not like other Dalits; hence, they should be respected like every other savarna. They are meritorious, noble, can overcome any harm, unfortunately keep meeting the casteist fate with zero fault of their own, and at last they emerge victorious, often with the help of the saviour savarna. In the case of Dhadak 2, the saviour was Vriddhi, his savarna girlfriend whose screams and tears, in the final few moments of the film, suddenly produce an anti-caste epiphany in her family — even in the father who tried to kill the protagonist a few minutes ago. These bipolar roles (the benevolent saviour vs. the murderous casteist) “present a safe space for savarna people to explore how they really think about us and how they really want to be portrayed.” Provided you have not contemplated murdering a Dalit, you are free to identify with the savarna saviour, and walk out of the cinema hall into a less casteist society.
That being said, the burden of confronting caste should not be a “Dalit problem”. Rahul Sonpimple, in his article for Roundtable India, writes that caste is not a question of Dalits but a question of Brahmins. While Dalit characters solve the problem of caste on screen, savarna characters have celebrated it ever since the beginning. In Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015), when the protagonist Bajrangi is asked about why he considers Munni one of his own, he replies, “Dudh jaisi gori hai, hume laga Brahmin hogi.” Upper caste identity is shown as heterogeneous: they can alter roles, change scripts, keep the authentic colour of their skin while still making their caste a casual element of their being.
By contrast, we see that when cinema involves a Dalit character’s story, caste becomes a homogenous idea: caste is the root of a Dalit character’s struggle and journey, but never of his/her unique characteristics and strengths. Such an agency has been deprived of a Dalit person. In the movie Lagaan directed by the savarna director Ashutosh Gowariker, Kachra, the outcaste, has his identity reduced not just to his physical deformity but also to his caste, hence the name ‘Kachra’. While the others fight for freedom from taxes, Kachra fights for visibility — something the villagers always denied him. Yet in the final scene, as the frame fades, we see only half of Kachra’s face behind Bhuvan in the rain. The implication is stark: even after his immense contribution, he is still rendered only half as visible, half as human, as Bhuvan.
While it is necessary to educate savarna audiences about increasingly widespread caste atrocities in India, this education cannot happen if the filmmakers are dedicated to fulfilling the stereotype that is present in our everyday lives. Such stereotypes undermine and erase the complexity and multidimensionality of the marginalised people. Dalit stories, when told by savarna authors, replace the joy, beauty and resilience with everyday trauma.
For the savarna director, the “default” audience is always savarna
As I recollect the experience I have had with “raw”, “bold” and “fearless” anti-caste movies, it has always led me to believe how “lazy” the directors are at capturing the depth and nuance of caste. In Rajesh Rajamani’s satirical short film The Discreet Charm of Savarnas (2020), savarna directors are shown desperately searching for an actor who “looks Dalit”. When they finally find a real person who doesn’t fit their imagination of a Dalit person, it only showcases how small and limiting their creativity is. For savarna audiences, Dalit trauma acts as an epiphany to “discover” caste. But for those who live it daily, it is not revelation but repetition, a tiring cycle where their suffering is endlessly replayed for others’ preliminary education on caste. The filmmakers use the “savarna-default” audience trope as an excuse to not bring any complexities or depth to the story. Hence, the use of surface-level shock in their movies is successful in creating an illusion of annihilating caste instead of actually bringing it into practice.
Similarly, the violence perpetrated by the Dalit characters is always accompanied by an explicit justification. At times, it is self-defence, or it is brought to the point of fighting for his dignity and reclaiming his humanity. This sends out the message to the savarna audience that as long as they do not threaten a marginalised person with violence or explicit abuse, they are safe, giving out a do-and-don’t manual. In Dhadak 2, Neelesh is pushed into a kill-or-be-killed situation that drives him toward violence. Before this, he sees his father humiliated by colleagues and loses a friend to casteist institutional practices, which fuels his anger at the system that finally becomes justified since he faced such an intense form of casteism. Yet in the end, he pulls back from violence, completing the “better person” arc.
The reason why things are the way they are in these movies can be answered if we look at the attitude of the directors themselves towards caste. In an interview with HuffPost, Anubhav Sinha, when asked about the participation of someone from the Dalit community, replied: “From a cast and crew of 300 people, I don’t know the caste of any person. I was casting actors and not casting them based on caste…. I’m not going to recruit people based on their caste.” This explanation comes in contrast with his own movie, where he attempts to explain “why it is important to mention the caste of the Dalit victim in relation to the crime perpetrated on her.” Perhaps he should rewatch his own film to understand why visibilisation of Dalit characters is important.
What an average Dalit person interprets from such a hypocritical and performative attitude of a savarna towards caste is that it can be turned aside as per their convenience. Despite possessing only a limited idea of “Dalitality”, they will hardly stop from commodifying a half-knowledge of anti-caste experience into the great “raw” cinema.
Beyond the oppressor–saviour binary
Refusal to engage with the mainstream narrative should not be seen as the desire to withdraw from the narrative. Instead, the criticism should be taken as a way to give accountability and justice to the ones watching and expecting things to be better, because at the end of the day, it is their stories which are being told on screen.
To represent Dalit experience is to show savarna oppressors accurately, not polarise them into “saviours” vs. “casteists”. Sensitive writers and directors (like Neeraj Ghaywan, Pa Ranjith, and Varun Grover) show the complexity of our casteist society: like when the person you’re in love with can be ignorant or even complicit in the casteism you face (Geeli Pucchi); or when caste inequalities exacerbate universal experiences like grief, loss, or shame (Masaan).
The question of fair representation arises because we want the oppression that the savarnas commit in the real world to be showcased on screen. In the real world, we don’t see “Vriddhi” from Dhadak 2 (2025), a savarna woman who wants to seek justice and ask uncomfortable questions; we are much more used to “Jo”, i.e., the upper caste woman ignorant about her caste privilege and the consequences of her actions.
Savarna directors continue to recreate their versions of “Dalit stories” and “Dalit heroes”, invariably full of traumatised victims and righteous martyrs, and so we end up with “anti-caste culture” made by and for savarnas.
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