Monday 29 July 2019

Article 15: Holding a Mirror

Anubhav Sinha's Article 15 lives up to Cesar A. Cruz dictum “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” For those who believe that caste is history this movie will be a rude awakening, and those who have to deal with casteist slurs, innuendos or even violence this will provide a small token of comfort that caste has finally reached the mainstream cinema.

The movie is an English August on steroids. While in Upmanyu Chatterjee's novel an urbanized, freshly minted IAS officer Agastya Sen, who probably would have been more comfortable working in an advertising agency or a foreign bank, comes face to face with the idiosyncrasies of rural and subaltern India in a town named Madna, in Article 15 it is a foreign-educated IPS officer Ayan Ranjan's (played by Ayushmann Khurrana) brush with Laalgaon, his first posting.

However, the similarities end there, while Agastya Sen gets 'hazaar baar fucked' by ungovernable Madna and retreats to soft drugs, Ayan decides to take on Laalgaon's storied caste system and its 'santulan' (balance), though the movie's ending seemed too good to be true, considering the way the wheels of justice in our country roll in such cases.

The movie begins with a starry-eyed Ayan who has a romantic notion about the beauty of rural India. He had lived most of his life abroad, as his father was in foreign service, and later studied in Delhi's St Stephen's College.

His drive in a jeep on a road bordering verdant fields with Bob Dylan 'Blowing in the wind' in the background is the brief interlude of innocence and sangfroid, before he comes face to face with rural and semi-urban India's heart of darkness.

A lot has been written about the movie and I don't want to get into the review mode. But there are some poignant scenes that got etched in my mind, thanks to some haunting dialogues written by scriptwriter Gaurav Solanki. 

The most prominent was Dalit activist Nishad's (a loosely based amalgam of Dalit activists Rohit Vemula and Chandrashekar Azad Ravan) remark, "Hum kabhi Harijan ho jate hain, kabhi Bahujan ho jate hain. Bas jan nahi ban paate hain taaki jan gan man me hamari bhi ginti ho” (There are times when they treat us as ‘Harijans’ and at times just as a part of the crowd, only never as individuals with rights).

It is a marginalised person's cri de coeur to be heard and recognised. It is the grim reality of a person whose social status is in the bottom of caste hierarchy and faces abuse from the rest of the society all through his life.

Ayan's WhatsApp exchanges with his girlfriend, a social activist, were quite witty and keeps the idealist Ayan grounded. Her remark, Hero nahi chahiye Ayan.. bas aise log chahiye jo hero ka wait na kare (We need people who don't wait for a hero) was a very telling statement. It has been a malaise afflicting our country for too long.

When he feels alarmed by casteism in rural hinterlands, she provides him a gentle reminder of similar discrimination in urban areas, though in a more subtle manner - of separate plates and utensils for servants.

When Ayan enquires with the scheduled caste Jatav policemen whether he and the victim belong to the same community, his response is classic. The policeman explains his community repairs shoes, while the victims' community rears pigs, hence below them in the caste hierarchy. The people of his community do not even drink water provided by them, he claims. 

This particular conversation brings out what B.R. Ambedkar had succinctly described as 'graded inequality' - the watertight hierarchies of casteism that has survived for centuries.

Ayan's conversation with the contractor who had raped the minors reveals the chilling manner in which rape and murder are used as a weapon to keep the poor in a leash. 

Contractor: Aukaat mein nahi rakhe hain sir.....Kam nahi kar sakte. Ayan: Aur aukaat kya hai? Contractor: Jo hum dete hain vahi aukaat hai sir. (Contractor says unless they are shown their place, they will not work. When Ayan asks what is their 'place' contractor replies it is what we give). It gives away the entitlement culture of the privileged in the society and how they lord over the downtrodden.

Despite many shortcomings and criticism of projecting a Brahmin messiah in Ayushmann Khurrana, Article 15 director wades into the malaise of the caste system, where many of his peers fear to tread.

Also Read: Bangalore Short Takes

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