Malavika Prasanna - Week 11

DALIT REPRESENTATION IN FILMS

The upper echelons of academia have had long-running debates on the question of "Who speaks for whom?", as in whether a savarna feminist can write about the the lived experience of a Dalit woman, or whether a man can narrate the lives of women, etc. I personally don't believe in fighting about who spoke for whom, and rather focus on what exactly they said. The reasons for this are many, but broadly speaking, there are two important considerations - One, a woman speaking for women could be just as problematic as a man speaking for a woman (internalised misogyny); Two, an outsider speaking about a community that they don't belong to are capable of exercising empathy in the process. For instance, Sangharsh is a rather poignant documentary on Dalit activists in Uttar Pradesh made by a French sociologist. 

Sangharsh is honest and raw. The director allows his characters to lead him into their life. He does not ask questions, he does not elicit answers - The characters live their lives within the camera's range. What I found striking about the the approach to this movie was the hope that it left me with. The reality in Dalit lives has two sides - The angle of oppression, and the angle of sustained resistance. Several movies and books deal with the former. They show you the violence, the hatred and the bloodshed, and they need to be seen. But Sangharsh deals with the other side of the coin. It shows us continuous resistance, a never-dying spirit to fight the oppressor. The characters are seeing motivating their people not to tire, to regain energy - to remember that Sangharsh (strike) is their calling. 

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