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Mumbai: "Every day two Dalits are raped and three killed," goes a shocking statistic in
well-known filmmaker Anand Patwardhan's latest documentary, "Jai Bhim, Comrade".
It begins with such murderous day, July 11, 1997, when 10 Dalits
gathered to protest the desecration of an Ambedkar statue were
shot dead by Mumbai Police. Six days after this massacre, unable
to take the pain and grief of his people and as a mark of protest,
Dalit singer, poet and activist Vilas Ghogre committed suicide.
"Jai Bhim..." then traces the legacy of the unique democratic
protest style of the Dalits through their stirring poetry and
music and the story of Ghogre and other singers and poets.
What emerges are tales of injustice and atrocities in the world's
largest democracy that will wrench your gut. Its riveting
parallels span not just Maharashtra (where the film is situated)
but the world.
A Dalit leader in the film is heard saying, "We have a singer, a
poet in every home." It is here that you realise the similarity
between the fight for justice of the mostly lowly and oppressed of
Indian people with that of Afro-Americans. Both share a strong
tradition of music and poetry that provides them relief, strength
and prepares them to fight against injustice.
This is the reason why the state of Maharashtra blacklisted one of
the strongest Dalit music groups (prominently featured in the
film), the Kabir Kala Manch (KKM), by calling them Maoists.
Patwardhan has a keen sense of social satire. He rips apart the
notion that equal justice prevails for everyone in India. When you
see political leaders of national stature speaking of wiping out
entire castes and religions, which in a true democracy would have
landed them in jail, you realise how truth can sneak out from
rhetoric and rewriting of histories, and punch you in the gut.
Documentaries thus serve as a public justice system. The powerful
may not be punished for their murders, but those who see the film
can see their true face, and remember.
'Jai Bhim...' also abounds in irony of how a constitution drafted
by a 'dalit', Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, continues to fail his own
community. It balances the grand sweep of dalit injustice with
individual stories. Thus on one side you see a Dalit working in a
garbage heap without the basic protection, cleaning Mumbai's
filth, you also see middle-class Mumbai talk about 'how dirty and
filthy these people are.'
The film's objectivity is laid bare because it spares no one.
Speaking to IANS, Patwardhan said, "The film is critical of
everything, even the Dalit movement, except its youth who have
been forced to go underground."
In a fitting screening, which Anand calls its 'real' premiere
(previously screened in a few film festivals), over 800 people in
BIT chawl in Byculla, where a part of the film was shot, sat
mesmerised Monday, without a break for its 200-minute duration.
In an ideal world, cries against Dalit injustice would have sprung
all over. Since we don't live on a just planet, "Jai Bhim,
Comrade" will retain relevance so long as caste-based atrocities
are not uprooted.
For it may have taken Patwardhan 14 years, in reality this story
of those who inherit injustice in their genes has been in the
making for thousands of years in India.
(Satyen K. Bordoloi can be contacted at satyens@gmail.com )
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