Bengaluru: When popular culture doesn’t represent you and when your lived experiences are seen only through an upper-caste gaze, you are faced with no option but to represent yourself and that’s exactly what journalist-turned-filmmaker Jyoti Nisha does in her critically acclaimed documentary B R Ambedkar: Now & Then. It just won Best Indian Long and Medium Length Documentary at the 12 Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2024.

First screened in November 2023 at the Dharamshala International Film Festival, the film is co-produced by Tamil director Pa Ranjith, founder of the popular anti-caste platform Neelam Cultural Centre and someone who has, almost single-handedly changed the way the Dalit community is represented in Indian cinema.

Nisha, 40, travelled across India interviewing experts and those who found themselves in the midst of powerful anti-caste protests such as politician Jignesh Mevani and Radhika Vemula, mother of Rohith Vemula, a PhD student at Hyderabad Central University who took his life fighting for his rights in 2016. The filmmaker revisited Una in Gujarat and Saharanpur in north-western Uttar Pradesh (UP), ground zero of caste crimes in recent years, and talked to survivors. 

“We will die for him. Babsaheb should not be dishonoured,” a female survivor told her in Saharanpur.

She interviewed Raya Sarkar, whose LOSHA (List of Sexual Harassers in Academia) was the start of the Indian #MeToo movement in 2017, a year before women in Bollywood (and this author) spoke up. In Nisha’s film Sarkar emphasised the lack of support she received and reiterated that savarna women called the list a “witch hunt that lacked due process”.

The experts featured in the film shared many hard truths. 

That the patriarchy Dalit women encounter is very different from the patriarchy faced by privileged communities. That many feminists are not intersectional, preferring to talk only about men and women. That mainstream media continues to be inaccessible to Dalit journalists. “Films don’t disrupt the perceived equilibrium of society,” screenwriter & professor Anjum Rajabali said. “North Indian, upper caste Hindu is the default position.”

Nisha, who was born in UP’s Hardoi to a progressive anti-caste family,  went to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in the midst of making the film, to better equip herself to understand caste. 

“I couldn’t stand the twisted gaze and so I theorised Bahujan Spectatorship,” she says in the film. This refers to an oppositional gaze and a political strategy to reject the Brahmanical representation of caste. 

The filmmaker said she was weary of explaining herself to privileged people and that the film was her attempt to understand what it means to be Ambedkarite in a casteist Hindu India. She said she hoped it would lead viewers to connections and solutions. 

As Mevani says in the film: “Caste is not just a problem of Dalits, it is a problem of India.” 

Edited excerpts from the interview:

How difficult was it to produce, direct, report and star in your own film?

The biggest challenge was the funding and, I think, starring in my own film. It was only in my third edit, after feedback from friends to make it more personal, that I put myself in the story. It took me eight years to make the film. I travelled to eight states and interviewed 30 or more people. I made the film because so much was happening from 2014. Babasaheb was being talked about a lot, and I was curious why his name was coming up so much in the popular discourse. 

Educational institutions were being attacked, free speech was really under attack. There was a certain kind of doom that was unfolding throughout the country because all mediums of scientific temperament were being curbed, controlled and punished. That was dark, as far as freedom of thought was concerned.  I didn’t think in my wildest dream that the government would want to shut down educational institutions. I’m a product of FTII (Film & Television Institute of India in Pune), so it was very personal for me. 

You went to TISS at the age of 35 and in the midst of making your film.

When I began shooting the film in 2016 I realised I needed to educate myself to tell the story so, in 2017, I joined TISS. It was the first institution where caste was being taught. The foundation lecture, by professor Avatthi Ramaiah, chairperson of the Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Inclusive Policies, was extremely eye opening. Listening to someone talk about caste was very different from reading a text. I did my MA in media and cultural studies. My first masters was in English and journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. By the time I went to TISS, I had worked at Indian Express and Times of India. I went to TISS very intentionally to study caste and gender. My thesis was on the appropriation of Bababsaheb Ambedkar and the connection between academics and politicians. 

By then I had achieved authority about the discourse and theorised Bahujan Spectatorship. I used critical discourse analysis as a methodology to understand and articulate my experience in terms of theory. TISS was great, at 35 you have capacity to engage.

What was it like to revisit survivors of caste crimes in Una, Hyderabad University and Saharanpur—where the Dalit community’s anger and resistance surfaced on a large scale after the violence against them?

I went after the events had unfolded but the journeys were very interesting. My cameraperson was a woman, Pooja Jain, and I had one sound recordist, the three of us travelled together. Everywhere I went people said nobody has come to speak to us, you’re the first. Nobody has come to capture our stories, they told me repeatedly. Then it hit me, why has nobody come? Having a conversation with my brother about the anti-caste movement at home is one thing, but going to these places you see a different imagination of the nation. 

In Una, seven men in three cars came with us. They said we will take you, you won’t have to spend, I paid for fuel. Even in Saharanpur, the Bhim Army helped us. When we were shooting them, the thakurs got to know and there were a lot of police. We had to camouflage our cameras.

People were more than willing to share their stories. I can’t tell you how many families I saw who were ostracised. They don’t get access to public water or access to public transport in Gujarat because they’ve been ostracised by privileged caste society for their moustache, or their shirt, or for standing in panchayat elections. A Dalit sarpanch was not allowed to hoist the national flag, his home was attacked. 

Share a couple of stories from the travels you embarked on to make the film?

There was great food everywhere. Food is a love language, and I felt honoured. People were more than accommodating. We stayed in lodges, hostels, ashrams, homes, or were hosted by people from the community. In Aurangabad I met a woman who had two daughters and lived in a small house and who was doing her second masters. 

People were studying everywhere. Generations who have experienced discrimination and violence don’t want their future generations to go through what they have faced. Rohith Vemula’s brother Raja got an LLM after his brother’s death. Education is the only way to empower yourself, Babasaheb has also said that.

What has been the response to your film? Who was your main support while you were making it?

The response has been great, pretty exciting, since I crowdfunded Rs 20 lakh in 2019. I had something very different to say which resonated with people. When Pa Ranjith came on board as co-producer, it became bigger. He is very kind and supportive, encouraging of everybody. He has that kind of vision and persona. He’s building an entire cultural movement of cinema, publications, music, literature. He’s absolutely on point and unstoppable, a visionary. We discuss films about caste, especially the gaze. His films are extremely assertive and they reflect the politics of the person as well. 

Your film has many inspirational moments. Like Radhika Vemula telling crowds to raise their children to be like Ambedkar. And Jignesh Mevani leading a public anti-caste pledge at Una. How was it to actively connect with people who are taking Ambedkar’s battles forward?

Total validation, nothing else. And also having an instant connection because of shared history. Caste is very systematic, an invisible demon and only those at the receiving end can tell you ‘yes, it is there’. There’s a shared history of trauma, pain, assertion and intellectual knowledge. I felt happy seeing how many people are doing active work, I really wanted them to be part of this film. It reflects a different imagination of India. 

Kancha Ilaiah said you’re the first Dalit woman who has come with a camera and a team to interview me, although I couldn't use his interview as the sound files got corrupted. My generation has woken up to the discourse of caste in the last decade but those who are part of the movement have been doing this work for decades. 

When Jignesh Mevani saw a Bahujan woman with a camera, he said ultimately it is a Bahujan woman who is going to break the patriarchy. 

People who watch my film are moved. They are crying, that means it hit home somewhere and that’s really moving for me as well. There is pindrop silence after each of my screenings. 

So many powerful Dalit feminist voices have never been so widely accessible on social media. Yet writers such as Thenmozhi Soundararajan say that for those from the community who are online, often there’s just an illusion of freedom and democracy. Your film takes us back to the day the head of Twitter tweeted a photo of himself holding a ‘Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy’ sign. As Soundararajan says in your film: ‘For a day Jack Dorsey got to experience what it was like to be a Dalit woman.’

People get very intimidated by me although I think I am a very approachable person, lots of people feel threatened and that’s by people’s admission. I think it has something to do with truth-telling and owning yourself. A lot of men from the community try to cross me and have crossed me and I suggest self work. Self work is essential and requires discipline, you cannot do emancipatory work if you are yourself a victim of an oppressive kind of thinking. A woman giving orders, knowing what she wants, one who is organised, becomes challenging, daunting for people. I believe in boundaries for myself and for others. 

Tell me about your family.

Both my parents have passed away. My dad Netram Singh was an engineer in the railways who died in 2002. He was the national president of Kanshi Ram’s BAMCEF (The All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation). He was involved with the DS4 (Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti), Kanshi Ram’s bicycle march, and worked with D K Kharpade (co-founder of BAMCEF, a strong influence on Kanshi Ram). I was 16, and I saw him doing meetings every weekend. 

He was a junooni aadmi, passionate and fearless, Ranjith comes close. My father didn’t care for anyone at all, in western UP people are like that, very assertive about their caste identity. Perhaps that's why Chandrashekhar Azad & Bhim Army makes sense. In our village in Bijnor district, there was always a response to caste violence, my cousins in the village, even the women, are very assertive. I have seen that throughout that they really stood up for themselves. I was raised like that, with a lot of self worth, education and with the idea that one must give back to the community. We were only punished if we didn’t study.

As you’ve pointed out in your film, accessing mainstream pop culture spaces has always been hard for the community. Your film talks about how Babasaheb Ambedkar had to start his own newspaper to make his point of view heard. Lokmanya Tilak would not even allow him to place a paid advertisement in ‘Kesari’. What does it take to represent yourself? 

I think just a lot of agency, knowledge about your past, skill and courage. The popular discourse has not represented you, so you start representing your own self as so many people have done in the past from political parties to Pa Ranjith. The popular discourse is not going to talk about you at all. That's also why I didn’t apply for any public funding. From the start I went to Ambedkarite organisations and used crowdfunding because I wanted control of the narrative.

Can you explain the idea of Bahujan Spectatorship, which you refer to in your film, and which is a counter to the mainstream upper caste representation and way of looking at the Dalit community.

Cinema is an ideological state apparatus founded by popular discourse, which is ideological in nature. Production of cinema really reflects the politics of a certain time–we are hearing of more cinema based on Hindu mythology right now than anywhere before. Clearly it reflects a certain imagination of a nation which is Hindu and popular.  Therefore, funding creates scientific questions. What’s funded is what becomes a pedagogy ultimately.  You hear of many big stars doing popular epics, so cinema is an ideological state apparatus. History, knowledge of the anti-caste movement, Babasaheb has not been represented appropriately in the popular cinema. When you don't really do the real research it becomes convenient to imagine a certain gaze and stereotyping instead of authentic representation, becomes normalised which leads to exclusion, distortion and appropriation of our icons, symbols and history. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about the danger of a single story. 

Bahujan spectatorship relates to an oppositional gaze and a political strategy of Bahujans to reject the Brahmanical representation of caste and marginalised communities in Indian cinema. It is also an inverted methodology to document a different socio-political Bahujan experience of consuming popular cinema.

I've looked at it from the Ambedkarite perspective, driven by knowledge and empathy, and through the eyes of philosophers working on the ground to build a beautiful equal society where you are actually free. Being aware of systematic oppression in society, and using my educational background, I could ask questions that made it all come together in a scientific way and based on lived experience. There is nothing one has to do to sell authenticity. Uska apna hi PR hota hai, that’s how you experience  catharsis and art fulfils its purpose. 

The point of me coming in the film was to tell you, it’s personal, it's coming from a lot of curiosity and concern, and also love because you can’t live with so much systematic hatred. You feel hatred, but if you understand, you can engage with these questions on an everyday basis, then self-preservation becomes essential especially when systematic oppression is the norm of life.

You share in the film how your mother missed out on an English education because of her caste. Tell me about her.

She was resilient and stylish. Very beautiful. My friends used to ask for her saris and everybody used to eye her clothes. My niece used to give her homework, cursive writing, and my mother used to write sentences for her. She did this until her 60s, she had no shame about it, she was extremely willing and vulnerable and broadminded. She was very good with saving money, not just for us but even for those around us. It dismissed this perception that education makes you clever. She was very fearless, that’s probably why my parents got along, though she got along with everybody. She was a great cook, I miss that, and obviously she wanted me to get married which I didn’t. She said I fight too much, which I think I do. Perhaps she also knew, I stood for myself. She did too.

In the run up to the 2024 election, what are your fears and hopes as an Ambedkarite in casteist Hindu India, as you describe this country in your film.

That we have entered into the era of Hindu Rashtra already, and it will be worse for women, no matter where you come from. We will need more resistance work from the anti-caste movement and engaging with more self work and giving back.

(Priya Ramani is on the editorial board of Article 14.)

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