Dalit Representation in Hindi Cinema 1

Abstract

This chapter focuses on three tropes in Hindi cinema to showcase the ongoing shifts in Dalit representation. In earlier Hindi cinema, the Dalit woman represented Dalit bodies as her passive, servile, and dependent nature serves both the concerns of reformist elites and the dominant social classes. In the art house cinema of the 1980s, Dalits were portrayed in realistic backgrounds of rural life as powerless and subjugated selves gripped under oppressive feudal order. The Dalit is shown as brutalised, raped, and exploited, distanced from civilised life and the arena of justice. It is in the post-liberalisation period that the conventional portrayal of Dalit characters as poor, powerless, and brute is destabilised. In post-1990s cinema, Dalits are portrayed with nuanced and plural abilities. The Dalit is self-aware, has acquired middle-class aspirations, and even developed capacities to contest the Brahmanical hegemony. Recent representations have also explored the Dalit person as a socially disembodied person, possessing vagabond individualistic aspirations. It appears that Bollywood is now increasingly ready to play with heterogeneous identities of Dalit characters. However, this chapter concludes that a mainstream Dalit hero is still a distant dream.