Filming the Struggle Against Caste

Scholars of documentary filmmaking in India agree that the early 1970s marked a turning point for the form, giving rise to a body of independent films that turned the camera on the postcolonial state, on the alienations generated by modernity, on jingoistic nationalism, on the effects of lasting forms of empire, and on censorship. As Rajesh James and Sathyaraj Venkatesan put it in their book India Retold, “Indian documentary cinema’s own voice is thus of dissent, of questioning, reason, facts, poetry, passion, compassion, and a sense of shared humanity that resides in a living relationship with the earth.” As a medium, film tends to reach a different audience and produce different affects than other media of dissent. As part of our two-year reflection on dissent in India, we turn for a week of reflection on caste and the struggle to annihilate it with two active practitioners of documentary filmmaking in the country today. While Bengaluru-based Deepa Dhanraj has carved out an oeuvre and won international acclaim for her filmmaking since 1980, Somnath Waghmare, from Maharashtra, is a young filmmaker whose work has drawn national and international audiences since his debut in 2016. Over the course of their week-long visit, we will hold three documentary film screenings and several formal and informal conversations for the Princeton community and public. In these conversations, as in the works of these two filmmakers, we will center the question of caste as historical experience, as cause for protest, and as filmic focus. 

Deepa Dhanraj is a filmmaker with an intersectional view of gender, class, and caste oppression and a collaborative approach to documentary. Dhanraj has dealt with issues of class, caste, labor, patriarchy, and state violence over the course of a long career. In 1980, she founded the Yugantar Film Collective along with cinematographer Navroze Contractor, activist Abha Bhaiya, and writer Meera Rao, and the group went on to create a series of works that spoke to working-class women’s experiences, struggles, and strategies of resistance within Indian society. Dhanraj’s films in recent years form an invaluable, on-the-ground record of India’s anti-caste and feminist movements. Her work serves as a model for how to forge a vital activist cinema.

Somnath Waghmare is a Mumbai – based Indian documentary filmmaker and film researcher born to a rural Dalit-Buddhist family in Malewadi, Western Maharashtra, India. He is the co-founder of the Dalit song documentation project ‘The Ambedkar Age Digital Bookmobile,’ and founder of the film company ‘Begumpura productions.’ At present, he is pursuing his PhD in Social Sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. He completed his M. Phil from TISS and Masters in Media and communication from Pune University.

His film, 'Battle of Bhima Koregaon' (2017), was critically received and has already been widely screened in India and abroad. His focus as a documentary filmmaker has been on forms of social persecution such as violent witchcraft allegations and caste-based oppression. His films have emerged as a major site for the archiving and expression of Dalit assertion in Maharashtra. Waghmare made his directorial debut with the short documentary feature 'I Am Not a Witch' (2016). His recent films are 'Chaityabhumi' (2023; the title refers to the resting place of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and a place of celebration of Buddhist identity) and Gail and Bharat (which is in production). Waghmare’s work is exemplary in its fearless articulation of the anti-caste perspective.
 
This event is part of the 'Power, Inequality, Dissent' series, an initiative of the Chadha Center for Global India that is led by Prof. Divya Cherian (History) and Dr. Harini Kumar (History/CGI)

This event is co-sponsored by the Program in South Asian Studies and the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice.

Image: 'Labour Leader'. Acrylic on canvas by artist Vikrant Bhise

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Co-hosted with: Program in South Asian Studies

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