Though such practices of public degradation and ridicule are banned by law, they are still prevalent in contemporary Indian society.
He posits ‘caste of mind’ as the repository of humiliation and the archaeology of untouchability, and sees it as the ‘minefield of humiliation’.Īs a crucial feature of the casteist order, public humiliation of castes lower down the hierarchy – particularly Dalits – often invokes images of pillory, flogging (Una) and parading them naked (Khairlanji). Humiliation may be defined as the act of engaging consciously in degrading a person or group, a “process of subjugation that damages or strips away their pride, honour or dignity.” In the case of India, as pointed out by Gopal Guru in Humiliation: Claims and Contexts, the social and cultural context in itself is suffused by such processes. Following in his footsteps, Mari Selvaraj has marched a step ahead and has broken this strongly established tradition of cultural representation. Ranjith heralded a new cultural revolution within Tamil cinema, which systematically addressed this cultural invisibility and devaluation of subaltern cultural forms.
Pandian has argued, Tamil film was more of an exercise of cultural hegemony. It should be noted here that largely in Tamil cinema, the lives of subaltern groups have become invisible or misrepresented, or showcased in a way that justifies their place in the social order as those of clients in a patron-client relationships. This is evident in the title sequences of films like Karimedu Karuvayan (1985) and Subramaniapuram (2008). This is important, because films on south Tamil Nadu mostly focus on the image of Muthuramalinga Thevar alone, either in the form of statues or portraits, thus marking it as a landscape of the Thevars. For instance, he shows statues of the Dravidian leaders but also of Kamaraj, Ambedkar and Muthuramalinga Thevar, and the corporation building named after V.O. Right from the first few scenes, Mari Selvaraj tries to break that metonymic construction through his different frames of Tirunelveli town. The films, explicitly or implicitly, celebrate caste dominance and become vehicles for, and expressions of, the assertion and pride of the Thevars or other intermediate castes. Over the past three decades, one particular intermediate caste cluster – the Thevar community – has regularly featured in the movies and great emphasis has been accorded to their caste standing, valour and martial prowess. The landscape of southern Tamil Nadu, Rajan Krishnan argues, has been constructed as a “metonymic extension of the caste identity of Thevars.” In an article titled “ Madurai Formula Films”, a co-author and I observed the existence of a symbiotic relationship between caste politics and cinema, particularly through the naturalisation of intermediate caste markers and narratives largely found in the films of south Tamil Nadu. Pariyerum Perumal is definitely a milestone in terms of redefining how southern Tamil Nadu has been constructed in Tamil cinema. This article is less a film review and more a symptomatic textual analysis of the film, drawing upon concepts of humiliation and shame to explain why Pariyerum Perumal is the most important film representing south Tamil Nadu in the last 30 years of Tamil cinema. Almost an everyday feature of the society we live in, where everything is determined by caste, the protagonist, Pariyan, undergoes different forms of humiliation. The young, debutant filmmaker, Mari Selvaraj, takes us through the life of a marginalised community youth who comes to face the realities of a casteist society beyond his village. Ambedkar, an unparalleled revolutionary leader of modern India.Ī very fine and nuanced portrayal of what happens to those with such aspirations in a casteist society forms the bulk of the story. He thus wishes to become like his role model, Dr B.R. It takes us through the highly emotional struggles of a scheduled-caste youth who aspires to become a spokesperson of dignity and human rights for his community. It invites a society, which is entrenched with casteist prejudices, for a debate and asks people to rethink these extreme forms of incivility. Pariyerum Perumal ( God Who Mounts a Horse) is a very strong film.
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