A Caste-Ridden Society, in Checkmate
The 2017 documentary Turup reminds viewers of how we are all trapped in a haunted physical world, rife with symbols of pathos; and yet, the revolutionary yearning echoes itself in the corners of the strangest of rooms.
How does a Muslim chess player slip into the costume of a hero, and displaces his Brahmin rival player? What does a Dalit woman witness when she turns towards love, even under a series of redundant threats? Who betrays their ideology, when a Savarna leftist woman marries another Savarna leftist man, to further the empire of Hindutva?
Surrounding the lives of men and women from different walks of life, the 2017 documentary Turup invites its viewers to an arduous adventure into the working-class neighborhood of Bhopal. Directed by the Ektara Collective, Turup reminds viewers of how we are all trapped in a haunted physical world, rife with symbols of pathos; and yet, the revolutionary yearning echoes itself in the corners of the strangest of rooms. These rooms dangerously long for a homeland, re-inventing the issues of desire, and pointing to the collective reveling of feminist praxis.
In Turup, secretive conversations surrounding love and unceasing care escalates the magnitude of loss forced upon by vigilantism. Witnessing her own survival in a caste-ridden society, Lata (a Dalit woman) speaks to her romantic partner Majid (a Muslim man) with scorn, as she says, “What’s my religion? Cleaning sewers?” Majid, who although aware of his political identity, dismisses the obliviousness of the attachment of caste to the body, and professes to leave everything behind and escape to a better place. He adds that Lata will “never understand” the pain he faces because of religious identity. A Muslim man may never be able to trespass the geographical boundaries of a Hindu caste-sanitized space; hence the love-birds meet near a barren land, hoping that they have been unseen.
Subsequently, Lata’s desires are policed by her own brother Deepak, who transmutes the distress of Mr. Tiwariji’s, a Brahmin local chess player. Mr. Tiwariji’s life revolves between spectacle and desperation, indicating anxiety and fear around his sense of place. He is an upcoming local leader who leans into the effects of bitter middle-aged politics of changing socio-cultural challenges. Every Brahmin family has experienced rote-learning and some level of self-confessed Vedic superiority, and considering Mr. Tiwariji’s imagined anxieties of Muslim men’s masculinity, he is unable to mask his own programming and believes in mobilizing the Hindus around Chakki Chauraha area to “save” their Hindu women. This policing displays how the colossal voices of anti-caste politics are muffled by the larger mounting interests of the upper-castes and privileged OBCs.'
When Majid is “almost beaten up” by Mr. Tiwariji’s goons at the tea-stall, it clearly intensifies the corroding nature of the Hindutva project. No apology was needed; Majid resolved to passive resistance, a subtle scoff gesturing a strategy of infrapolitics. Deepak, who temporarily works for Mr. Tiwariji, warns Lata that Majid is going to “trap” her, a euphemism of the ‘love-jihad’ discourse that has been popularized for political gains around India (the term first coined by Malayali Upper-caste Christians from Kerala).
The hallmark of Dalit experience is made even more vulnerable when there is a national investment of ‘informally’ recognizing them as subjects capable of constraining relationships with the Muslim other. In her essay “Dalit Feminist Thought”, Shailaja Paik cites the example of Muktabai Salve to warn of us how Brahmins enjoyed their power and privilege and exploited the Untouchables. According to Paik, the institution of caste sowed dissension among Dalits, creating jealousy and rivalry, and dividing them.
In Turup, it is clear how Lata’s brother Deepak is unable to celebrate his sister’s existence who “has always looked after him”, because he has been bombarded with the political rhetoric of BJP’s campaigns. “Who’s putting all this in your head?” asks Lata. She reminds her brother that, “Your friends don’t even drink water from our house and now they want to fix my marriage!!!?” This is not a toxic dynamic as some upper-caste viewers might think, but a sensitive space where vulnerability and vengeance meet and stare at one another, until one unburdens the other, spilling open the poison of caste manifestations.
Brahminical patriarchy is not a taboo representation, but a grand ritual that glorifies political strategies. For example, Mr. Tiwariji asked one of his goon members to calm down his anger instead of glorifying violence in the neighborhood immediately. He says, “If we can manipulate the girl’s family who ran away with the Muslim guy, we will have more media impact and reach. All they have to do is say that our daughter was misled. It’s politics.”
The game of chess takes on important symbolic power in Turup. The game allowed players of various castes, gender, class and religion to picture human interactions and institutions, a temporary lifestyle revealing tensions of power struggles connected together by contractual and economic connections. Black and white squares drawn around the gravel, the camera view from the lateral position, chess pieces moved around assertively (even tossed out dramatically) offers a metaphoric ground upon which social tensions vitiate. Most of the chess players in the beginning were also working for the ruling political party, obeying the propaganda of the Hindu state (directed by orders of Mr.Tiwariji). It resembles the organic movement of pawns, dictated by a supreme authority. Their main concern is the Hindu girl (Madhu) who had eloped with the Muslim boy (Hasan), glossing over the status chess offers to their own bodies/rules/national identities.
She reminds her brother that, “Your friends don’t even drink water from our house and now they want to fix my marriage!!!?” This is not a toxic dynamic as some upper-caste viewers might think, but a sensitive space where vulnerability and vengeance meet and stare at one another, until one unburdens the other, spilling open the poison of caste manifestations.
India’s society has conjoined caste with enslavement, and produced outcomes that have often only benefitted the upper-caste political game players (in this case, the metaphor of chess addresses similar power dynamics). The question shouldn’t be why Mr. Tiwariji felt it was his personal duty to manipulate the family of the eloped couple, but why Brahmins cling on to casteism and communalism even after the perseverance of the constitution that is otherwise always bending towards social progress. Does that mean that casteism feeds the upper caste with jobs, political opportunities, housing, marriage, etc? What was “hidden” in order to protect the terror of caste, dispossession, and poverty?
Indeed, the actual existence of Brahminical patriarchy crystallized the moral valence of India’s so-called modernity. It is well known fact how the state pawns like the police (as shown in the documentary) favour the calculated moves of Mr. Tiwariji.
In the essay cited above, Shailaja Paik further extends B.R. Ambedkar’s well-curated analysis of Hinduism. To Ambedkar, Hinduism—based on hierarchies of the human—could not provide a civil society of equality, centred on the human. From the dry, cracked ankles of Monika (a maid at the Savarna journalist Neelima’s house) to the anxieties of Lata’s Aunty, who could not clean her body “enough” with soaps to enter caste public spaces, Turup distills the reality understood by lower caste as an abject absence of freedom and a total subordination to the evils of Brahminical social capital.
By the end of the documentary, viewers are also able to scour for evidence of how Savarna women end up profiting from the plight of lower-caste women. Monika has been helping to provide haven to Lata’s friend Madhu, who ran away with Hasan to live as a couple in peace . Neelima, the journalist, who seeks an unknown place called “Talaiyyah” moves around in an auto. She is on a mission to write a truthful story of the young couple Madhu and Hasan, resurrecting their love story as a fierce call for autonomy and agency, despite the dominating narratives suggesting anxieties of Hindutva nationalism.
Collective solidarity between Muslims and lower-caste people doesn’t freeze into a catatonic body, but holds its hands with unyielding love—even as they’re treated with stereotypes of terrorism and untouchability by the upper caste characters. After Neelima’s story gains attention, it may have helped the eloping couple to buy some more time as the rabid cops searched for them; ironically, it’s Neelima’s own husband Varun who pays hefty corporate money to the local Savarna politicians, which leads to creating these ghettos of distinctions.
Distinctions expose boundaries. The influence of non-local grassroot workers/ political lobbyists create tensions and borders by playing along the discourse surrounding radicalization, war on terror, the idea of an Akhanda Bharat, love-jihad, and finally wielding structural violence against vulnerable groups. Sloganeering, misinformation, reviving stories of glorious mythical past, muscle power, porno-sexualization of the Muslim male body, all collectively mobilize small neighborhoods and fractures spaces supplanting popular narratives.
What use is a news-story, if the constant supply of money from Neelima’s own husband stimulates the angry goons to beat up Muslims in the community? Neelima’s heroism is, in fact, a tendency to perpetuate a spirit of liberty, a form of manufactured saviorism that softly hijacks the celebration of solidarity between lower-castes and Muslims, and expresses momentary catharsis in psyche of some guilt-ridden Savarnas (Neelima was beaming with pride after she received numerous other offers following this story). Brahminical patriarchy produces triple oppression for Dalit women (caste, class and gender), and, in Turup, Neelima’s representation as a strong woman frustrated with the domestic duties of neoliberal family traditions doesn’t really speak of such discontinuities.
Sara Ahmed, in her essay “Bringing Feminist Theory Home” writes, “Feminist housework does not simply clean and maintain a house. Feminist housework aims to transform the house, to rebuild the master’s residence.” We’ve heard enough of the stories of labour and carework occupying the field of feminism: some maintain a pseudo revolutionary posture, while others die in silence.
When Monika leaves that evening, Neelima asks if she will return tomorrow. “I come to your house every day,” Monika replies. It is a well-rehearsed pattern. Even if Neelima’s intentions may have looked innocent; to many Savarnas, lower caste bodies are seen as collateral, because without their labour, upper caste women wouldn’t have the luxury to think and re-think about feminism.
This documentary therefore, must not be attended to the emotional experiences of Savarna guilt. It is rather a witness to the rotting society built for the upper-caste, one that is deeply dissatisfied by their obedience to their own structures.
Sharmila Rege in her independent scholarly research “Dalit Women Talk Differently” provides a subjective experience of womanhood in India. Issues of Brahminism were ignored by feminists composed of women who were oblivious about caste and to the problems faced by lower caste/tribal women. Analysis of women’s oppression leaned more towards a “class” framework, even those who were radical, socialist, and dissenters from the status quo, creating a feminism in which Dalit women were often made to feel unwelcome and uncomfortable. When Neelima advocates for women's rights occupying venues, spaces, write, talk eloquently, earn honors, and advance careers, the Dalit women’s agency is somewhere lost. It disappears Lata and Madhu’s experiences in the cannibal’s mouth. Madhu’s triumph of her love story is overshadowed by the quiet coexistence of Savarna saviourism.
In Monika’s case, help—be it small or big—only works as a social lubrication. Centuries of oppression and being seen as ‘victims’/political pawns doesn’t help create new opportunities for autonomy for those like Monika: She has to be a maid in front of the Neelima’s household, just like how Neelima has to be tied to Savarna kinship for social capital.
Neelima is often frustrated by her husband, Varun, and she is aware that he will not help share the burden of the emotional labour of her pregnancy. Her condition of feminism is finagled: her marriage is in shambles and cannot be sustained by her feelings alone. She projects her confusion on to Monika, who she perceives as one living a happier life with her friends and neighbours, without any restrictions or any emotional incoherences of neoliberal family patterns.
Neelima must constantly question her own contributions to the sustenance of Brahminical patriarchy. Mr. Tiwariji’s cunning fox-like game-plan—along with the expected role of the Neelima’s husband, Varun as a capitalist businessman (who was left-oriented in the college where they met) —provides an access to the organizing order of casteism. The lower-caste individual is tied to the market economy of the Savarnas, marking their bodies as “smelly”, “untrustworthy”, “dirty”, “mazdoor” (testimony of Lata, her own aunty, and Lata’s friends who sweep) one that is often placed outside of the sanitized public space that has been built for Brahmin men.
There is neither accountability nor any punishment for these conspiratorial men, men who stick posters of deities like Saraswati and Ram, while practicing the opposite of what they preach by displaying extreme forms of violence. Nothing is done by the end of Turup to repair and heal the trauma suffered by the lower-caste people.
This documentary therefore, must not be attended to the emotional experiences of Savarna guilt. It is rather a witness to the rotting society built for the upper-caste, one that is deeply dissatisfied by their obedience to their own structures.
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Anamitra Bora (he/him) is currently a Queer PhD research scholar from JNU, New Delhi with interests in nationalism, gay sexuality, policing, (absent) body and the philosophy of affect. His published work is archived in Doing Sociology and he has dedicated a chapter, "Memory of Body beyond the Binary: Policing Gender Non-Conformity" for the book Gender Equality for Sustainable Development: An Analysis (Edited by Dr. Shikha Jyoti Deka). You can find him on Instagram: @anamitra_bora and Twitter: @anamitrabora1.
