Twelve-year-old Sivanaindhan’s heart-wrenching cries and helpless screams echo the lush green banana fields as four men forcibly load his beloved cow Boo onto a truck. Clinging to the taxidermied calf made to stimulate milk production after the cow lost its own baby- he refuses to go home till his elder sister Vembu finds him and consoles him. Sooner, we realize that the dead calf is a poignant symbol of his sister Vembu, foreshadowing her tragic death in a lorry accident—a consequence of the landlord’s greed and the exploitation of bonded laborers.
Mari Selvaraj’s Vaazhai (2024), based on his own days of boyhood which powerfully portrays the stolen childhoods of Dalit children in rural societies of India. Despite these harsh realities, Sivanaindhan and his best friend Sekhar, ardent fans of Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan, find fleeting moments of joy and connection.
Set in mid-1998 in Karungulam, Tamil Nadu, the film depicts the lives of villagers earning a meager amount of Rs. 1 per raw banana bunch, carefully harvested and carried on their heads to load them in lorries. Sivanaindhan, a bright young boy with lustrous eyes and dark skin, struggles to balance school with grueling weekend labour to support his widowed mother, who is burdened by debts. His warm feelings for his teacher, Poongodi, and his close friendship with Sekhar offer brief respite from their difficult circumstances. The innocent schemes Sivanaindhan concocts to escape labor are both endearing and heart-wrenching, as his childhood is weighed down by labor, discrimination, and hunger.
Sivanaindhan’s teenage sister, Vembu, is in love with Kani, a socialist among the laborers who advocates for better wages for the villagers. When their cow trespasses into the boundaries of an agricultural field, the landlord imposes a heavy fine on Sivanaindhan’s family. This leads to a confrontation between the landlord and Kani, further exacerbating the family’s precarious situation. Sivanaindhan’s attempts to escape the labour—such as feigning injuries—are met with his mother’s desperation to repay mounting debts. Dreams of childhood, represented by a school dance performance, are overshadowed by economic burdens, culminating in the sale of the family’s cow and even the death of Vembu, Kani, and Sekar in a tragic lorry accident caused by the landlord’s greed, as he overloads the truck with laborers beyond its capacity to compensate for his “loss” from agreeing to pay a slight hike in the daily wage.
On the fateful day of the accident that killed a large number of Dalit bonded laborers, Siva requests his sister to allow him to leave the truck and attend school, as there was a dance practice with his beloved teacher, Poongodi. Unaware that it was going to save him from the clutches of death, he jumps out of the truck and runs to school However, the food for breakfast and lunch was packed in the lunch boxes handed over to his sister. Starving after a long day in the scorching sun of southern India, Siva fears going home, dreading his mother’s scoldings for not attending to work in landlord’s banana field that day.
Weak and hungry, Sivanaindhan is brutally beaten by a cruel landlord for stealing a singlular banana from the field which is akin to beating of the cow for trespassing the boundaries of a form land. At the end, Sivanaindhan sneaks home in search of food, only to face his grieving mother’s anguish for her deceased daughter.
Impossible Subject of Love
What makes Mari Selvaraj’s films a significant part of Dalit cinema is the powerful yet subtle imagery he uses to convey the complex and nuanced human experiences. There is no qualifying subject to define the warmth Sivanaindhan feels for his teacher or the affection Pariyerum Perumal has for his classmate Jothi Mahalakshmi in Mari Selvaraj’s 2018 film Pariyerum Perumal. These relationships outlay the conventional spectrum of human intimacies. The film never attempts to define Sivanaindhan’s feelings for his beautiful and kindhearted teacher, Poongodi. When Sivanaindhan compliments Poongodi by saying,“You look very beautiful today, teacher,” she playfully responds, “So you’re saying I don’t look pretty on other days?” Struggling to define his feelings, Siva replies, “On other days you were as beautiful as my mother and today, you are beautiful like my sister.” This moment highlights how children, who are not socialized into regulated forms of intimacy, often don’t have the language or framework to articulate their emotions. In another context, Sivanaindhan steals Poongodi’s handkerchief only to smell her. Smell is the only way he could feel her presence. The sense of smell evokes various strong emotions and memories in human lives. The sense of smell, rather than the male gaze, is emphasized as a means of feeling the presence of another body. Sivanaindhan repeatedly presses the handkerchief against his face and takes deep breaths to smell Poongodi. Caste-Hindus often associate Dalits with certain odors, evoking a strong sense of contempt and disgust. In Geeli Puchi (2021) directed by Neeraj Ghaywan, Brahmin woman Priya Sharma associates Dalits with “ajeeb sa badbu (strange smell)” as the reason she cites for her inability to eat with the Dalit working classes. However, the feelings associated with smell to feel the presence of Poongodi cannot be equated with romantic love but as a representation of the impossibility of love in the society that is segregated on caste-lines.
Pariyerum Perumal, finds it impossible to express his feelings for his classmate Jothi Mahalakshmi (Jo), a caste-Hindu girl, as this impossibility is shaped by the rigid caste system in Indian society. Pariyerum Perumal does not openly express any romantic feelings towards Jo, but instead experiences undefined emotions for her, just as she holds warm feelings for him. In a society entrenched in caste hierarchies, even a friendship between a caste-Hindu girl and a Dalit boy is met with violence and brutality. Similarly, in Vaazhai, Siva’s affection for the cow, Boo, cannot be nurtured, and Pariyerum Perumal’s bond with Karuppi cannot be sustained—both are violently thwarted by caste violence.
Animal Imagery and Contemptuous Caste
Mari Selvaraj uses animal imagery effectively in both Pariyerum Perumal and Vaazhai to convey deeper social and political meanings. For Selvaraj, the violence that caste-Hindus inflict upon Dalits is akin to their brutal treatment of animals. Dalits often feel that caste-Hindus treat animals better than they treat Dalits. However, in Selvaraj’s films, this notion is not entirely true. In reality, the urban middle class’s love for animals is often limited to foreign breeds of dogs, which serve to highlight their social status. This selective “animal love” cannot be categorized as genuine concern for animals, as it reflects in their development approach that encroaches upon the natural habitats of animals. The caste-Hindus often brutalize black dogs and black cats due to their preconceived notions around the colour black, as seen in the case of Pariyerum Perumal’s Karuppi, a black dog.
Karuppi is tied to the railway tracks by caste-Hindu men in a heartbreaking scene. Pariyerum Perumal races against time as the train approaches, but fails to save Karuppi. The scene ends with Karuppi’s shattered body on the railway tracks, while Pariyerum Perumal’s pounding heartbeat and panting overpower the sound of the train horns. The image of the shattered body on the railway tracks effectively symbolizes numerous Dalit men in Tamil Nadu, such as Illavarasan and Gokulraj[1][2], who faced brutal violence for daring to form intimate relationships or friendships with caste-Hindu women, often meeting tragic ends on railway tracks. The image of the black dog Karuppi powerfully evokes the marginalization of Dalits and the deep contempt caste-Hindus hold for Dalits and animals. In the end, Karuppi transforms into a blue-hued figure symbolizing the unity of Dalits and the strength of the Ambedkarite movement and returns to rescue Pariyerum Perumal, who had been thrown onto the same railway tracks after being struck and left unconscious. When Pariyerum Perumal is believed to have transgressed caste boundaries by attending a wedding in Jothi Mahalakshmi’s family on invitation, he was attacked, abused, and trapped in closed room by the male relatives of Jo. The imagery of the scorpion, snake, and lizard evokes powerful emotions, starkly reflecting the lives and experiences of Dalits in a caste-ridden society. With much deteriorating health, Sivanaindhan’s mother pleads with him to go to work on the weekend, fearing the landlord’s abuse, Sivanaindhan sits in silence, watching the hen trapped in the cage. The quiet scene subtly mirrors the inescapability of Dalits from bonded labor and caste discrimination. The images of the cow, the dead calf, and the garden lizard laying eggs in the dry land symbolize Dalit motherhood in Vaazhai, shaped by relentless labor, abuse, and poverty and even losing her children. Often, animals like garden lizards, like Dalits face contempt from people for no particular reason, due to the perceived notions associated with certain animals, as they are considered disgusting. The Dalit mother’s love and affection for her children are weighed down by destitution, hunger, and subjugation, all shaped by her Dalithood. When the Dalit mother sends her children to toil in the banana field, it almost appears cruel, however it is only a reflection of the brutality and cruelty of caste, which robs Dalits of their childhood.
Blacks are treated like animals, referred to by whites as “mules de world” and their dehumanized status is symbolized through comparisons with orangutans and “hairy apes”. The display of Sara Bartman’s body further represents this dehumanized, animal-like status of the hypersexualized female bodies of black women (Collins, 2000). For Mari Selvaraj, animals and Dalits are equally subjected to the brutality of caste-Hindus. In other words, the human speciesism (the belief that humans are the superior species than all other species) is similar to the casteism in Indian society. Thus, animal imagery in his films powerfully symbolizes the lives of Dalits, conveying the brutality they endure.
The Signifiers of Food and Hunger
Food is valued the most by those who are hungry. Hunger and food shape the lives of Dalits in India. Their relationship with food is paradoxical: they produce it yet are often deprived of it, much like the Madigas, who make slippers but have no right to wear them. The imagery of food and the emotions surrounding it are integral to Dalit cinema and Dalit autobiography. They have specific meanings in their cultural context distinguishable from the culture of the caste-Hindus. According to Gérard Genette (Genette, 1982), the relationships between signs within the meaning spectrum of a culture determine the meaning of a signifier. Each cultural context, therefore, provides a unique meaning for a text, precluding the possibility of a singular, fixed meaning imposed by hegemonic cultures. In other words, the hegemonic classes inherit and limit the meaning of a text, considering it static and exclusive to not only themselves but impose it upon the working classes as well. For Raymond Williams, Culture is deeply connected to the social class often providing the hegemonic status to the dominant class culture (Williams, 1988). However, class in India is entrenched in caste excluding the possibility of the Dalits any social and economic upward mobility with subjugation shaped by complex social structure of caste.
In a striking scene, the landlord brutally thrashes Sivanaindhan for plucking one banana from the massive bunches in his field. In sharp contrast, his sister, Vembu, endearingly offers a banana plucked from the banana bunch which she carried on her head to an unknown little girl walking on the road, bringing a smile to the innocent child’s face. This moment highlights the sharp contrast between the cruelty of caste-Hindus, who monopolize food as opposed to the “food democracy” among the Dalits. I am using food democracy in a slightly different way from its western conceptualization.
The extra lunchbox packed for Sivanaindhan by his mother is shared by Vembu with Sekhar, as an expression of her sisterly affection, and with Kani, as a gesture of her romantic love. In The Prisons We Broke (Kamble, 2008), an autobiography by Baby Kamble, even in the direst days of starvation, Dalits share food equally among all families of the Dalitwada. Whether it is leafy vegetables found in the forest or a rotten carcass offered to them by caste-Hindus when their cow dies, Dalit women communicate the availability of food and come together to collect the meat which is a striking form of food democracy among Dalits.
While food symbolizes unity, love, affection, and often an expression of romantic feelings for Dalits, it represents the monopoly over land, caste superiority, and ritual purity for Brahmins and caste-Hindus. Brahmins and Caste-Hindus often use food as a tool to discriminate against Dalits, denying the possibility of sharing it with “untouchables” or even eating together with them which Ambedkar calls prohibitions on inter-dining (Ambedkar, 1989). Often, Brahmins and caste-Hindus highlight their superior ritual status by distinguishing themselves from those who eat certain types of meat like beef and even certain vegetables, dishes, recipes and ingradients.
Dalit Masculinities, Desire and Intimacy
Mari Selvaraj’s films Pariyerum Perumal and Vaazhai challenge the stereotypical, unidimensional portrayal of Dalit male ambition, which is often reduced to the aspiration of marrying an upper-caste woman, symbolizing the hypersexuality of Dalit men. Pariyerum Perumal’s father, who dresses like a woman and dances during village festivals, is even molested by caste-Hindu male students when he visits the law college, due to his perceived effeminacy. Rape and sexual violence often mark the lives of Dalit men, as their masculinities are routinely constrained and subordinated by the dominant upper-caste men, through brutal violence. In fact, Pariyerum Perumal, who had often been ashamed of his father’s effeminacy and profession, is struck by feelings of guilt after realizing the depth of his father’s love.
On his first day at the government law college, Pariyerum Perumal, expresses his ambition to become a doctor when asked by his principal. The principal responds kindly, “You cannot become a doctor by studying law, you should become an advocate” assuming he is unaware of the field of law. In response, Pariyerum Perumal clarifies that he wants to become Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, symbolizing his aspiration for higher education and a desire to drive societal change through knowledge and scholarship. Similarly, in Vaazhai, Shivanandhan (Shiva), who scores the highest marks in his class, is applauded by both the teacher and his fellow classmates, while the camera focuses on Ambedkar’s portrait on his text book in blue western suit, symbolizing the collective Dalit ambition for education. However, Mari Selvaraj simultaneously presents the harsh social realities that make it nearly impossible for Dalits to pursue this dream. The discrimination faced by Dalit students in schools, colleges, brutal caste violence, struggles of Dalit students with the Brahminical notions of merit reflected the social reality of Dalits in Vaazhai and Pariyerum Perumal.
The brutality with which Mari Selvaraj portrays his Dalit characters reflects the harsh realities of caste, leaving no space for the nurturing of love, affection, ambition, or desire. His films vividly capture the lived experiences of Dalits and often construct visual signifiers to represent these experiences. This highlights the lack of linguistic expression available to Dalits within the dominant hegemonic framework of culture and language.
- Patricia Hill Collins (2000), Black Feminist Though: Knowledge Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge
- Ambedkar, B.R (1989), “Annihilation of caste” in Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches Vol-1, Maharastra: Education Department, Govt of Maharastra.
- Williams, R (1998), “Analysis of Cutlure” in John Storey (ed.) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, Athens: University of Georgeo Press.
- Genette, G (1982). Figures I. Translated by Alan Sheridan, U.S.A: University of Nebraska Press.
- Kamble, B (2008). The Prisons We Broke. (Translated from Marathi by Maya Pandit) New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.
Dr. Sowjanya Tamalapakula teaches at Woxsen University.
[1] Illavarasan a young Dalit man was found dead near the railway tracks in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu after a great deal of caste violence due to his marriage with Dhivya who belongs to an intermediate caste in Tamil Nadu.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/dalit-youth-ilavarasan-found-dead/article4881007.ece accesed on 19th January 2025.
[2] Gokulraj, a young Dalit man, was abducted and later found dead on the railway tracks in Namakkal district of Tamil Nadu by caste leaders of the intermediate caste to which Swathi belongs, who suspected his friendship with her to be a romantic relationship.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/Dalit-youth-found-dead-on-rail-track-was-murdered/article60199226.ece accesed on 19th January 2025.
