Readers Write In #724: Pa.Ranjith–Moving forward by looking backward or Move on?

By Heisenberg

Pa.Ranjith has made a new movie and as has been the case with his previous movies, he has generated a lot of discussion about the movie and also about his ideology through the frequent fiery speeches he makes. 

Since his debut in 2012, Ranjith has grown into an indisputable voice for Dalit cinema and counterculture movement through his Neelam culture centre. Personally as a movie buff, I see him as a very important voice in Tamil cinema and I have tried to catch up with most of his work – have liked most of his work, disliked some. 

But of-late I have started to find his non-stop preaching and increasingly ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude troubling. In a recent interview online about his research work for Thangalaan and how he identifies what is true in history, he made some interesting points. I was in agreement with what he was saying until suddenly I realised the striking parallel of what he was saying with another ideology that I am completely in disagreement with. 

Let me try to summarize to the best of my ability what he said as I feel it is very important and that is the trigger point for me to write this article.The interviewer talks to him about how finding the truth in history is troublesome and in general how it is mostly biased towards who is writing it. Ranjith replies

“Truth in history is abstract. It is hard to identify if a truth is indeed truth. The history of defeated gets lost and what is being propagated is the story of victors. Truth is very personal and one tries to make sense of it through his viewpoint. When a leader propagates his narrative to a group it then gets accepted as history.  If one agrees with the narrative, he doesn’t have a counterpoint and simply accepts it as truth. But when I, someone from the defeated group tries to make sense of the actual truth and reads this established narrative, it contradicts with what actually transpired.  

When the interviewer prods what instrument you have to test what you have found out is actually true. Ranjith responds, “that’s where Ambedkar has given guidance that use your imagination to fill in the missing pieces. The imagination shouldn’t be a wild imagination but base it on observable truths you see in society today.” 

Ranjith makes this fascinating statement about his background work for Thangalaan and in doing so he also lays out his ideology. This is a recurrent theme for those familiar with Ranjith’s work and his speeches. I couldn’t help but notice, this sounds very similar to the ‘Hindutva’ view of the world. If you replace ‘Dalits’ with ‘Hindus’, you get the Hindutva narrative – The history you read in your books is not real history. Hindus have been subjected to torture and been treated unjustly in their own land for almost thousand years. The world is out to get us. We must unite in rewriting our history and reclaim our lost glory.  A Hindutva hardliner (or opportunist) might take the Kerala story or Kashmir files and make the same argument that Ranjith makes.

 I would like to leave aside Hindutva henceforth as I just wanted to make the point and discuss specifically around Ranjith’s work. I agree that Dalits have been subjected to inhuman abuse and ostracization for thousands of years. To this day it still continues in many parts of our country. The society is progressing (maybe very gradually) in accepting the horrific past and trying to make amends through affirmative action. Is this system flawless? Of course not, but every system in India has its loopholes and there will be people trying to take advantage of it.

This may be a very subjective question, but what is the responsibility of a socially conscious artist to his society? Through your art, do you talk about the struggles of the horrific past, convey the pain to society and make them empathize with you or do you try to confront the present society and in turn antagonize a large section of them? In other words would you want to make a healing movie like Schindler’s List or would you want to make a ‘Kashmir file’ to instigate a mob against present day muslims?

Surely, Ranjith is a much more nuanced and responsible filmmaker than Vivek Agnihotri. But increasingly Ranjith seems to polarize the audience with generalized statements. In recent event for Mari Selvaraj’s ‘Vaazhai’, Ranjith says there are people who liked pariyerum perumal but not Karnan or Mamannan. He further gives the reason as, ‘while pariyerum perumal gently conveys the point of oppression, the latter two hit back at the oppressors and that is the reason why people did not like the movie.’

In making simplistic statements like this, he equates the people who did not like the movie as people who do not like Dalits standing up for themselves. While that may be true for a miniscule group (which dislikes anything from Mari Selvaraj/Ranjith including Pariyerum Perumal), he forgets wildly successful Asuran or even his own Kabali which had a very much violent protagonist who hit back. Ranjith also seems to forget that it is the same mainstream audience that have accepted his ideology, applaud his craft and given him his righteous seat as one of the best filmmakers of this generation. 

In his 12 year career,Ranjith has injected this political consciousness in mainstream Tamil cinema, and created a space for stories about oppression.  I also hope he will break free from this shackle, and move on to make movies that transcend these man-made barriers. But as of now he would say how long are you going to dictate to me?

Disclaimer: Although I have written this, my views are also clouded on this topic. I respect the perspective of many commentators in this blog and I hope to generate a discussion to gain a better understanding.