Views From an Anti-Caste Movement

Caste, Labour, and Religion in Sangharsh

Bibliographic Data

ID10940895
AuthorsDhivya Janarthanan (National Law School of India University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume54
Issue2
Pages208-228
Publication date2024-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Change (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0049-0857 • E-ISSN: 0976-3538
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00490857241252695
OpenAlexW4399682719
LanguageEN
References cited21

While the sociology and anthropology of India are replete with the thematic of caste and caste-based oppression and inequalities, the world of ethnographic film-making is largely silent on these issues. This article analyses an exception to this situation—Sangharsh: Times of Strife [Dir. Nicolas Jaoul, 2018], filmed in the late 1990s–early 2000s and revolving around activists of the Bhartiya Dalit Panthers, an anti-caste formation in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. I examine the film’s enactment of caste relations through its focus on this anti-caste movement and its activists. To this end, I attend to questions of cinematic form and structure, link the film’s representational strategies to film-making lineages, and analyse sequences in which some of the most contentious, topical issues are developed—namely, the connections between caste and labour as well as between caste, religion, and communalism. The article therein analyses the implications of these cinematic engagements to our understanding of caste relations

Caste · Communalism · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Law · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · South Asian Studies and Diaspora

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