From Thugs to Victims: Dakxin Bajrange Chhara's Cinema of Justice

Abstract

The documentary films of the Indian filmmaker Dakxin Bajrange Chhara focus not on his own community but on marginalized nomadic communities within his home state of Gujarat. In order to understand these films I draw on Partha Chatterjee's theory of “political society” to argue that Bajrange's portrayal of the social injustices suffered by these other Indian communities serves also to challenge the historical stigma that his own community feels as a result of having been labeled a “Criminal Tribe” by the British more than a century ago. By highlighting the victimhood of India's Denotified and Nomadic Tribes, Bajrange seeks to imbue them with the “moral attributes of a community.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Thanks to Shashwati Talukdar for help with the translations.

Notes

Some parts of this section developed out of posts I wrote on the anthropology blog, Savage Minds [Friedman 2007a, 2007b].

My wife and I, together with our producer Henry Schwarz, have started a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, Vimukta Inc., which currently helps support the activities of the Budhan Theatre library. For more information, visit http://vimukta.org

Due to the poor quality of the English subtitling in Bajrange's films, all quotes from those films have been modified with reference to the original Hindi by Shashwati Talukdar.

The title was from Mahasweta Devi's article “Year of birth − 1871” [2002].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

P. Kerim Friedman

P. KERIM FRIEDMAN, who was trained at Temple University, is an assistant professor of Ethnic Relations and Cultures, College of Indigenous Cultures, National Dong Hwa University, in Taiwan, where he teaches visual and linguistic anthropology. His most recent film is Please Don't Beat Me, Sir! His current research explores the link between Taiwanese language policy and indigenous identity formation. He is also a founding member of the anthropology blog Savage Minds. Website: http://kerim.oxus.net.