Patriarchal “Engineering”: Caste-Gender-Culture in Tamil Cinema

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Notes

1 “The Bahujan movement, under the leadership of Kanshi Ram… had a broader definition of the oppressed, and included the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). It also included lower-caste Muslims (Azlafs)” (Narayan 2019). I employ Patil’s (2021) definition of the term Bahujan in this article.

2 “In 1949, the newly forged (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) DMK broke away from the Dravidar Kazhagam (established in 1944), a non-electoral reform movement that had the Self-Respect Movement (founded in 1925) and the Justice Party (started in 1916) as its Dravidian predecessors. These two early Dravidian movements were spearheaded by E. V. Ramasamy, a.k.a as Periyar, with ideologies of female emancipation, anti-caste, anti-Brahmin hegemony, anti-superstition, and anti-religion as their governing principles” (Divya 2022b).

3 For a reading of Periyar’s politics and the Self Respect Movement, please see Manoharan (2020, 2021b), Geetha (1991), Geetha and Rajadurai (2008), and Anandhi (1991). Kalaiyarasan and Vijayabaskar (2021, 36), drawing on Geetha and Rajadurai, emphasise that the Self Respect Movement “transformed into a mass movement that began to draw in various subaltern communities and caste groups” to challenge “hegemonic power” and “to make way for democratisation of social values and realisation of self-respect”.

4 Shailaja Paik (2014, 169) argues that “Dalit women contested and challenged Brahmani (Brahmanical) practices, selectively appropriated them, and made them Dalit”.

5 For a discussion of potential solutions to the intermediate caste violence against SCs and STs, see Karthick Vargini (2023, 10).

6 For plot summaries of all these films, please see Kailasam (2021).

7 Sivaji Arumugam is born into a poor farmer’s family. The caste position of his father (played by Manivannan) underpins his declaration that caste will not be considered while fixing Sivaji’s marriage, suggesting that his family is non-Dalit. Vijayabaskar and Wyatt (2007, 32) state that the film’s hero and heroine are non-Brahmins. Ramalingam (played by Pattimandram Raja), Tamilselvi’s father, treats his neighbour Thondaman (played by Solomon Pappaiah) with familiarity, suggesting that Ramalingam is also from a non-avarna caste. The name “Thondaman” is mostly associated with BC/MBC castes in Tamil Nadu.

8 Thol Thirumavalavan (2023) points outs that Brahmin women were also considered as “Sudras” in the varna system. However, in Tamil Nadu, the community in its path to modernization—induced by social justice movements—liberated and empowered its women. Now, due to their enormous material and cultural privilege and power, the Brahmin women cannot generally be considered as “Sudras”.

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Notes on contributors

A. Divya

Divya A. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. Her research interests are in the fields of gender and culture in literature and Tamil cinema.