decoder

Aditya Kumar

Henry K

Caste Anthem (Illustration generated using AI)

In Kollywood movies such as Thevar Magan (1992) and Chinna Gounder (1991), respectful villagers stand with folded hands before their magnanimous, big-hearted yajmans (means ‘masters’). Patronage is clear in the Kannada film, Kasturi Nivasa (1971). Late actor Rajkumar plays a factory owner who lends money to his employee Chandru, who speaks a thick Vokkaliga accent, and even sends him abroad for training. In the opening credits to Telugu star Mohan Babu’s 500th film, Rayalaseema Ramanna Chaudhury (2000), a montage shows him first as a Chaudhary, then as a farmer, and last as a superstar! 

You can argue that these are cinematic stunts to try and capitalise on the business of stardom. But at what cost do audiences consume these narratives? Don’t these passive-yet-potent potions of lordships only wedge a larger divide between different caste groups - even when the films never mention a caste? 

Heroic Patronage

Karthikeyan Damodaran and Hugo Gorringe, in ‘Madurai Formula Films: Caste Pride and Politics in Tamil Cinema’, note how juices of certain Tamil movies instill bravado into communal clashes and violent spectacles like jallikattu (bull-taming sport). A double-edged sword that cuts both sides: because of films, Madurai is also stereotyped as a place for caste-rooted violence and vigilantism - an image grossly at odds with reality. 

Hero worship and caste fanaticism go hand in hand in Andhra Pradesh, where dominant castes like Kamma and Kapu have turned films into battlegrounds in disguise. In 2016, Vinod Kumar, a young supporter of Pawan Kalyan - both members of the Kapu caste - was killed in a street brawl with fans of Jr. NTR, grandson of N.T. Rama Rao, the late actor and former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradhesh, who belongs to the Kamma caste. Street hoardings in Andhra Pradesh often feature Kamma actors and politicians with NTR at the centre. Telugu NRI fans from the Kamma community even produced an anthem once, hailing the achievements of their caste actors. 

But when two major actors of different castes - Jr. NTR and Ram Charan (son of superstar Chiranjeevi, from the Kapu caste) - came together for S.S. Rajamouli’s magnum opus RRR, fans from both communities, regardless of financial ability, paid exorbitant ticket prices to celebrate the film. That is how deeply films and caste politics run in South India’s veins. Dr. Rajkumar never mixed films and politics in Karnataka, but he, too, remains a matter of personal pride for the politically dominant Kuruba (OBC) caste in the state. 


Land, Politics & Caste Pride

Given the deep political attachment South Indians have with films, we are no longer in the cinematic era where a woman must offer blood to her boyfriend’s upper-caste mother for acceptance. Contemporary cinemas show the oppressed burning buses and taking on police after grave injustices done to them. Sounds redemptive, yes, but if smearing the soil that a yajman walked on boils blood, doesn’t the sight of burning policemen alive, expose a serious moral flaw in how cinemas celebrate armed resistance? Even if mass films are purely formulaic, shouldn’t a medium this influential, portray violence with a greater social responsibility? 


The Journey - What Changed and What Didn’t  

Yes, we need change - by all means. But in Khaidi (1983), Chiranjeevi portrayed a lower-caste hero and appeared dusky on screen. The Mohanlal-starrer Vanaprastham (1999) questioned Kerala’s rigid caste boundaries. In Pa Ranjith’s, Natchathiram Nagargiradhu (2022), a Dalit woman breaks up with her boyfriend over his casteist slurs. 

We can’t say the walls are not being brought down, although very slow and subtle. But if movies must explicitly pander to caste-breaking rhetoric, art will soon sink into the quicksand of vested political interests or a hostility without end. 


We need more films like Visaranai (2015), where the real-life story of lower-caste Tamil workers, hunted and discarded, was viscerally told without apology. At the same time, Dominic Arun’s ‘Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra’ (2025), which made box-office history, places a female superhero with a Dalit background at its centre. Wouldn’t that empower girls from deprived, lower-caste communities to dream as big as Marvel’s heroes, or as Chandra herself? And doesn’t Mammootty’s (originally a Muslim) subtle questioning of religious beliefs in Kathal (2023), while playing as a gay man, hold more transformative power to break social shackles than a bloodied scythe or a burning train? 


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