Author – Prashant Bhaware

‘Tandav’, a newly released web series on Amazon Prime Video is in the news these days. Some right-wing fundamentalist organizations are demanding to ban the show as it ‘disrespects Hindu Gods and Hindu religious sentiments’ they claim.

It is a fictional political drama where almost every character is full of political ambition and their character are led by their power hunger. It starts with the greedy planned move by Samar Pratap Singh played by Saif Ali Khan, to snatch away the throne from his father who is also former Prime Minister, right before the results of the general elections of the country. As the story progresses, it depicts the other characters’ journey along with Samar to acquire, maintain power, and ready to do anything overpower the others. I am not interested in reviewing the whole show so I will not go into that. But I’m more interested in dissecting the show on its regressive fronts and providing critique with an Anti-caste perspective.

The show contains very much sexiest language and abusive words. Despite considering the need for scope for an art medium to convey its message to the viewer, the foul language, the sexiest takes and abusive words do not help the screenplay. Instead, it seems annoying, unnecessary, and cheap.

The lead character portrait by Saif Ali Khan is a Janeu flaunting Bramhin. No surprise, almost all the lead characters in the show are depicted from “Upper Castes”, except one. Kailash Kumar, played by Anup Soni who is one of the main characters in the show, is shown as a person from a “lower caste”. It was very thought-provoking and unsettling for me the way this character is handled in the show. In the very first episode, in stereotypical Hindi film style, Kailash’s character is being insulted and dehumanized by the former Prime Minister, a Brahmin. Kailash is shown helpless and takes it all without a word.

All the main characters are executing their plans to satisfy their greed for power. Their plans consist of frauds, lying, cheating, killing, and rioting. Samar poisons his father as he sees him as the only obstacle to reach the utmost power. Samar’s right-hand man, Gurupal, played by Sunil Grover, is shown as a full-fledged murderer. Yet the sharpest, most intense, and personal attack is made against Kailash, a “lower caste” man. The attack goes as follows-

“When a man from lower caste dates a woman from a higher caste.. all he’s doing, is exacting revenge, for all atrocities spanning centuries, on that one single woman.”

This line is heard two times in the show. First, when a Savarna man warns his wife, a Savarna woman. And the second time, when the same Savarna woman attacks a “lower caste” man (Kailash) while breaking up, with whom she had a live-in relationship. Here also, Kailash stays silent.

It is a very generalized and dangerous statement to make. And this is where it transcends the show, the attack goes beyond all those fictional characters and hits the full section of the society which is oppressed because of the inhuman caste system. Kailash is not shown doing any extraordinary cruel criminal acts in comparison with the other characters of the show. Like others, he is also trying to sustain and acquire more power, he possesses political ambitions. To fulfill that political greed, he is ready to cheat, lie and manipulate, just like everybody else. Then why nobody else but Kailash receives this intense casteist attack? No one is shown attacking Samar that “Brahmins are mean selfish people, they never hesitate to kill anybody to satisfy their greed”, why?

To answer this question, we have to study the genesis of the problem, the genesis of the caste system! According to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, the prohibition of intercaste marriages and strict endogamy is the essence of caste. In the paper ‘Castes in India – Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development’, that he wrote for Anthropology Seminar, 1916, he says, “This critical evaluation of the various characteristics of Caste leave no doubt that prohibition, or rather the absence of intermarriage—endogamy, to be concise—is the only one that can be called the essence of Caste when rightly understood”. He adds, “Caste in India means an artificial chopping off of the population into fixed and definite units, each one prevented from fusing into another through the custom of endogamy. Thus the conclusion is inevitable that Endogamy is the only characteristic that is peculiar to caste, and if we succeed in showing how endogamy is maintained, we shall practically have proved the genesis and also the mechanism of Caste”.

It needs no further explanation that the above-discussed casteist attack in the show has its roots in the Manusmriti. Depicting such regressive ideas through popular mediums should be rejected by society. I have zero expectations from Savarnas and their flawed narratives. They all looking for “Good Dalit stories” to capitalize and earn profit out of it. Their “inclusion” attempts are fraud and performative. It will be far better if Savarnas stop including us, stop representing us in their filthy narratives.