Hindi cinema’s history of dealing with caste has not been nuanced. Though it never ignored caste, the camera was very clear which caste would get space on the screen. Hence Bollywood has and continues to revolve only around the upper castes. From the names of the characters to their homes, the portrayal of lifestyle, rituals, weddings and mythological references, traces of upper caste Brahminical practices can be found all over mainstream Bollywood cinema.

Achhut Kanya (1936) and Sujata (1959) were the first two films that spoke of discrimination, caste segregation and the impossibility of the upper and lower castes coming together. These two films went on to prove that Gandhian ethics are an inescapable part of our political conscience hence, no matter how rigid a system is, a change of heart is possible. According to Harish Wankhede, Assistant Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, women became the symbol of this shift. “Accepting women from lower castes into the family or even as a heroine depicted the process of accommodating,” he said.

Newton, the newly released film which will be India’s entry to the Oscars, has again stirred the debate.

As a film on caste, Newton, stands apart. Throughout the movie, the protagonist’s caste is never explicitly mentioned making it seem as if caste is a matter that remains beside the point. According to Wankhede, it is the task of the audience to gather the fact that Newton, the protagonist, is Dalit. For him, Newton introduced a new form of codifying the Dalit – the Dalit as the “general person”.  In his article in The Indian Express, Wankhede wrote of Newton, “A new Dalit hero is offered to the audience through the subtle use of certain symbolic gestures and social codes. It appears that Bollywood is ready to present a nuanced Dalit identity in its films.” He ends the column though by noting the hesitation of filmmaker Amit Masurkar to “take up the caste question in a substantive way”.

While presenting his paper, ‘From Achhut to Newton- Bollywood in Search of a Dalit Hero’ at JNU, Wankhede dwells further into his own suggestion by claiming that there has been a slow improvisation of Dalit representations in cinema. “The Dalit has moved from an untouchable to a Harijan to a person seeking citizen rights,” he said. Nevertheless, he emphasised that cinema still hasn’t reached that level of nuanced evolution where we have a politically conscious Dalit.

Ashley Tellis, an academic and activist, believes that although there is a dire need for Dalit heroes in Indian cinema, it has not and will not be forthcoming to the idea of constructively engaging with caste.  “Even a Dalit and political director like Pa Ranjith made Rajinikanth subdued in his ‘Dalitness’ in Kabali and I am sure in the forthcoming Kaala as well. Nobody wants to talk about caste whether behind or in front of the camera in any of the Indian cinemas,” he said.

It is possible that Wankhede, in his attempt to articulate the emerging Dalit hero, he was making a presumption of who a Dalit was and how the identity must be represented on screen. Sarv Priya, a Ph.D. scholar from JNU who attended the presentation, pointed out that maybe Wankhede is too sure of his own definition of the Dalit and wants to impose it on the cinema screen.

Wankhede’s definition of Dalit arises from the depth of engagement with Ambedkar. For him, a Dalit is not a Dalit unless he is an Ambedkarite. “The ‘Dalit’ identity is not available for all scheduled castes or untouchables. It is an extremely conscious category in which a person moves from being a passive citizen to an active one. A Dalit is a politically conscious, positive, revolutionary community and nothing else,” he said.

Tellis responded to this argument by saying that, if one were to go by Wankhede’s own logic, then the protagonist in Newton cannot be considered a Dalit because he is hardly an Ambedkarite and shows no Ambedkarite beliefs or politics. “This is a ridiculous definition of a Dalit hero. The hero of Masan was also Dalit and at least engaged with his caste. One can’t have fixed expectations of what Dalit should or should not be,” he said.

Pabitra Bag, a Ph.D. scholar from JNU, also disagreed with Wankhede. “A Dalit can be an Ambedkarite, but an Ambedkarite need not always be Dalit. I would not consider a Dalit who is not politically conscious or invested in political progress as an Ambedkarite but I would still call him a Dalit,” he said.

On the other hand, Jitendra, another Ph.D. scholar of JNU, agreed with Wankhede by saying that it is impossible to even separate Dalit from Ambedkar. “I think what Wankhede was trying to do was point out that the two terms are actually synonymous with each other and cannot exist on their own. And that is true. The two categories cannot exist as mutually exclusive entities,” he said.

While the importance of an emerging Dalit hero is welcomed it is also not to be undermined that being Dalit is a difficult, contradictory state, marked by shame, self-denial, anger, marginalisation and aspiration. For Tellis, a cinema that captures this complexity would be good cinema. “We don’t need heroes. We need flesh and blood people who are complex like we all are,” he said.

While Wankhede believes a Dalit hero is born only when a politically conscious Ambedkarite is presented on screen, Tellis believes that a Dalit hero is one who does not have to hide his caste.

So while the inquiry of whether India is ready for a Dalit hero or not continues, the bigger question that cropped up in the interaction at JNU was – Who is a Dalit hero?