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HomeFeaturesBlackface, shells, ‘jhinga lala hu’—in Indian films, tribal characters are still 'foot...

Blackface, shells, ‘jhinga lala hu’—in Indian films, tribal characters are still ‘foot soldiers’

From Satyajit Ray's Aranyer Din Ratri to Rajamouli's RRR, Indian cinema still doesn't know how to show tribal characters.

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If you are familiar with pop culture or inclined towards old Hindi songs, you’re sure to have heard the words ‘jhinga lala hu.’ Millennials would have come across its tamer version, courtesy of Tata Sky advertisements, while the generation before them would have heard these incomprehensible words in ‘Hum Bewafa,’ sung by the legendary Kishore Kumar in the 1978 film Shalimar. But have you ever paused and wondered about the relevance of these words? As the years passed and the song became iconic,  the deeply offensive phrase stuck and became part of the modern urban lexicon.

Shalimar, an American co-production, is the story of a thief Kumar (Dharmendra), who lands on an island among a group of thieves from an indigenous community. The words ‘jhinga lala hu‘ hold no resonance in any native language of tribal communities. Still, the film showcases the indigenous thieves chanting these words while dancing with flambeaux and dressed in exotic costumes.

This wasn’t the sole moment where the tribe is boxed into a misguided stereotype. They are portrayed as barbaric—people who wouldn’t blink twice before killing someone. Much like this film, the history of Indian cinema is cliché-ridden, full of unfounded bias against tribal communities.

“These notions have been transferred from generation to generation. I don’t see any hope [regarding realistic representation] in the coming 100 years,” says Niranjan Kumar Kujur, a National award-winning filmmaker based in Kolkata.


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‘Tribals are just foot soldiers’

Women tribal characters are often trapped in sexualised portrayals, and the gaze is almost always urban. Even Satyajit Ray, one of the most progressive and celebrated filmmakers of Indian cinema, was not immune to the crime of misrepresenting tribal communities in his films.

Aranyer Din Ratri (1970) glorifies the sexual gaze of Kolkata’s ‘bhadralok’ (upper caste gentry) towards Adivasi women. Based on a Bengali book of the same name, Aranyer Din Ratri tells the story of a group of male friends who travel to Palamau, near Jharkhand, for a vacation. One of the men, Hari (Samit Bhanja), is attracted to a local Santhal woman, Duli (Simi Garewal). Instead of going through the civil route of wooing a girl, Hari uses his masculinity and high economic status to ‘attract’ her.  In one scene, he pulls her into the forest to have sex with her. Since Duli shows no resistance, we are to assume that the sexual relationship was consensual.

A still from 'Aranyer Din Ratri' | YouTube
A still from ‘Aranyer Din Ratri’ | YouTube

To make matters worse, Garewal, who is fair-skinned, has her face blackened to make her look ‘authentic’. Now called ‘blackface,’ the hugely controversial practice was recently in the headlines in the United States. An elected official in Virginia had to apologise after sharing an image of himself in blackface on social media. He had worn a curly wig and dark make up in the photo to resemble a character played by Eddie Murphy in Coming to America (1988). It was racist and offensive then and is racist and offensive even today.

In another scene in the film, Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) tells Ashim (Soumitra Chatterjee) that “tribal life is not that easy.” To describe their pain and suffering, she leads him to a window where they intently observe a tribal woman who is ill.

“There is this gaze of seeing tribals as poor,” says Kujur, who also happens to be Oraon. “The parameter for measuring wealth is money for the mainstream society. But with us [tribals], it was not like that. When you see these [films], they [tribal communities] are all shown as poor. We aren’t like that. We don’t need to buy so many things,” he elaborates.

If there is a shortage of drinking water and the rivers go dry, people go to the river, dig a little bit of sand and let the water seep in. Later, through sedimentation, they derive drinking water. “There are survival methods that do not involve cash,” he adds.

The indigenous communities of India are often used as fillers or tokens of inclusivity and symbolism in the larger plot of a film. Rarely do we see them as protagonists or central characters driving the narrative forward. For example, in the 1976 film Mrigayaa, directed by Mrinal Sen and Mithun Chakraborty’s debut, the latter played the lead role of Ghinua, a tribal.  “It defeats the purpose when actors from an upper-class background play the role of a tribal character on screen, says Kujur.

“The film industry is biased and completely operates for the consumers. They are not willing to see a tribal in a leading role,” he asserts.

Precisely why the 2021 film Jai Bhim garnered tremendous support from the masses for treating a sensitive subject with a contemporary sensibility.

However, academician and tribal activist Dr Jitendra Meena is not convinced that the film did justice to the “real” issues faced by scheduled tribes in India.

“As the lead character sits and reads a newspaper with his legs on the table in the last scene of the film, we see a young girl enter and imitate him. Seconds later, the camera focuses on Babasaheb Ambedkar’s frame on the wall. The insinuation is that education can fight every social upheaval and challenge. While all that is great, that is just a fragment of the larger fight,” he says while emphasising the significance of land acquisition for tribal communities. “That is all they need to survive. But when do we talk about real issues on the screen?”

As Kujur echoes Meena’s words, he says that tribals are “only the foot soldiers”.


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Exoticism, blackface dominate

In films such as Madhumati (1958), Nagin (1954), Talash (1969), Caravan (1971), Yeh Gulistan Hamara (1972), and others, Adivasis were exoticised and reduced to ‘child of the earth’ — the latter even used as a trope in Mani Ratnam’s Raavan (2010).

Musical legends Manna Dey and Lata Mangeshkar immortalised the song, ‘Chadh Gayo Papi Bichua‘. To date, it is known as one of the most well-known tribal songs in Hindi cinema. However, the representation of and the landscape where the titular character (Vyjayanthimala) resides reflect how the identity of indigenous communities has been configured cinematically. It has often been seen that the hero visits remote hilly areas where they come across a tribal heroine. Another version of this has often been documented in films where tribal women are shown conducting ‘swayamwar‘ (the practice of picking a groom). While they are meant to be seen as empowered, these women inevitably choose the urban visitor who wins them over with his textbook masculinity and social status.

A still from 'Chadh Gayo Papi Bichua' | YouTube
A still from ‘Chadh Gayo Papi Bichua’ | YouTube

This trope has further been adopted as cinematic heritage in films like Mary Kom (2014), Raavan (2010), RRR (2022), Baahubali (2015), and Veer (2010).

Another prominent feature imbibed by the filmmakers has been the nomadic or ‘banjaran’ appearance of pivotal characters, especially female actors. These characters are typically dressed in multi-coloured blouses and skirts, often with plunging necklines and skin show, and perform to the tunes of — sometimes gibberish — mainstream music. The songs or lyrics stray clear from the indigenous music of the tribal communities they portray.

In Caravan (1971), Asha Parekh’s character, who is a part of a travelling gipsy caravan, is pushed on the stage wearing ill-fitted clothes with a sombrero-looking hat. As soon as she enters, the audience (all male, no surprise there) throws stones. Jeetendra’s character joins her and asks her to sing anything to entertain the crowd. While she sings and the song proceeds, the ill-fitted cloak comes off, leaving her with a short skirt and blouse bejewelled with shells and beads. The transition of clothing is synchronised with odd antics such as birds flying off on the stage, generating laughter among the audience. Despite being a central character, Parekh’s character is reduced to a stereotype.

In the 1969 film Talash, Sharmila Tagore played a tribal girl Gauri, who, in one scene, came to the leading man  (played by Rajendra Kumar). After he regains consciousness and is found by his friends, his female friends make fun of Gauri. They call her “dirty,” while his male friends exchange lewd looks.

A still from 'Talash' | YouTube
A still from ‘Talash’ | YouTube

In another sequence, we are introduced to Gauri’s father, the tribal chief, who is wearing a hat with fur beads around his neck, and a broad leather belt studded with more beads. At no point in the film do we even find out what his name is. He is simply reduced to a caricature.

Besides sexualising the characters, the songs in these movies were deemed offensive for their misrepresentation and ignorance. For example, in Yeh Gulistan Hamara, Mangeshkar and Danny Denzongpa teamed up to sing a song named ‘Mera Naam Aao‘. The Ao Naga community, who live on the India-China border, found it offensive. The film depicts the characters as tribals but never identifies them as such. The song was subsequently withdrawn from the film.


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Flawed contemporary representation

Seven years ago, S.S. Rajamouli’s Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) broke all previously held box-office records and established itself as the first pan-Indian film. But how can you truly be pan-Indian if you restrict your vision to cliches and unfounded notions?

The film portrays two tribal communities, one raises Baahubali’s son and worships Shiva, and the other belongs to a place called Kalakeya. While the former unnamed community sports chunky jewellery and no blouses — a cinematic marker of tribal people — the other community has blackened faces, sleeveless costumes and speaks in an incomprehensible language called Kilikili. The language is fictional, with no resonance in the real world. Moreover, while the Kalakeya people converse, the dialogues are not subtitled, indicating the worthlessness of their words.

Another worrying film released in the same year was MSG 2, where Sant Gurmeet Ram Raheem Singh, the head of controversial religious organisation Dera Sacha Sauda, is on a mission to ‘civilise’ the Adivasis. They are portrayed as people with questionable personal hygiene wearing minimal clothes and chunky jewellery with names like rakshas, ajgar, shaitaan (demon, python, monster).

RRR — a Rajamouli directorial yet again — showcases a central character from an indigenous community, loosely based on tribal freedom fighter Komaram Bheem. But instead of paying attention to the socioeconomic reality of the Adivasis in his narrative, Rajamouli chooses to overshadow the character’s identity by promoting him as the Hindu god Hanuman. The other protagonist, based on and named after revolutionary Alluri Sitarama Raju, is also portrayed as a reincarnation of lord Ram.

According to Kujur, the problem also lies with the viewers“They associate tribals with naturalism, poverty, nakedness, and cannibalism. And, it is very difficult to break that,” says Kujur.

At 8.6 per cent, scheduled tribes account for more than the population of brahmins (4.3 per cent). Despite that, they are deprived of a fair representation and identity on the screen. But things “will improve”, says Shriprakash, a well-known tribal filmmaker based in Jharkhand. “The way the big-budget commercial films are failing on the screen shows that the audience is evolving. The way the subaltern society is evolving and identifying the symbolism and tokenism in films, things will change for the better,” he says.

If there are films like Hero No. 1 that show the unrealistic notions of romance and companionship, there are also films like Sairat that project the real-life issues of what happens ‘happily-ever-after’. So, there is hope that the tide will change for tribals too, he says.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)

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