The Cinematic Gaze and the Fractured Rural: A Critical
Analysis of Article 15 and Caste Politics in Contemporary India
Dr. Saranya Sen
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Purash Kanpur Haridas Nandi Mahavidyalaya
West Bengal, India
Abstract: This article
examines Anubhav Sinha’s 2019 film Article
15 as a cinematic text that attempts to confront the deeply entrenched
realities of caste-based violence, systemic discrimination, and social
stratification in rural India. Drawing upon the constitutional mandate of
Article 15—which prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste,
sex, or place of birth—the film utilizes the tropes of an investigative noir
thriller to map the socio-political landscapes of the rural hinterland. Through
a critical framework incorporating subaltern studies, Dalit feminist critique,
and film theory, this paper argues that while Article 15 successfully forces
mainstream Indian cinema to confront the horrors of casteism, it simultaneously
reproduces a paternalistic, upper-caste saviour narrative. By centring the
consciousness of an elite, Brahmin protagonist, the film risks marginalizing
the agency of the very subaltern subjects it seeks to emancipate. This article
unpacks this tension, exploring how the film reflects, refracts, and
occasionally misreads the complex realities of contemporary rural caste
politics.
Keywords: Caste, Saviour narrative, Article 15, Elite, Marginalization
Introduction: Constitutional Idealism vs. Rural
Materiality
The framing of the Indian nation-state in 1950 was
anchored in a profound constitutional idealism. Chief among its transformative
provisions was Article 15 of the Constitution, a radical legal instrument
designed to dismantle the millennial architecture of graded inequality. Yet, as
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar prophetic declared in his final speech to the Constituent
Assembly, India was entering a "life of contradictions"—possessing
political equality through one-man-one-vote, but structurally defined by
profound social and economic inequality (Ambedkar. Writings and Speeches,
1218).
For decades, mainstream Hindi cinema (Bollywood) largely
ignored these contradictions, choosing instead to romanticize the rural space
as an idyllic, uncorrupted repository of traditional values, or rendering caste
invisible behind a homogenized upper-caste, urban-bourgeois identity.
Anubhav Sinha’s Article 15 (2019) marks a stark,
deliberate departure from this tradition. Set in the fictional, fog-shrouded
district of Lalgaon in Uttar Pradesh, the film uses a brutal gang-rape and
murder of three minor Dalit girls to expose the systemic rot of rural caste
politics.
However, the film’s primary narrative vehicle is Ayan
Ranjan (played by Ayushmann Khurrana), an elite, St. Stephen’s-educated,
Eurocentric Brahmin Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who enters the rural periphery
as an outsider. This structural choice positions the film at a crucial
ideological crossroads where the constitutional idealism of the State is
mediated by the saviour protagonist, as it is expected in the constitutional
republic; but ends up confronting the materiality of the rural caste hierarchy.
This article will critically analyse Article 15 by
interrogating its representation of rural space, its deployment of the
"Brahmin Saviour" trope, the gendered intersections of caste
violence, and the contemporary politico-economic realities of Dalit
mobilization that the film attempts to mirror.
The Geography of
Discrimination: Mapping the Rural Hinterland
In Article 15, the rural space is not merely a
backdrop; it is an active antagonist. Sinha and cinematographer Ewan Mulligan
strip the countryside of any pastoral romance, replacing it with a grim,
claustrophobic aesthetic dominated by stagnant swamps, unyielding mud, and an
omnipresent fog that symbolizes the moral blindness of the community.
The Spatiality of Caste
The film brilliantly captures what sociologists term the
"spatial segregation" of the Indian village. In rural India, the
village is divided along strict purity-pollution lines:
- The
Savan (Upper-Caste) Quarters: Concrete houses, proximity
to administrative power, and control over natural resources.
- The
Mahadalit Basti (Ghetto): Located at the periphery,
vulnerable to flooding, lacking basic infrastructure, and physically
separated from the main village.
This spatial arrangement determines life and death. In
rural India, the village is not merely a geographic cluster of habitations; it
is a rigidly mapped moral and ritual hierarchy. To understand how this space is
weaponized in Article 15, one must turn to the foundational sociological
frameworks of Louis Dumont and M.N. Srinivas. In his seminal work Homo
Hierarchicus, French sociologist Louis Dumont argued that the caste system
is organized entirely around the opposition of the sacred/pure and the
profane/polluting (Dumont 43). This binary functions as the governing principle
for all social distance. Purity is fluidly linked to the spirit, ritual duty,
and the upper echelons of the varna system (primarily Brahmins), while
pollution is inherently anchored to the organic, the physical, and the
bodily—specifically tasks associated with death, decay, and human waste.
Because pollution is viewed as highly contagious—capable
of being transmitted through physical touch (chhut), sight, or even
shared shadows—the physical layout of the rural hinterland is engineered to
prevent ritual defilement. As Dr. B.R. Ambedkar noted, the Indian village is
fundamentally fractured into two distinct spatial realities: the village proper
(savarna quarters) and the peripheral ghetto (dalit basti)
(Ambedkar, 45).
Article 15 maps
this geography with clinical precision. The village is divided along strict
purity-pollution lines that dictate daily physical movement and resource
allocation: The sacred core is controlled by the landowning Thakurs and
ritualistic Brahmins, this space contains the village temples, concrete houses,
and the clean municipal water sources. It represents the apex of structural and
ritual purity. On the other hand, the Mahadalit Basti represents the
polluted periphery where the minor girls and the activist Nishad reside. This
space is physically relegated to the low-lying, flood-prone outskirts. It is
the zone where "polluting" labour—such as manual scavenging, tanning,
and agricultural servitude—is contained so as not to defile the core.
Fluid Pollution and Social Friction
This binary is not static; it is enforced through
everyday violence. M.N. Srinivas’s concept of "ritual distance"
explains that the physical distance maintained between castes is directly
proportional to their place on the purity scale (Srinivas, 34). In Article
15, the fundamental friction occurs because the subaltern subjects attempt
to alter this distance.
When the three minor girls demand a wage increase of
three rupees, they are not merely demanding economic parity; they are
disrupting the traditional master-servant dynamic anchored in their prescribed
"polluted" status. By asserting economic agency, they step out of
their assigned spatial and behavioural boundaries.
The upper-caste response—abduction, gang-rape, and public
hanging—is a brutal exercise in spatial re-assertion. The Dalit female body,
historically viewed through the lens of upper-caste hegemony as an inherently
"pollutable" yet sexually exploitable site, is violently violated to
punish the community’s defiance (Rege 46). The act of hanging their bodies from
a tree in the intermediate zone between the village and the fields serves as a
public, visual warning designed to re-inscribe the boundaries of the
purity-pollution matrix. Thus, Article 15 demonstrates that spatial
segregation is the physical architecture required to keep the myth of ritual
purity alive. The stagnant swamps and foggy horizons of Lalgaon are not just
atmospheric choices; they represent a landscape choking under the weight of an
ancient binary that weaponizes geography to deny basic human dignity. The crime
at the heart of the film occurs because three Dalit girls demand a meager wage
hike of three rupees (from Rs.22 to Rs.25) to sustain their livelihoods. When
they assert their economic agency, they are violently dragged from their
spatial boundary into the fields—a transition zone where upper-caste hegemony
is enforced through sexual terrorism.
One of the film's most visceral motifs is the literal and
metaphorical swamp. When Officer Ayan Ranjan attempts to navigate the local
power structures, he is repeatedly told by his subordinates that "things
do not change here."
The rural space is depicted as a temporal anomaly—a place
where modern constitutional law goes to die, swallowed by ancient caste codes (Manusmriti).
The film argues that the state machinery (the police, the local bureaucracy,
the medical examiners) is not a neutral arbiter of justice but is completely
weaponized by upper-caste actors to maintain the status quo.
The Brahmin Savior and the Erasure of Subaltern Agency
The central critical critique of Article 15 lies
in its narrative architecture. To make a film about Dalit oppression palatable
to a predominantly upper-caste, middle-class multiplex audience, Sinha relies
on the well-worn cinematic trope of the "White Savior," translated in
the Indian context as the Brahmin Saviour.
The Epistemological Journey of Ayan Ranjan
Ayan enters Lalgaon listening to Western classical music
and reading books on global politics. He represents the clean, rational, modern
state. His encounter with caste is framed as a shock to his civilized
sensibilities. In a pivotal scene, Ayan stands outside a roadside tea stall and
asks his subordinates to chart out their respective castes.
|
Character |
Caste Group |
Socio-Political Status in Lalgaon |
|
Ayan Ranjan |
Brahmin (Kanyakubja) |
Apex of Purity / State Authority |
|
Brahmadatt Singh |
Thakur / Rajput |
Landowning Hegemony / Physical Enforcer |
|
Nihal Singh |
Kayastha |
Bureaucratic / Clerical Intermediary |
|
Jatav / Gaonvasi |
Dalit (Jatav/Pasi) |
Subjugated Labor / Peripheralized |
As his officers explain the intricate
micro-hierarchies—how a Jatav cannot marry a Pasi, how certain sub-castes
cannot eat together—Ayan cries out in exasperation, "What a mess!"
While this scene effectively highlights the fractured nature of caste
identities to an uninitiated audience, it reduces a deeply violent, structural
oppressive system into a comical, absurd bureaucratic puzzle. More importantly,
it establishes Ayan's epistemological superiority; he is the only one who
stands above the mess, looking down with rational disgust.
The Subaltern Who Cannot Speak
By centring Ayan, the film inadvertently marginalizes its
Dalit characters. The character of Nishad is a radical Dalit activist modelled
clearly on real-world figures like Chandrashekhar Azad of the Bhim Army. Nishad
is articulate, deeply conscious of his history, and unwilling to beg the state
for scraps. He declares:"We are not begging for someone to save us. We
are waiting for the day we stop needing to be saved."Yet, the film’s
narrative arc dooms Nishad to tragedy. His radical politics are framed as noble
but ultimately futile and disruptive. He is hunted down and killed by the
state, clearing the stage for Ayan Ranjan to achieve a peaceful, institutional
resolution.
The message is clear: change cannot come from subaltern
revolution; it must be delivered through the benevolent, reformed institutions
of the upper-caste state. The climax features Ayan physically entering a filthy
swamp to find the last missing Dalit girl, a visual manifestation of the elite
purifying the corrupt rural landscape.
The Dalit Female Body as a Site of Inscription
Caste is not merely a division of labour, as Ambedkar
noted; it is a division of labourers. Furthermore, as Dalit feminist scholars
like Rege have articulated, caste is maintained through the strict regulation
of endogamy and the systemic control over women's bodies. Article 15
operates within this terrifying matrix. The three minor girls in the film are
violated not out of random lust, but as a deliberate act of political
punishment. Their bodies become the canvas upon which the Thakur landowners
reinscribe their caste dominance. When the girls demand twenty five rupees,
they commit an act of defiance against the economic order. The response is a
gang-rape that serves as a public pedagogy of terror meant to keep the entire
Dalit community compliant.
The film handles the visual representation of this
violence with commendable restraint—avoiding the voyeuristic
"rape-revenge" tropes common in older Hindi cinema. However, the
victims themselves remain largely faceless and silent throughout the narrative.
They are symbols of suffering rather than fully realized characters. Their sister,
Gaura (played by Sayani Gupta), acts as a fierce voice of grief and defiance,
but her actions are constantly constrained by her structural vulnerability. She
must ultimately rely on Ayan to find her missing sister. One cannot help but be
reminded of Uma Chakravarti who in her Gendering Caste through a Feminist
Lens, unequivocally mentions that Brahmanical patriarchy preserves caste
hierarchy by regulating women's sexuality. (Chakravarti 28)
The position and response of the upper-caste female, in
contrast, are interesting one as presented in the film. Though briefly
explored, the character of Aditi (played by Isha Talwar), Ayan’s urban partner,
provides a fascinating point of contrast. Through phone calls, she acts as Ayan's
moral conscience. However, her distance from the rural reality highlights the
insulation of urban, elite feminism from the visceral intersections of caste
and gender experienced by Dalit women.
The State as an
Instrument of Hegemony
A significant strength of Article 15 is its
unsparing critique of the rural state machinery. It deconstructs the myth of
the police force as an objective defender of the law. Brahmadatt Singh (played
by Manoj Pahwa), a high-ranking local police officer, represents the insidious
face of everyday rural fascism. He does not see himself as a criminal; he sees
himself as a custodian of social order. To him, filing a First Information
Report (FIR) for missing Dalit girls is a dangerous disruption of peace.
He falsifies the autopsy report to claim the girls died
of honour killing committed by their own families. This tactic is deeply rooted
in actual rural politics, where upper-caste perpetrators routinely use the
"honour killing" narrative to deflect blame back onto Dalit families
and exploit existing intra-caste fractures.
The Complicity of Bureaucracy and Medicine
The film shows how every arm of the local administration
is integrated into the caste network:
- The
Medical System:
The local doctor is easily intimidated into falsifying forensic data
regarding the rape.
- The
Political Elite:
The local politician, Mahant Ji, uses a mix of religious rhetoric and
electoral engineering to keep different sub-castes fighting each other,
ensuring they never unite against his hegemony.
Ayan’s act of physically pinning the text of Article 15
on the police station wall is a radical, symbolic reassertion of the state’s
unfulfilled promise. It highlights that in rural India, the Constitution is an
alien document that must be forcibly introduced into an ecosystem governed by
customary oppression.
Real-World
Parallelisms: From Una to Hathras
To understand the academic and socio-political weight of Article
15, one must look outside the theater to the material realities of
contemporary India. The film’s narrative is a thinly veiled amalgamation of
several real-world horrors. One cannot but horridly reminded of the Badaun
gangrape of 2014 where two cousin girls were found hanging from a tree in Uttar
Pradesh, initially met with massive administrative apathy and victim-blaming.
At the same time, we further recall the Una fogging incident of 2016 which
catalyzed radical Dalit resistance against vigilante violence.
The film's release in 2019 preceded the horrific Hathras
gang-rape of 2020, where a young Dalit woman was assaulted by upper-caste men
and her body was hurriedly cremated by the police in the dead of night without
her family's consent. The eerie accuracy with which Article 15
anticipated the state's complicity in the Hathras case proves that the film's
depiction of Lalgaon is not an exaggeration but a precise diagnostic map of
rural North India's political economy.
Conclusion: The Limits of Cinematic Radicalism
Anubhav Sinha’s Article 15 remains a landmark
achievement in contemporary Indian cinema. It shatters the comfortable silence
of the privileged classes, forcing them to look into the abyss of caste
privilege and structural violence that funds their urban comforts. It
brilliantly captures the spatial, gendered, and institutional realities of rural
caste politics.
Yet, as an academic critique demands, we must acknowledge
its systemic limitations. By choosing an elite Brahmin protagonist to dismantle
a caste-ridden system, the film reinforces the very hierarchy it seeks to
critique. It operates on the assumption that the subaltern can be spoken for,
and that the path to liberation lies in the moral awakening of the oppressor
class rather than the revolutionary mobilization of the oppressed.
Ultimately, Article 15 is a film made by
the privileged, about the oppressed, for the privileged. It is a
vital stepping stone toward an anti-caste cinema, but the true democratization
of the medium will only occur when the subaltern subjects move from being the
tragic objects of the cinematic gaze to the creators of their own narratives.
Works Cited
Ambedkar, B. R. Annihilation of Caste. Political
Mission, 1936.
_____________ Writings and Speeches. Vol. 13,
Government of Maharashtra, 1994.
Chakravarti, Uma. Gendering Caste through
a Feminist Lens. Stree, 2003.
Dumont, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus: The
Caste System and Its Implications. Complete Revised English Edition,
University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Rege, Sharmila.Writing Caste/Writing
Gender: Narrating Dalit Women's Testimonios. "Dalit Women Talk
Differently: A Critique of 'Difference, Zed Books, 1998.
Sinha, Anubhav. (Director). Article 15
[Film]. Benaras Media Works, 2019.
Srinivas,
M. N. Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India. Oxford
University Press, 1952.