Not “anti-caste cinema” but Dalit cinema: a study of Pa. Ranjith and the new Tamil films

Pa. Ranjith has said: “My cinematic journey was influenced by Ambedkar. Without reading him, I would not have become a filmmaker” (quoted on p. 169, from a talk in 2023).

Sree Govind Bharatvaraj, a media scholar at JAIN (Deemed-to-be University) in Kochi, takes Ranjith at his word. His study argues that the films Ranjith made, produced and made possible are usually labelled “anti-caste cinema”, and that the label gets their history wrong. They are, he argues, Dalit cinema.

What the researcher did

Bharatvaraj reads Tamil films closely, from the 1940s to 2024. He looks at their stories, songs, dialogue and the things placed in the frame. He sets them against recent scholarship, against Tamil press coverage of Ranjith’s films, and against speeches by Ranjith and other directors.

His target is a view common among film scholars: that today’s films continue a long Tamil tradition of criticising caste, from the screenplays of the Dravidian leaders C. N. Annadurai and M. Karunanidhi to the films of M. G. Ramachandran (MGR) and directors such as K. Balachander. Bharatvaraj argues that the new films mark “a paradigmatic shift towards the representation of Dalits, their lived experience and their politics” (p. 171).

What he found

Earlier films criticised caste but kept Dalits at the edge. The anti-caste politics of the Dravidian (DMK) filmmakers, he writes, was “mostly centred on non-Brahman assertion and not on Dalit liberation” (p. 172). In Nallathambi (1949), Ambedkar appears only as a studious boy who rises through education, which in Bharatvaraj’s reading shrinks a radical leader (pp. 172–173). In MGR’s films, the caste of the poor characters he played “always remained concealed and ambiguous” (p. 173). In Balachander’s Unnal Mudiyum Thambi (1988), the Dalit woman is named Malam, “human excreta” in Tamil (p. 174). Film after film, he finds Dalit assertion led by “an upper-caste protagonist influenced by Gandhian or communist politics” (p. 175), and Ambedkar left out.

Ranjith’s films come out of the Dalit movement. Bharatvaraj places Ranjith in the wave of Dalit politics that followed the Ambedkar birth centenary in the early 1990s: the rise of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) in Tamil Nadu, and the spread of Dalit literature across Indian languages (pp. 168–169). Ranjith did not train under Tamil cinema’s leading directors. He worked briefly as a storyboard artist, then wrote and directed his own films, and he chose commercial cinema over art films to reach a mass audience (p. 176).

The films argue with other politics. Bharatvaraj shows them taking on three traditions:

• Dravidian parties. In Madras (2014), two parties fight to paint their slogans on a wall in a Dalit neighbourhood. At the climax the hero throws blue paint on it, beside a real DMK flag. A song in the film says: “We stick up posters and set up tents. We gather the crowd and cast our vote. Yet, all these days, we have lived as cheats” (p. 177).
• Gandhi. In Kabali (2016), the hero, played by Rajinikanth, explains why he wears a suit: “There are several reasons behind Ambedkar donning a suit and Gandhi removing his shirt. It’s all political!” (p. 178).
• The Left. In Natchathiram Nagargiradhu (2022), asked if she is a communist, the character Rene answers, “No, I am an Ambedkarite!” Bharatvaraj calls this the first time in a hundred years of Tamil cinema that a character makes that claim on screen (p. 179).

What was stigmatised is shown with pride. For decades, Bharatvaraj writes, Tamil films linked parai drumming with drunkenness and servitude, kept beef off the screen or gave it to villains, and showed slums as dens of crime. In Ranjith’s films, the parai plays at a Dalit wedding in Sarpatta Parambarai (2021), beef is eaten at home and at community gatherings, and slums are places of hip-hop, gaana, football and boxing (pp. 180–182). Ambedkar’s slogan “Educate, Agitate and Organise”, his books Annihilation of Caste and Castes in India, the colour blue and the flags of the Republican Party of India all appear on screen (pp. 182–183).

A star made a market. Ranjith cast Rajinikanth, one of Tamil cinema’s biggest stars, in Kabali and later Kaala (2018). The Tamil daily Dinamani called Kabali “a bad dream” and said of Ranjith, “he is a low-budget director and has a low-level thinking” (p. 184). The film was a hit anyway. Bharatvaraj cites press reports that it took over ₹650 crore. Ranjith then founded Neelam Productions (Neelam means blue). Its first film, Mari Selvaraj’s Pariyerum Perumal (2018), has a hero who says, “I want to become like Ambedkar” (p. 185). Bharatvaraj argues that this “market space” (p. 170) is why other directors could follow: Vetrimaaran with Asuran (2019) and T. J. Gnanavel with Jai Bhim (2021). Gnanavel said in 2022 that “Ranjith has already created a path for such films in the Tamil film industry” (p. 185).

Why the label matters

If the new films are Dalit cinema, why are they called “anti-caste cinema”? Bharatvaraj’s answer is that Ranjith himself refused the “Dalit cinema” label during the debates over Madras and Kabali. He did so, Bharatvaraj writes, because he believed it “would adversely affect the reach, access and market of Dalit-centric films”, and would keep other directors away (p. 186). The press and critics took up “anti-caste cinema” instead.

Bharatvaraj argues that the trend “must be recognised as ‘Dalit cinema’, because it centres around Dalit experiences and Ambedkarite politics, and is rooted in the Dalit political movements” (p. 186). The difference is more than a name. “Anti-caste” describes what the films are against. “Dalit” names whose experience and politics they centre. His reading gives the credit for the change to the Dalit movement, not to the Tamil film industry’s own history.

What the study does not show

• Other readings. This is one scholar’s interpretation. He disputes named scholars on several films, and they may disagree.
• “Firsts”. Claims that something appeared on screen for the first time are the author’s. The article doesn’t describe a survey of films that would establish them.
• Audiences. There is no evidence on how viewers, Dalit or not, received the films, beyond press coverage and box office.
• Box office. The figure for Kabali comes from press reports in 2016, not audited accounts.
• Who is left out. Dalit women directors are not discussed, and films after 2024 are not covered.

Talking points

• Ranjith refused the “Dalit cinema” label so that his films could reach everyone. Does naming the trend Dalit cinema now honour that work, or risk the narrow audience he was trying to avoid?
• Can a film by a non-Dalit director, such as Asuran or Jai Bhim, be Dalit cinema in Bharatvaraj’s sense?
• A counter-view: the earlier Dravidian films did attack caste and Brahmin power on screen, decades before Ranjith. Is it fair to judge them by what they left out?

The study

Sree Govind Bharatvaraj, “Contemporary Anti-Caste Cinema: Pa. Ranjith, Dalit Movements, Cultural Assertion and the Politics of Representation in Mainstream Tamil Cinema”, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 49(1), 2026, pp. 167–187. doi:10.1080/00856401.2025.2592504