The big picture: Aarakshan and its Radhakrishnan problem

by Avirook Sen The Indian media has a current affairs quota. This enables bad films like No One Killed Jessica, My Name is Khan, Deshdrohi, and the like, to get a disproportionate amount of publicity. It is because of this quota that a film like Aarakshan starts trending on Twitter. But set aside the controversy about releasing it. Set aside the SC/ST commission’s review. Set aside the bans. What is the film really about? It begins poorly, with a deprived and darkened Saif Ali Khan (fairness cream applied in later scenes) appearing in an unsuccessful job interview—rejected summarily because of his low caste. It then slips rapidly downhill. [caption id=“attachment_60609” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Aarakshan might claim to be about the issue of reservations but it is a standard Bollywood good versus evil story, in which good pretends to struggle, sings and dances unexpectedly and wins in the end as ordained. Image from IBNlive.in.com”]  [/caption] Firstly, the title — which is at the root of the fuss — is a misnomer. It would be analogous to calling a film ‘Civil Rights’ and proceeding to also explore bizarre building by-laws at length. Aarakshan might claim to be about the issue of reservations but it is a standard Bollywood good versus evil story, in which good pretends to struggle, sings and dances unexpectedly and wins in the end as ordained. To suggest anything else (as in “it has a message”) would be doing the film a flattering injustice. It tells us nothing we don’t already know. For all of us who know that casteism is no good; that corruption is bad; that our education system is rotten; that Saif Ali Khan was really born into privilege, as he says truthfully in his booze ad; and that Amitabh Bachchan is also called Wig-B, this film has nothing new to say. What it says, it says poorly enough to qualify for one of those  ‘Hitler’s reaction to…’ spoofs on Youtube right alongside his “stop-stating-the-obvious” rant against Rebecca Black’s song Friday. But ‘Reservation’ has a ring to it because of the events of the last few decades, and demands examination. Since the film suffers from such a poverty of decent argument or entertainment, I was struggling to understand the fuss, struggling to figure out what it was really about, to see the big picture. Until I saw it. The upright college principal’s office (Amitabh Bachchan’s) is one of the theatres where the case between good and evil is fought. It has a big picture of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan dominating its wall, watching over proceedings. To have a large portrait of a former president, leading modern philosopher and eminent educationist (whose 5 September birthday is celebrated as Teacher’s Day) is appropriate and desirable. And therefore, not unusual in such rooms in schools and colleges. But what were Radhakrishnan’s views on caste? This is slightly trickier. For although President Radhakrishnan rejected the caste system calling it a scandal, the practice of which had no place in modern India, the philosopher Radhakrishnan wasn’t as forthright. [caption id=“attachment_60443” align=“alignright” width=“231” caption=“For although President Radhakrishnan rejected the caste system calling it a scandal, the practice of which had no place in modern India, the philosopher Radhakrishnan wasn’t as forthright. Image from Wikimedia commons.”]  [/caption] This Radhakrishnan held the belief that the foundations of the caste system were sound. There is evidence of this in his writings in several places, but a telling passage in one of his books, Indian Philosphy Volume 1 is worth reproducing:

“The barriers (of caste) did not show any signs of weakening when the tide of progress demanded it. While they contributed to the preservation of social order they did not help the advancement of the nation as a whole. But this gives us no right to condemn the institution of caste as it was originally introduced. Only caste made it possible for a number of races to live together side by side without fighting each other. India solved peaceably the inter-racial problem which other people did by a decree of death. When European races conquered others, they took care to efface their human dignity and annihilate their self-respect. Caste enabled the Vedic Indian to preserve the integrity and independence of the conquering as well as the conquered races and promote mutual confidence and harmony.”

This is part of a lengthy defence of Indian philosophy— Radhakrishnan’s early ideas were shaped by the rejection of Indian thinking by his evangelist teachers. It is also, whichever way you read it, an apology for a system that codified inequality. If you substituted a few words here, deleted a few there, you could have a nice little passage on why apartheid, as originally introduced, was actually a force for good. Radhakrishnan’s argument rested on one key difference between the Vedic caste system and the one that we now see slices of in the matrimonial sections: he took the position that caste wasn’t hereditary and cited Vedic hymns to support this. But there are a number of opposite instances in Hindu scripture and mythology (Eklavya, for example). Radhakrishnan also writes that while Aryans may have had a shudra caste of their own, they accepted/converted conquered people into their fold allowing them to join at the bottom, as shudras. Others not assimilated this way became panchamas (the untouchable fifth caste). So evidently, Aryan birth had its advantages. These would, however, be pretty unusual ways of promoting  “mutual confidence and harmony”. Ramachandra Guha’s book Makers of Modern India drops Radhakrishnan from the playing eleven with a mention on page 13. Guha says that Radhakrishnan had a lot of traction with the middle classes as an intellectual when he joined public life, but this waned in subsequent years. His ideas, however, have had deep (if unintended) impact even if he’s not credited with them often enough. Ask the (non-bigoted) middle-class Hindu about caste, and you are likely to hear that it was a system corrupted by practice, rather than undesirable to begin with. Ask him about Hinduism, and he will say it is greater than other religions because it is a ‘way of life’: a phrase coined by Radhakrishnan in 1926 to describe the extraordinary powers of assimilation that Hinduism possessed. And a phrase that later influenced Indian courts to deny minority rights and clumsily define Hindutva as something so inclusive that other religions were only subsets. Another unusual way of promoting “confidence and harmony”. Radhakrishnan’s inclusion in the frame in Aarakshan is ironic. It is ironic because the film has none of Radhakrishnan’s nuance, nor the context in which he wrote about caste.  It just has his picture presiding over the clichés. But it’s a big picture. You can’t miss it.