THE DEAD WEIGHT OF TRADITION
The second of Satyajit Ray’s Hindi films, Sadgati was his only work that was made for television. It was produced by Doordarshan, the state broadcaster, during a time when television was at its most responsibly, socially aware. The combination of this Premchand story about the wickedness of caste, the language, and the medium, was the perfect vehicle for Ray to bring his craft to a much larger audience than ever before.
It was also his chance to work with three of the doyens of Hindi parallel cinema, Om Puri, Smita Patil, and Mohan Agashe. And although the film runs short of a full hour, there is no doubt it is one of Ray’s most haunting and visceral works.
Undone Since Creation
One can imagine that some centuries after humankind learned how to control fire, we started to see ourselves as separate form the rest of the animal kingdom. With the creation of language, story-telling, and eventually religion, humans have embraced this idea more and more, rejecting all evidence of our natural evolution.
It is bad enough that humans have assumed dominion over the entire planet and all of nature, but we have also created unreasonable differentiation within our own species based on skin colour, geography, language, and other racial characteristics. In the Indian subcontinent this discrimination has coalesced into the system of caste.
Caste is the bane of Indian society and yet it is also the foundation. It has been linked to history and prehistory, and even previous lifetimes. Caste has been defended by real and fictional characters, and even gods have been assigned castes.
Such is the tightness of caste’s grip on collective imagination that those who are the most devastated by it are often willing participants in their own downfall. Dukhi is an example of one such man who toils under the cruelty of the caste system and yet, is also a willing pillar in holding it up.
Why is a man like Dukhi – strong, and deserving of dignity, willing to work till his last breath for such heartless creatures as the priest and his wife? He accepts all of the priest’s misbehaviour just because the priest’s help is needed for selecting an auspicious date for his daughter’s wedding. Why can he not find the will to resist and choose his daughter’s wedding date without consultation? The answer is two-fold – superstition and excommunication.
The strength of social evils derives from co-opting people into a shared belief system. The trickery of the gatekeepers is that they conceal exploitation in the garb of mythology. By transferring the responsibility of creating such a system on to all-knowing, all-powerful gods, the oppressors evade consequences. After all, they are just the messengers, carrying the word of gods. To defy convention will risk inviting the ire of all the heavens.
Once this superstition has been established, it keeps almost everyone in check. But, what if some independent-minded individual decides to challenge such superstitions and break the illusion? That’s where such systems exert pressure on individuals by cutting them off from society. In Dukhi’s case, if he were to refuse to consult the priest on the date, he might find the groom’s family backing away from their arrangement.
Take the case of Dukhi’s wife, Jhuria, who appears more fierce than her husband. She has no say in the matter because the woman’s inferior position is also determined collectively in society. If a wife cannot rely on her husband’s support because of societal pressures, how can a family resist the entire community? Dukhi and Jhuria may find that no one wants to marry their daughter, no one wants to do business with them, no one wants to even talk to them.
That’s exactly what a system of exploitation does, it makes the price of non-compliance so high that a man like Dukhi will not dare to even take a break for fear of being ostracised or cursed.
The Free Economy Of Exploitation
Already we can see a system that keeps the masses beholden to a few gatekeepers. Not only does Dukhi need to consult the Brahmin priest, when he goes to that priest he cannot go empty-handed either. He must go bearing gifts, which in his case means a gift of fodder for the priest’s cows.
But, even this is not considered payment enough by the priest, who shamelessly starts to order Dukhi to do domestic chores. What follows is the unrelenting exploitation of the hapless man as he sweeps floors, carries heavy sacks around, and starts to chop away at a boulder-like section of a fallen tree. He does all this without rest or food, even once getting scalded by a carelessly thrown chunk of red-hot coal. Eventually the strain of the chopping takes its toll on this simple man and he dies from it.
While the primary issue that this brings up is that of caste oppression, but there is also the secondary and more universal problem of free labour. While caste can be brushed off by the privileged sections of society because it doesn’t cause them harm (in fact, it benefits them), the exploitation of free labour is something everybody suffers from whether the social structure is feudal or liberal, communist or capitalist.
In any hierarchical structure there is scope for exploitation. Even in modern neo-liberal economies white-collar employees can be made to work overtime without pay, or even run errands for their bosses. Recently there have been multiple studies to calculate the monetary value of work done by stay-at-home wives. While that is a domestic matter and isn’t directly relevant to this film, it is still an example of how much work gets done for no remuneration just because social mores dictate it to be so.
Dukhi is not relative of the priest, he is no friend either. In fact, the priest will not even touch him because of the caste difference. Why then is he okay with accepting Dukhi’s labour? Just because it is free. The hypocrisy of the priest is evident by the fact that he can refuse to accept Dukhi while also happily accepting Dukhi’s labour.
[The same hypocrisy can been seen in Ashani Sanket, where the sweet-natured Ananga is willing to let an untouchable woman die, but had no problem getting some house-cleaning done by her earlier.]
The priestly class traditionally lived entirely on gifts and free labour that they commanded because of their caste status. Their work cannot exactly be considered productive (although some of the more enlightened ones may offer genuine guidance and solace to their followers, or organise socially beneficial activities) and hence not have a clear monetary value. Instead they made do by getting gifts of food grains, clothes, and occasionally money, in return for services like officiating marriages, leading prayers, and conducting auspicious rituals. While these are, by their very nature, irregular and sporadic, the rest of the time they turned to the lower castes to offer their services. That’s where Dukhi plays his part.
And which is the point where the film makes its most powerful and prescient point – even the priest will feel helpless when the Dalit finally breaks.
Curse Of A Dalit
When Dukhi finally succumbs to the injustice meted out to him, his corpse becomes his revenge on the priest, like the albatross hanging on the sailor’s neck. The priest is stuck. He cannot do for himself the simple task of carrying Dukhi’s body to his family and arranging for his cremation because his customs prevent him. On the other hand the rest of the untouchable villagers decide to protest the inhuman treatment of Dukhi and do not agree to do the needful. Finally, they are willing to take a stand.
It is important to note here the historical backdrop against which such a story can unfold. The country was under British rule during Premchand’s time and they ushered in a modern system of law to India. This legal framework treated manslaughter in objective terms and caste was not counted as justification. The untouchable community could take recourse to the law under the British which they never could under their own people. They now had some power, some basic human rights, under which they could have the priest sent to jail.
[No system is free of double standards, and while all Indians may have been subject to the same legal system, the British operated a separate legal system for themselves in India.]
By becoming accustomed to being on top of the social pyramid, the priest has made himself extremely dependent and unproductive. The world which has moved away from the feudal economy can no longer afford to keep such a priest on dole. If not him, his children will find themselves lost in a world where the lack of practical skills will put them on the side-lines (something similar unfolds in Jalsaghar). Moreover, they may find themselves in competition with other priests as well, vying for the same appointments. By not evolving with time, they go down the path of redundancy. At best they can keep complaining about others not following the age-old ways, but in reality they have a decomposing corpse in their backyard and no one willing to cart it away.
Eventually, the priest uses the cover of night to drag Dukhi’s body away. It is a painful to watch sequence where the body is dragged by one leg, over raw and rough earth, and dumped at a distance from the house. Dukhi is reduced from a human being to a degraded carcass, but the priest is also forced off his elite throne and reduced to doing an untouchable’s work.
He is no longer pure in his eyes. And in truth a person like him never was pure. He is a man of education, of privilege, of prayer, who nevertheless does not possess basic humanity or tenderness. He is a useless member of society, and his customs and traditions are like a corpse that he keeps dragging behind him, pretending it’s a gift to him from the gods.