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Contemporary Urban Politics: Reflections from ‘MulshiPattern’ and ‘Kaala’SHRIRANJAN AWATERAHEE S G

Shriranjan Awate (shriranjan91@gmail.com) is a PhD scholar in Savitribai Phule PuneUniversity, Pune. Rahee S G (rahee.ananya@gmail.com) completed her MA in sociologyfrom Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

Kaala (2018) directed by Pa Ranjith, and Mulshi Pattern (2018) directed by Pravin Tarde,both depict the changing nature of the political economy that revolves around theownership of urban and suburban land. The conflict arising out of the overlapping shades ofcaste, class and land is at the root of both the films. While Kaala is the embodiment ofcontemporary subaltern politics as well as its aesthetics, Mulshi Pattern is an expression ofthe reactionary politics of criminalisation arising out of the collective insecurity perceivedby dominant castes on losing landholdings and associated privileges.

Kaala and Mulshi Pattern, both take place against the backdrop of urban cities like Mumbaiand Pune respectively. The films revolve around the urban land politics and changingequations of political geographies. While the family of the protagonist of Kaala comes fromTamil Nadu to Dharavi, Mumbai, the migration takes place from Mulshi to Pune Tehsil (bothin Pune district) in Mulshi Pattern. Beyond these primary similarities, the sociopoliticalcontent, context and aesthetics of the films differ significantly.

‘Kya Re Settinga?’ The Pertinent Question to Brahminism and Neo-liberalism

Kaala Karikaalan (played by Rajnikanth) is the protagonist of the film, and is also the most

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powerful "don" of Dharavi. As the film begins, a battle starts over the land of Dharavi where"Manu Builders," under the patronage of a local right-wing leader Hari Abhyankar (NanaPatekar) plans to build a development project. The collective endeavour of rising againstthis project by the slum, constructed on the foundation of progressive values propagated byiconic leaders such as BR Ambedkar and Periyar, is a revolt against Brahminism and neo-liberalism. While noting the names of the characters of the film, one can easily locate theideological moorings of the director. The builder is named "Manu," directly indicating areference to Manusmriti while the name "Kaala Karikaalan" symbolises an aestheticstatement of Dravidian culture, as "Karikaala" is the name of a Tamil deity. On the one hand,the name Hari Abhyankar underlines the social location of the character, with"Hari" implying the Brahminical tradition, while on the other hand, one of Kaala’s rebellioussons is named Lenin, indicating the ideological roots of the protagonist, and so on. Kaala,then, does not only relate with the counter-rhetoric to aesthetics, but notions of classconsciousness also. For instance, when Hari Abhyankar, the representative of the rulingBrahmin neo-liberal political establishment, asks Kaala “Kya re, kaisa naam hai tera, Kaala!”(How disgusting is your name, Kaala!) Kaala replies, “Kaala (black) is the colour of labour!”

The film is also awash with images of Ambedkar, Buddha and Periyar, which have remainedconspicuously absent in Indian cinema till now. Generally, the absence of Budhha orAmbedkar comes with an inferiority complex, as there is always a possibility of the directorbeing labelled with their Dalit identity, closing doors to all prospective opportunities in thefilm industry. However, with Kaala, Pa Ranjith displays the courage to assert his Dalitidentity and while doing so, not exclude communities other than the Dalits. Rather, heattempts to build a new inclusive identity based on the solidarity of the oppressed practisedin Dharavi.

The dispute over the land becomes intense as Kaala organises the people from the slumsand encourages them to remain firm for their rights. To pacify the popular discontent aboutthe acquisition of land by the builder, the neo-liberal tactic of non-governmentalorganisation (NGO) intervention is used smartly. Here, Zarina (an NGO activist) paints arosy picture for the slum residents with the builder’s rehabilitation plan. This picture,however, gets tainted with a simple question by a resident, who asks, “Why do we require agolf course when the local kids only play Kabbadi, football, and cricket?” Here, Kaala'sintervention is pertinent. He demands that the local people should be asked what theyrequire.

In short, “Kya re settinga?” is a timely question asked by the protagonist to the neo-liberalBrahminical traditions that systematically oppresses the people in the cities today. This isconcurrent with Ambedkar's doctrine, which explicitly identifies Brahminism and capitalismas the two prime enemies of the marginalised sections.

A new grammar of aesthetics has been spelt throughout the cinema. Interestingly, PaRanjith uses the framework of the mainstream action film, but successfully manages to instil

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alternative revolutionary content into it. Rajinikanth is the “superstar” in most of his moviesand hence, obviously, the film becomes the medium of the superstar, instead of the director.Here, however, the protagonist Kaala is not made into a full-blown superstar. This is seen inthe opening scene of the movie where he gets clean bowled in a cricket match that he isplaying with children from Dharavi. In another instance, young men from his neighbourhoodtease him about his old age, and at the end of the film, the collective action against evilbecomes more important than the protagonist. Kaala disappears in the crowd and Kaalabecomes one. It would be more than appropriate to say, as pointed out in an article byShailaja Menon and N Sukumar, that this is “a Pa Ranjith film in which Rajinikanth hasacted” (N Sukumar and Shailaja Menon 2018).

Mulshi Pattern: Story of the Frustrated Rural Dominant Caste

Mulshi Pattern, directed by Pravin Tarde, is an action thriller situated in and on theoutskirts of the city of Pune. A Maratha family (its caste identity located repeatedly throughuse of the traditional title “Patil”) is forced out of their village in the Mulshi tehsil of Punedistrict when their land is sold to a builder and the resulting wealth runs out. The family iscompelled to live in a tiny tin hut, in stark contradiction with their traditional Waada(mansion) in the village. The head of the family soon starts working as a daily wage labourerin the vegetable market of the city, and his frustrated son, Rahul, enters the criminal world.The drama that unfolds in Mulshi Pattern is a story of the result of this young man’sendeavours in the criminal world.

The director has repeatedly announced in various media appearances such as his pressconference in Satara that this movie is a ‘story of his roots’ (Maharashtra News, 2018). Hedeclares that he has lived this story with numerous other families who moved to cities fromtheir villages in the 1990s. The criminal world portrayed in the movie is also customary tothe director, as he is said to have “friendly relations” with some of the infamous criminalshailing from Mulshi tehsil. So much so that the movie landed in controversy when a songvideo from the movie was released, and it starred two actual criminals with several murderson their track record. After the movie released, another criminal “wanted” for murder wasarrested while watching the movie in a cinema hall.

The Indian cinema and, in particularly, the Marathi cinema is dealing very boldly with theissues of caste in the last couple of years. While caste was always present on the film screenin India throughout history, given its all-pervading presence in the Indian society, theportrayal of this reality is no more limited to the experiences of untouchability andintermarriages. The complex politics that caste plays in everyday urban and rural lives aredepicted very clearly with the narration of life as usual. Life-as-usual is a life entrenched incaste, and cinema today has realised this with a sense of non-ambiguousstraightforwardness. While most of these stories are geographically located in the ruralparts of the country and most of the directors portraying caste socially locate themselvesfrom below the caste hierarchy, and ideologically, in the Ambedkarite tradition, Mulshi

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Pattern is of significance because it defies all these locations. Rahul, the protagonist of thefilm, is an upper-caste man who has made the urban crime scene his home. Unlike withmost other movies that explicitly deal with caste, the director of this movie does notideologically locate himself in the Ambedkarite anti-caste movement, but on the contrary, isan upper caste himself and merely wishes to paint the picture of the agony of his caste.

The characters of the movie appear to be inspired by various real-world criminals of Pune,and their main plight is for land. Parents of the young criminals in the movie lose theirancestral rural land to development projects and the sons appear to avenge this historicaldefeat by acquiring more and more land through criminal deals in the city. Rahul’s oldfather is a “Maharashtra Kesari” (an award-winning Kusti player) of the past and isrespected and feared in the village in his times. The son often nostalgically recalls the timeswhen his father used to wear a feta (turban, a symbol of power) and sit in the village squarewhere he would make judgments for people and resolve their conflicts. People, in turn, paidhim their regards. His wife, the "Patlin" of the village, was draped in rich sarees andexpensive jewellery in this nostalgic picture. All this, however, is history the moment thefilm starts, and this history is recalled by the characters time and again throughout the film.The old father is now a daily wage labourer and his wife and daughter work as domesticlabour to survive in the suburban slums of Pune.

The film starts with an eagle gliding in the sky and a narration that accompanies thecamera. The camera pans over various sites in the city, including the outskirts, and thenarration follows an eagle-eye-view of the site, where the drama for the next two-and-a-half-hours unfolds. It is unclear as to whose voice it is that is narrating this introduction. Thisintroduction paints a picture of a city expanding due to the development in 1991 and thenarrator describes how several villages were eaten up by this expanding city. Exclaimingthat the side effects of this cancerous growth of the city are being felt only now, thenarration recalls MK Gandhi’s call for people to move to villages, and observes that peopleopposite behaviour to the historic call led to this mishap.

This cancer of development in 1991 is the starting point of the movie. Given that most land-holding farmers in Maharashtra are Marathas, acquisition of rural land for real estate andindustrial development is linearly equated with the fall of Maratha pride in the movie. Theprotagonist’s family sells their ancestral land to Shinde builders, interestingly a real estatebuilder from the same caste. The land fetches the family a great sum of money, but the cashruns out soon as it is spent generously on various luxuries in a short period of time. Imageryused to depict this short-lived wealth is an expensive car in the family’s courtyard. The caris bought with the new cash, but since the family is unable to pay for the car’s expenses, itacquires dust and grass grows over it. The "Patlin" finally uses the car to dry her cow-dungcakes on it. As all the money runs out, the Patil has to work as a watchman for the builder towhom he sold his land, and eventually with rising debt and shame, the family moves to thecity.

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The film unfolds a chase sequence, which takes place through the length of the film. Rahulis being chased by a gang of armed criminals, and the story of the protagonist is narratedthrough a series of flashbacks during this chase. The plight of the younger generation of theupper or dominant caste is symbolically portrayed in this near-death chase. Rahul runs forhis life, with little prospects at staying alive, and growing hysterical, he eventually startshallucinating by the end.

Mulshi Pattern is the story of the fall from grace for the rural Maratha and their plight inthe city. The caste, the resultant status pride and thirst for power that has historically beeninstilled in the community through a systemic caste hierarchy, is the ultimate killer for theyoungsters of the community. The director although points at the caste pride and the fall-from-grace separately, he stops at paying a compassionate tribute to the dying spirit. Tardeidentifies the ultimate enemy as exclusive development and blames the system for theuncertain future for the community.

Question of Urban Land and ‘Development’

Both Kaala and Mulshi Pattern revolve, to a great extent, on the issue of urban land anddevelopment. While Kaala is the fight of the slum dwellers for their land, young criminals ofMulshi Pattern either forcefully acquire farmers’ land for various builders or for themselvesto build their empires with this land-based property. The slum dwellers in Kaala fightcollectively against the builder for their land, while the builder’s men, with whom we seemost action sequences in Kaala, are parallel to the criminals of Mulshi Pattern. The fight forland for the Dharavi residents is their fight for survival while the land is the means to thepower matrix for the young men in Mulshi Pattern.

The vocabulary of development used in both the movies has its roots in the globalredefinition of economies of the world post-1980s. The World Bank classified economies interms of their national wealth, and India became a third world, developing economy. By thetime India embraced the LPG policy (Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation), theterm development was already popularly equated with economic growth and prosperity.Development projects were usually understood as big dams, highways, industrial estatesand large-scale residential and non-residential real estate projects. It is this developmentthat both Dharavi residents and Mulshi criminals are dealing with.

Most of the Dharavi residents portrayed in the film are living in the slum for at least twogenerations. As the legend of Kaala goes, his father Vengai is the first in his family to movefrom Tamil Nadu to Mumbai and subsequently to Dharavi. One can estimate this migrationto have taken place somewhere in the late 1970s to the early 1980s. This is the period of theemergence of Shiv Sena in Mumbai, and the riot references in Kaala may be a depiction ofthe aggression of the party. In its early years, Shiv Sena based its entire campaign againstthe South Indian people migrating to Mumbai for employment. Kaala and his family musthave been the primary potential victims to the party’s aggression, given the period of their

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migration. The struggle between Kaala and Hari Abhyankar, then, can be estimated to bearound four decades long. In the early years of this struggle, Hari defeated Kaala byunleashing violence on Dharavi, killing his father, and forcing Kaala to flee. During thecourse of the time, Kaala acquires significant hold on Dharavi and is the popular leader andrepresentative of the slum. The present time portrayed in the film is owned by Kaala.

The time frame of migration in Mulshi Pattern is different from Kaala’s. It is more recent; tobe specific, it is post-LPG. This migration is of a historical land-holding dominant-castefamily, which had seen prosperous days back in the village. The development of the 1990spressed the economy of the village to collapse which used to revolve around the land ownedby the dominant castes. Some from the dominant castes made the most of this collapse, andadapted to the changing economy, while most others were still entrenched in the traditionalways of life. Those who could adapt invested in the state’s party politics and managed toestablish a ruling class. Those who did not venture in state-level politics attempted atmaintaining a hold over the village economy through feudal modes of control. They ownedsome land, cultivated it and enjoyed their status as Patils of the village in the land-basedeconomy. As the economy shifted its bases, the land was put on sale and the Marathas werethe first to claim their share. They sold the land and accepted amounts of cash they hadnot seen before. However, they were not accustomed to the ways of the new economy anddid not seem to know investments and saving. To suit their Patil glory, they conspicuouslyconsume everything they could, as fast as they could. Soon enough, the money ran out, andthe Patils unaware of the new economy and unaccustomed to learning to adapt faileddrastically.

The criminals of Mulshi are those children from these families who have seen the gloriousdays of the Marathas in their childhood, whose present is marked by a cycle of abundanceand scarcity, and future with uncertainty. They look back at the bygone village withnostalgia and cannot cope with the fact that those days are history. The movie ends withRahul’s father slapping himself; a black screen appears with a voice saying that this slap isfor all those farmers who sold their land. It appears as if the director would want to go backin time to stop those fathers from selling their land.

Conclusion

Kaala looks back to his village only once in the whole movie to recall a local folk tale, whileMulshi Pattern almost lives with the burden of nostalgia. The emancipatory path shown inKaala is a creative imagination with deep-rooted mythological underpinnings, while MulshiPattern shows the negation of life with reactionary criminal politics ending in a tragiccircular track. Though both trajectories of these films take different angle, it must be notedthat its origin is the same— that of a post-globalised setting along caste lines, revolvingover urban land.

In Mulshi Pattern, the first piece of land that Rahul helps a don acquire is referred to as one

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from the Maharvatan (land belonging to the Mahars, a Dalit community). The don remindshim that he must be careful with this land otherwise he will be charged with atrocity. TheMarathas have been historically committing caste crimes by exploiting and threatening theDalits. The warning by the Maratha don to Rahul is about the PoA (Prevention of AtrocityAct), charging upper castes for their caste crimes. On the one hand, in a scene in the policestation, few Brahmin journalists are mocked for their lack of know-how of the real world,their safe and naïve ways are looked down upon by the Marathas. On the other hand, thegrowing threat to the Maratha power is by the Dalits, armed with the PoA. Interestingly, theblatant rift between the Marathas and Dalits revolves precisely around these issues, as wasevident in the recent outbreak of the Maratha Kranti Morchas. The Maratha frustration ismultilayered. It mocks the Brahmins, but admits the community’s control over power arisingfrom the caste privilege and, at the same time, fears the newly emerging Dalit power andunleashes endless anger and frustration over this emergence, despite its "lowly" castestatus. Mulshi Pattern has not been successful in locating this frustration in the changingpower dynamics of the caste system, but blames, ultimately, the ambiguous "system" alongwith the sociopolitically loaded "development."

Kaala, on the other hand, offers alternate mythology in which the dominant Hindu notions of"pure" and "impure," "black" and "white," "gods" and "demons" are subverted. Kaala callshimself the Ravana, and the final battle between Kaala and Hari’s gang is fought while thetale of Ram is narrated by a priest in Hari’s house. The Ravana here does not die, but re-emerges and becomes one with his community to ultimately overpower Hari. Here, theBahujan discourse challenging the dominant Brahminical Hindutva discourse is evident inthe narration of subversion. The women and children of Kaala’s gang are equally a part ofthe struggle as the men are. Pa Ranjith is attempting a new egalitarian anti-caste discoursewhere women, men and children of the oppressed castes, Muslims and all others who live inDharavi (he mainly uses the term "urban poor" to identify these people, almost suggestingthat they may be the same) wage a collective battle for their survival. Along the way, theychallenge gender stereotypes and religious barriers, the caste-based notions of purity,hygiene, darkness, etc. Unlike Mulshi Pattern, Kaala is not directly based on a true storyalthough most of the characters and historical frameworks are influenced by the real world.Pa Ranjith offers a normative framework of struggle, almost creating a modern epicmythology.

The cultural manifestations of the changed power matrix through these films underline thedeep impact on the urban sociopolitical psyche and dynamic interactions of differentcommunities with the flux of financial, social power flux.

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References:

Sukumar, N and Shailaja Menon (2018): “Kaala: Debrahminizing Indian ‘Popular’ Culture,”Roundtable India, 10 June 2018,http://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9388:kaala-debrahmanizing-indian-popular-culture&catid=119:feature&Itemid=132. Maharashtra News (2018): “मुळशी पॅटर्न' च्या मागचं वास्तव ऐका दिग्दर्शक प्रवीण तरडेयांच्याकडून ..,” Youtube, 3 December, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoVM34FEunw.

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