With the movie Origin, released last month across the US, Dr B.R. Ambedkar has made an entry on the big screen in Hollywood. The film directed by Ava DuVernay is based on Isabel Wilson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
As Ambedkar’s writings have spread across the world, there is a new-found interest in his persona and his work. A Hollywood movie showing an “untouchable” boy Bhima sitting outside a classroom and later as a young man walking around Columbia University reading books is indeed very compelling.
Through this two-and-a-half-hour movie, DuVernay, known for her Oscar nominated Selma (2014) tries to establish a compelling and convincing link between caste discrimination in India, racial apartheid in America and the persecution of Jews in Germany. Origin essentially brings on screen, the journey of the author Isabel Wilkerson (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor).
The film tries to underscore that it is not race but caste which is the overarching binding force — a skeleton — to various other forms of discrimination. The movie covers the history of three countries — Germany, America and India — to find a common thread among discrimination across the world.
Gaurav Pathania, assistant professor of Sociology at Easter Mennonite University, Virginia plays the role of Ambedkar in the film.
The trigger
In one of the scenes, Wilkerson is shown opening Dr Ambedkar’s The Annihilation of Caste as she tries to find answers to a range of questions that hit her after she comes to know of the death of an innocent young black man, called Treyvon Martin, killed in 2012 for merely walking in the neighbourhood because he was considered a ‘threat’.
This shatters Wilkerson to the core. She instantly drops her current project and decides to understand the root cause of racism and its nuances in the US. In her quest, she travelled to Germany and India as well.
The trigger
In one of the scenes, Wilkerson is shown opening Dr Ambedkar’s The Annihilation of Caste as she tries to find answers to a range of questions that hit her after she comes to know of the death of an innocent young black man, called Treyvon Martin, killed in 2012 for merely walking in the neighbourhood because he was considered a ‘threat’.
This shatters Wilkerson to the core. She instantly drops her current project and decides to understand the root cause of racism and its nuances in the US. In her quest, she travelled to Germany and India as well.
Many questions arise in her mind like Jews and Aryans are both white then how did the Nazis separate one from the other; all Indians are mostly brown then how did they separate the ‘touchable’ from the ‘untouchables’. She was intrigued if there was a common thread of prevention of interracial or inter-caste marriages, in an attempt to preserve the ‘purity’ of race or caste.
Initially, any suggestion of a connection of caste is rejected by many of her colleagues and family members. But, what follows are answers to these questions. Along with her, the audience is then taken to an insightful and interesting journey across the world that provides new discoveries, theories and evidences to prove the linkage.
Wilkerson gives specific examples while proving her point — how “caste” is an inherent thing such as a “bone” whereas race acts as a “skin”.
The movie reveals how Nazis were inspired by a segregation and disenfranchisement system of the 1890s known as the Jim Crow Law in the US where African Americans were separated from commonplaces such as schools, toilets, buses and trains.
The movie shows how the strict maintenance of endogamy comes to play at any cost in all three forms of discrimination — the Holocaust, in the Jim Crow era and in India — such examples, the narration and the powerful scenery makes her hypothesis convincing. Some members of the audience were also seen clapping at the powerful ending of the film.
Although it concentrates on the past and the present life of Wilkerson, it doesn’t sound like a documentary nor a biography of the author. The director keeps the audience’s attention glued.
The Ambedkar angle
In the film, Wilkerson meets Indian scholar Dr Suraj Yengde from Harvard during her visit to the country. He gives her additional insights on the caste system. Yengde asserts that Ambedkar is close to the African Americans.
Origin underlines how caste is an intrinsic factor in a developing country like India where there still continues an inhuman practice of manual scavenging: Dalits enter into a manhole full of human excreta without any protection and only the oil on their body, clearly, technological advances remain “untouchable” in this area.
The director uses Ambedkar’s original voice and his opinion on endogamy as a preserver of caste very succinctly to make a point. However, if you were expecting Ambedkar’s character as one of the main ones, you are in for a slight disappointment.
Pathania looks perfect as Ambedkar perhaps more compelling than Jabbar Patel’s movie (2000) where Mammooty portrayed the same character.
He is shown in various avatars — as a student of Columbia university on the campus, in and around New York and also during the Mahad satyagraha — but his screen presence is limited and he has no dialogues.
If the director had shown a short scene of Ambedkar presenting his paper “Castes In India – Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development (1919)” talking about endogamy, in front of his professors, his character would have come really alive.
The silver lining
Ambedkar’s foray on the big screen in Hollywood in 2024 is sure to enthuse people across the world who believe in human rights. It’s interesting to note that Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982) did not even mention Ambedkar in a passing reference. It seemed that he was ‘outcasted’ from the scene.
But 41 years later, we finally have a Hollywood movie showing Ambedkar in a motion picture led by an African American lead, a powerful combination of the oppressed.
In the US, the movie has received rave reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and has been appreciated for the incredible performance of the lead actor and unique storytelling by the director.
Origin has released in the US and the UK. The India release dates are not yet announced.
This article was first published on The Wire.
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