Every community discriminates...

Room at the Top (1959)
Director: Jack Clayton

Watching the movie, one realises how much the world has changed. Imagine hearing a line such as this that praises the hero's masculinity: "Too many pansies about these days!" Even within society, in the so-called Imperial power, which was just ruling half the world and believed it was their god-given duty to bring modernity to the heathens and lost natives in the dark continents, it was so dysfunctional.

Condemning the people of its jewel of the Crown, that it was discriminatory against their own kind, and highlighting the ugly side of caste separation in India, Britain gave the impression that its society was free of prejudices. We know that it is not true. The British 'divide and rule' policy in India must have its roots in its own backyard. The British divided their community into two major classes. The aristocratic class would have close ties to the royal family and would also be the more educated group in society. The remainder would be the working class. There was a constant battle amongst the working class to somewhat niggle themselves to be among the affluent aristocratic ones. In essence, it is a journey to the top echelon of the food chain.

This story follows the journey of a civil servant from humble beginnings who seeks to advance socially by marrying into a wealthy family. He inadvertently falls in love with another woman, a married lady, which complicates things. His background impedes his ascent of the social ladder. His friends and relatives advise him to be among his'own kind'. He believed his time in the army would enhance his social standing. Paradoxically, the well-heeled have their own ways to use their influence to gain more benefits from the same stint. He is left in a limbo - to be with his true love or continue in his pursuit of riches.

A film that illustrates discrimination is as old as human civilisation. No society can proudly say that it is genuinely free without discrimination, patriarchy, bigotry, or chauvinism.

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So much for humanity!

 

It is heartbreaking to see a helpless grown man being beaten up and hosed down with water against his will. Things are different during Holi when people wilfully want to get wet and be sprinkled with coloured powder in the name of merriment.

This incident reminded me of a scene in the first instalment of Sylvester Stallone's 'First Blood', where John Rambo gets hosed with a powerful jet of water for being a nuisance.  

Here, as seen in the movie, a few days ago, a homeless man was shooed, chased and kicked about for sleeping in the footpath outside a commercial bank. A lady security guard was hosing him away while a cobbler who had his corner nearby started kicking him as he lay on the ground, pathetic. A passerby, who thought that rather than confronting the perpetrators and incurring their wrath, he recorded the incident and viralled it. Without missing a beat, within minutes, the internet was buzzing in a mad pitch. 

The bank acknowledged that the incident occurred outside its premises. It, however, refuted any involvement in the violence. Security was outsourced to a third party, and the bank washed its hands of it. 

Within the hour, a kind soul who made it his life's goal to help the homeless arrived at the scene and took the homeless man to a sanctuary he ran. Everyone was happy that the problem was solved. The homeless man has a place to rest his weary body and a roof over his head. Is the problem really solved?

The reason for the man's homelessness remains unknown. Where is his family? He did not look too unkempt, so his problem could be new. Does he have a medical condition? So far, we know his name. Safiudeen Pakkeer Mohamed from Tamil Nadu. 

We can give a tap on our shoulders for sorting out his problem, at least for the time being. But the way the two individuals handled the situation was quite appalling. They later, maybe as an afterthought, were heard telling reporters that they were merely cleaning him as the area reeked of excrement. 

Here, we are living in a country which cries for people wronged thousands of miles away who do not look anything like us. And we spent supplies on them as they lay stranded in a war zone. If that is not enough, we even send our planes to fetch their wounded to provide medical aid. 

Are we all guilty of exhibiting our prejudices to people beneath us? For those poorer than us, of darker complexion than us and of different appearances than us. We Malaysians are good at hosting foreigners and making them feel at home. When it comes to our own citizens who helped to build our country, we become suspicious. Suspicious that they would take a piece of the pie meant for us. Suspicious that the role would reverse. 

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=410521716239827

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How they converge and diverge?

Lady in the Lake (Miniseries)
Season 1, Episodes 1-7.

An intriguing miniseries set at a time when Black Americans had an understanding with Jewish Americans. Even though Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to declare all slaves to be free, in reality, the Blacks still received the short of the stick. In so many instances, they were discriminated against. The law was not in their favour either. The Blacks had to prosper by themselves despite the restrictions. Some beat the systems and joined the mainstream, while others prospered through an alternative economic system. The evidence of their successes includes the Harlem Cultural Renaissance in the 1920s and the numerous legislative gains through the efforts of the NAACP (North America Association of Colored People).

Many of the African-American associations worked in tandem with many Jewish bodies. The Jews also felt the discriminatory vibes of the predominantly Anglo-Saxon majority of America. The earlier interactions between Jews and Blacks were not cordial. Many Jews became land owners and were ruthless businessmen who earned the wrath of the poor Blacks. Things changed later. 

During the Civil Rights Movement, many of the laws of the day, including the Jim Crow laws, were challenged by the movement with Jewish lawyers. Jewish leaders participated in numerous marches organised by Rev King and others. The 1955 to 1966 era is sometimes called the Golden Age of Black-Jewish relationships.

After 1966, the cooperation turned cold as the Jewish community moved higher in the economic class whilst the majority remained poor. Another possible explanation for this rift is the popularity of Islamic-based groups like the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X and the Panthers. The 1967 Six-Day War in the Middle East made many Black leaders and personalities, including Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, express solidarity behind the Palestinians and condemn Israel and the Zionists.

Set in the 1960s USA, this miniseries is mainly the story of two ladies trying to prove to themselves that they make something out of their lives. A 40-year-old Jewish lady who had to give up her writing ambition to get married and raise a child in a conservative, suffocating Jewish household gets an epiphany of sorts to break free from all this bondage. This happened after the much-published murder of an 11-year-old Jewish girl. She itches to investigate the case on her own accord. Through the episodes, we see the challenges she has to face to break from the mould of what is expected of a mother and a lady of the era.

In another parallel story, a young, ambitious black lady of about 30 tries to break from the clutches of poverty and the mob to make something out of her singing and provide a promising future for her kids. She needs to extricate herself from the crime-inducing society and the lure of the gangsters and their promise of a good future.

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Caste, not race?

Origin (2023)
Director: Ava Duverney

(Based on the book, 'Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents' by Isabel Wilkerson)

It is an interesting way of looking at all the problems affecting the world today. It is blamed on caste segregation. Traditionally, we think of caste as a problem only affecting India. And Indians believe it is a system brought in by colonial masters and divided the nation to ease control. The stifling of one layer of society over the other is not just based on the colour of their skin. It is something beyond. The group at the top end of the food chain would want to maintain the status quo and keep the people beneath them forever squashed.

The writer, Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize winner, compared situations in three scenarios. 

She looked at the black situation in America, where blacks are stereotyped as troublemakers, poor, unemployed, unemployable and criminals. The system reinforces this stereotype upon them to a level that even the blacks buy into the trope. The blacks become apologetic about how they are and make amends to be 'liked' by the oppressors, i.e. the white Americans. 

The truth of the matter is that the white men brought them as slaves from Africa. Everything was alright when they were the masters and the blacks their slaves. Things became complicated when emancipation happened. The whites made it a point to retain themselves in the highest perch of the food chain. They suppressed the blacks through the preservation of the white gene pool via marriage laws, housing restrictions and educational opportunities. This continued until they occupied the unsavoury aspects of the country's statistics. Stories of police brutality, George Floyd and Trayvon Martin have become a recurrent theme.

It is not the colour of the skin of the other that matters. Look at post-WWI Germany. The wisdom of the Nazi Party thought the Jews should be made the bogeymen to make their country rise from the ashes of the First World War. Propaganda after propaganda of the Nazis made Jews the scorn of the country. Jews were identified, tagged, marked, quarantined, cursed and finally sent to incinerators, all under the law of the land.

The author then travelled to India to see how caste discrimination affects the Dalit community. Accompanied by a Dalit academician, she is told how the elitist and the ruling class suppress the Dalit community from succeeding in life. The film goes on to show how members of the low rung of society are oppressed and confined to performing menial chores that nobody wants to do. Ambedkar is featured here as the living of someone who went on to obtain a double PhD despite all the odds that worked against him to keep him down. The manner in which his society had reservations about sharing, even drinking water, even as a Government official, is stressed too. A statue of Ambedkar in Delhi is shown to be placed in a cage because the statue is constantly vandalised, suggesting to the viewers that the general public hates revering a Dalit figure even though he helped to draft the Indian Constitution. Is that the hint?

The presentation conveniently failed to inform the high number of high-performing students who could not secure a place in the local universities, all because of caste quota. To continue studying, these students and their parents must fork out high sums of money to get foreign education and possibly foreign employment. India's loss is the rest of the world's gain.

The film tries to simplify everything. The innate desire for one person to dominate over the other is inherent in all of us. It does not depend on race or ethnicity. People will find reasons to suppress others with made-up reasons. This probably goes well with critical race theorists who insist that racism is inherent in the legal institution to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans.

Wilkerson looks at black suppression not as a race issue but as a caste suppression. A group of people, in the USA's case, it is the Hispanics and the Blacks, are put at the bottom of the hierarchical 'caste system' through generations of oppressive laws.

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Guilty by default?

Emergency (2022)

Director: Carey William

Sikhism is professed by 25 to 30 million worldwide and is the fifth-largest religion in the world. Even though Sikhs constitute only 1.72% of India's population and 1.02% of the world's population, they are instantaneously recognised, not only by their unique appearance but also by their industriousness and successes. In India and the rest of the world, wherever they migrate, their proportion of poverty, as compared to other groups, remains the lowest. Outside Punjab, some minorities still excel without political assistance. Reaching foreign shores as economic migrants, they generally prosper and outperform other immigrants. They blend well into society and have the tongue to learn to speak the local lingo swiftly. Pretty soon, they will be sitting in professional bodies.

The Sikhs are often seen by community leaders as a shining example of how societies should progress. Someone toyed with the idea that lack of political representation and state assistance are the very things that help them propel forward.

Hence, in Malaysia, the recently perceived 'lack of Indian representation' in the Malaysian Cabinet is a non-issue. There is no need to depend on handouts from the top. The community itself should pull itself with its own bootstrap. As the Senior Economist Thomas Sowell advised, when people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems discriminatory. He also concluded that affirmative is ineffective. He likened it to a wrong medical diagnosis and prescription. His research had repeatedly shown that blacks in America were better off in many social parameters before the Civil Rights Law was passed in the USA. As he is often quoted to have said, "When people are poor, they want communism or socialism, but when they are rich, they think capitalism is best!"

All that is fine at a macro level, but day-to-day human interaction does not work that way at the ground level. Power dynamics and racial stereotyping are a mainstay. The presence of little Napoleons and power brokers is everywhere. The decree from the top gets lost in translation, purposefully or like the game of 'Chinese whispers'. 

If George Floyd has taught us anything, dealing with the enforcement unit is more complex. Split decisions made in an encounter are anything but easy. The police see the other as a potential criminal who would harm him or escape. If he made a wrong call, he would be negligent or, worse, lose his life. 

The person on the end of the police baton would be apprehensive that he would be pigeonholed based on his ethnicity or appearance. In his mind, he is assumed to be guilty by default. Any wrong move, and he is a cadaver.

These thoughts go through the minds of three friends who aspire to go places as they almost complete college. The three friends, two blacks (Kumle and Sean) and a Hispanic (Carlos) find an apparently stoned white teenager in their home. Like black South Africans in the apartheid era, they panicked. They decide to take the kid to the hospital in their SUV. Kumle, the studious one, has his life all mapped out. He is going to Princeton come fall. Sean has had a previous bad encounter with the cops, and Carlos has consumed intoxicants and is flying high like a kite.

While cruising en route to the hospital, they encounter a police roadblock. Suddenly, it dawned upon them how they might look to the cops- three coloured people kidnapping a drugged white teenager! Then begins the cascade of confusion as they avoid police custody, escape the victim's sister and friends, but most of all, not in any way jeopardise their future. The last thing they want is to be just another statistic in the ever-expanding number of victims of police brutality. 

This film is supposed to be a comedy, but the subject matter deems anything but funny!

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Justice delayed is justice denied!

Indian Predator: Murder in a Courtroom (2022)

Documentary; Netflix

Humans thought living in big numbers protected them from the elements, predators and even enemies. Security concerns were taken care of by the individual community itself. It was jungle justice with no higher justice to recourse. Might decided what was right!

As communities coalesced into country-states, the job of security and protection was outsourced to the State. Suddenly there was no reason for the average citizen to hold powerful weapons. The duty to apprehend and punish wrongdoers was outsourced to State-owned agencies. These agencies were supposed to protect all levels of society, the powerful and powerless alike. It looks all nice on paper, but in reality, the mission statements of these agents are mere rhetorics to pacify the vote bank. The minorities and the weak can only cry foul, fill up the newspapers and breaking news segments and spit on the system.

People will bear with the imperfections of the system. Despite its follies, they believe that God and leaders will soon realise their shortcomings to rectify their errors. At a particular point of no return, the bow will break, and there will be no turning back. Justice must be seen to be done. Justice delayed is justice denied.

This must be what happened to Kasturba Nagar's dwellers in Nagpur, Maharashtra. Since 1999, a group of rowdies had been terrorising the inhabitants. They were brazenly beating up people and molesting girls there. Reports to local police did not achieve much. They became bolder. Akku Yadav is the de-facto leader of the pack. After a brawl, he killed one of his friends. Akku was imprisoned but was released after 10 months, bolder and blunter in his attacks on his victims. He terrorised the women, molesting, harassing and even raping them in the open. The people of Nagar were just too frightened to retaliate.

One brave lady, Asha Bhagat, went against Akku only to be stabbed to death. Another young student was almost killed by Akku but was saved by her quick thinking and when all her neighbours came to her rescue. This act empowered them. When Akku was produced in court, all the ladies of the colony planned an ambush on him. On August 13th 2004, over 200 people from Kasturba Nagar made their way to the Nagpur courts. They locked him up in the courthouse, sprinkled chilli powder into his eyes and mutilated every part of his body, including his ears and genitalia.

This took a big dent in the integrity and competence of the policing and justice systems of the country. When people take the law into their own hands, and the State has no control over protecting its own officers, how can it protect the country? The authorities arrested five random ladies for the murder of Akku. This prompted 200 over ladies from the colony to turn up at the local police station, all confessing to murdering Akku. 50 ladies were later arrested, but the justice system's slow wheel took ten long years to acquit them of all crimes.

The action of the members to ambush the court show and kill an accused in broad daylight exposed the impotence of the police and the courts. They could help but charge the authorities of caring less for them because of their depressed class status and perhaps their generally lower castes too. The purists insist that their actions could not be condoned and the State machinery must be respected. Detractors question the relevance of government servants who are only there to serve the upper echelon of society. Somewhere along the way, the Naxalites are accused of instigating the public to create anar
chy.

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An unfair tale!

Madaathy, An Unfairy Tale. (Tamil; 2021)
Director & Writer: Leela Manimekalai

It is said there is a back story behind every village deity. Madaathy is one such goddess. A representative of the feminine powers of the Universe, it is said that she is the embodiment of the spirit of a wronged low caste adolescent girl. 

The first scene itself sets the mood for the rest of the movie. A newly-wed couple, in their best attire, goes on a joyful motorbike ride to Madaathy temple. En route, the bride realises that she just started her menstruation and insists that they stop to get some kind of sanitation napkin. It would flash upon viewers that we are into something taboo. Are they going to cancel their journey or continue to the destination? We are left to wonder.

The story revolves around a group of the lowest of the Dalit community, the Puthirai Vannars. Sometimes, I wonder whether these types of communities and such levels of oppression do actually exist. According to the director/writer, the story was well researched and based on actual events when she was interviewed during the film launch. The Puthirai Vannars comprise a particular group that clean garments. Not any garment but articles of clothing used by the sick, diseased or recently deceased. Sometimes they are summoned to clean the menstrual cloths of villagers. They are cleaners but are considered too polluted to be seen in public. They must never be in full view of others and even live at the edge of the village, delineated by a river. They are too cursed to be seen.

Being impure or outcast does not cross the men's minds when they lust for these Dalit women. They are regularly raped. The Dalits have no recourse to state their predicament.

The film tells the story of a rebellious adolescent girl who runs wild in the forest and builds a crush on one of the village boys. She builds sandcastles in the air only to be gang-raped by her crush and his friends on a drunken night of the Madaathy temple consecration. The girl dies, and her spirit lives in the deity.

Agreed the storytelling, characterisation and cinematography are world-class par excellence. But sometimes, I wonder if all the numerous accolades attached to the film were given not because of its quality but rather because it puts the sub-continent and its dwellers in a horrible light. They like to assume that India is still the same backwater as was depicted in Katherine Mayo's 1927 novel 'Mother India'. They find joy in continually degrading Indian society, religions and culture and portraying the whole of India as worse than the Dark Ages of medieval and savage Europe.

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Affirmative action can't last forever!

Yennanga Sire Ungga Sattam (என்னங்க சார் உங்க சட்டம், Tamil; 2021)

Director: Prabhu Jeyaraman

Suppose the idea of affirmative action is to uplift a particular community group and give an equal fighting chance to the oppressed to get their place in the sun. In that case, it should only be handed to one generation. After being given the levy, their offspring should not be expecting the same. Everybody only gets one chance. They are expected to pull themselves up by their boot-straps with the chance given to them. That is it. Freebies are not infinite. 

This film is one of the many new genre movies which highlights the plight of fringe people. The filmmakers named this movie a duplex as the real story with message starts with the movie's second part. The first part is essentially a draggy commercial that does not contribute much to the rest of the story. In a complicated way, it boils down to two scenarios.

The first instance involves an interview for a government post. The viewers are shown how nepotism, recommendations and quota allocations predetermine which candidate would probably succeed in an interview. A person from the higher caste has to work doubly harder to qualify for the same job as one from the scheduled caste. Things are not so straightforward, however.  A person who fails may genuinely be unimpressive but would cry foul anyway. A person from the lower rung of society may have been unexposed and deprived of many things because of poverty. Sometimes, people of influence get it anyway.

If we were to blame religion for the evil effects of caste in society, we even see discrimination within the houses of worship. It is not the religion at fault per se, but rather the people who act as pillars of the faith, in their greed to hold the rein of temple management, come up with rules and regulations at their whims and fancies. When intelligent discussions do not solve the problems, they recoil into the wisdom of ancient text to assert their point. Even within the four walls of the House of God, there is blatant discrimination.

The end result of not giving the job to the best man around only results in brain drain. Unfortunately, solving this issue is not easy. At a time now when identity politics plays a vital role in how a country should be run, politicians will continue pandering to populist politics. Level headedness is a rare commodity in the 21st century.

P.S. Extrapolate the message behind this story to our own backyard. Affirmative action cannot go on forever. It would only result in lazy, entitled rent-seekers who cannot survive in the real world. One black swan event, and they would just fizzle out.

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