Article Title: ‘Article 15’ highlights once again the need for more diversity within Bollywood

Article Summary

The article at hand comments on the unsettling casteism dominating Indian politics and society, and what role Bollywood religiously plays in reinforcing it. The article starts by exploring the idea of Article 15, a movie starring Ayushmann Khurana that is apparently a meticulous attack on the caste system. The main problem with the film, cites the author, is that it doesn’t go even close to capturing the real ordeals suffered by the lower castes as the cast and crew involve an upper-caste exclusivity. Indian politics and daily life comes down heavily on caste equality, and Bollywood just propagates this trope for cheap societal resonance in its cinema. The instances are subtle, but ubiquitous – lower caste surnames are almost never borne by film characters, or the real people who carried a film to completion, in a fashion similar to how upper castes are favored in Indian politics as well. Lower caste women are at the receiving end of oppression twice over – unprivileged both in a gendered and classist hierarchy. In a hostile climate of India against the lower castes, progress is happening in movies but at a painfully slow pace, and amid several appropriations of lower caste narratives by upper caste people – if this goes on, true representation may never arrive, fears the author.