Films like Veyil (directed by Vasantha Balan) and Kadhal (directed by Balaji Shakthivel) are produced by Sankar, the director who is considered as the most eminent commercial directors of Indian film industry. From his first film Gentleman onwards he streamed the pictures of brahmanical ideology on the screen. In his films like Gentleman, Indian, Muthalvan, Annyan and Sivaji, he used the brahmanical lines of ideologies like amassing wealth, killing, one man rule, and one man liberation which are fanatic and fascist which followed the route of Hindu feudalism in the Indian spectrum. He gained the name as a good “producer” by presenting the films like Veyil and Kadhal as down to earth movies. Shankar grabbed a clean image in the dialogues/discourse of mainstream intellectual and cultural industry by the production of these films. But in the close examination of the film Kadhal, provides with the underlined but clear textual message that if a dalit strive for an inter caste marriage, the result may be madness and the feudal energy prevails has that sort of power and back ground to attack them brutally and make them mad and to roam around. The subaltern mechanic role played by Bharat has one of the most pathetic “ending” since the evolution of Indian film for he happened to be a dalit and hailed from a slum. Unlike all other feudal heroes of Indian cinema he is depicted as a coward and is always in doubt about his lady lover and her relatives. In Veyil, Murukesan played by Pasupathy has a series of failures and “killings” in his life. He fails as a family man, lover, and human being in the movie. In the saga of Murukesan his inter caste love affair with an elite girl brutally ends in the suicide of her. The psychological posturing of this incident is nothing but inter caste affairs by elites especially to uneconomical dalits must be killed. Murukesan in Veyil and the mechanic boy in Kadhal, both being as dalits have the same mode of transformation of failures, violence against them, madness and killings.
The inter caste relationship in Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu (directed by Susindhran) and Paruthiveeran (directed by Amir Sulthan) are also being killed by the creators of both of these films. In Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu the dalit hero Marimuthu who was on the road to his ultimate victory in Kabadi competition and love affair is being killed. It was pictured as Marimuthu is being killed in an accident at the end of a Kabadi match. The character has inter caste love relationship and the girl doesn’t even know what happened to Marimuthu. Eventhough he was heroic his character is molded as inferior in all aspects except his confidence in Kabadi tournament. In Paruthiveeran there is the same text of dalit narration of characters. The protagonist is a hero in a village named Paruthi. The end of this character is brutal, pathetic and tragic. A dalit woman who is considered as a rogue is brutally killed as untold in Indian film history covering her in a sack and butchering her body. Pruthi veeran’s father who had an inter caste marriage is killed in an accident. Paruthiveeran’s lover Muthazhaku, who is from an elite caste family, is gang raped and killed by some lorry drivers. Paruthiveeran suicides after she is being killed. In Veyil and Paruthiveeran, the women who loved two Dalit identities are being killed.
In Subramaniapuram (directed by Sasikumar) killing of dalits has new brutal presentations. The homicides in the film were shock to the South Indian audience. In Subramaniapuram the elite caste girl who is the lover of the protagonist, Jai, becomes the tool for his homicide by her relatives. This theme was entirely different and shocking to the receivers of the film. She cannot do anything while her hero is stabbed to death in front of her. The Dalit character and the friend of Jai, Kanja Karuppu is the cheating element. Knife is piercing in the dalit body of Jai again and again. The inter caste marriage in this film also is blocked by these killings. And the dalits are pictured as the most violent and those who do the biggest violence are also dalits, ie. the receivers and donors are subalterns. This dichotomy denies further of different complexities of socialites like how dalits become violent, and who makes dalit as violent and who are the behind the curtain players.
One of the significant psychological characters that paved the success for these films are the sympathies gained from the audience to these characters. These characters remained in the mind of audiences as dark memories. They lived in the mind of people. But it is not empathy or confrontation with those characters. Or it is not the political analysis of the social formation of these characters. It is due to mere sympathy towards them. But on the other hand the brahmanical mass psyche of Kerala/Tamil societies enjoyed these killings underneath. Killings of dalits, their disability and madness are secretly enjoyed and celebrated in the Indian mass/mad psychology. And it is a trick of Brahmanical hegemony to highlight these films as a refreshment of Indian film texts. These are nothing but the celebration of homicides of dalits and subalterns.
