MOVIE REVIEW: Jai Bhim (2021)
Jai Bhim fails to mention caste in any meaningful way.
Jai Bhim follows a real life story of a tribal woman whose husband went missing while in police custody. It goes over issues like police brutality, caste discrimination and corruption.
This is ironic because the real oppressor was missionaries and not “upper caste” individuals; the latter of which is less than 2%. But it is changed to caste.
Still, for a movie about caste, it has way too many references to communism and Marx, and not enough for caste itself. Outside of a few symbolic nods to untouchability and other things, and the first scene, nothing tells us that caste is why discrimination is happening, without it you'd have just another story about class oppression.
This too, makes sense, because the movie forces a narrative somewhere where it doesn’t even exist.
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It barely touched upon the nepotism within caste systems which further creates divide, or how caste is used to create hegemony in rural or suburban and lower middle class groups because the Brahmins can’t come to terms with the fact that they are the uneducated in the brave new world (Dalits in it, if you will, while educated "Dalit" people are now Brahmins). Nor does it show cultural differences between castes. It stays obsessed with class instead.
In retrospect, this is a huge problem with caste discourse, with those Dalits who make money choosing to Marxistize (instead of Sansktitize) to maintain some semblance of their identity and lived experience. Until poverty remains, the lower castes and their culture will remain an enigma to the mainstream. This is changing in Modi’s Bharat, with at least the stories and culture of many tribals coming to the mainstream. But it is only maybe 1% of what truly needs to be done.
Maybe this simpler Marx-based class conflict plotline can resonate with more people, and scenes where real landmark judgements are passed may inspire a lawyer or two to use that for their own awareness, but in the grander scheme of things this movie added nothing to the caste conversation, albeit started one about class.
But yes, it doesn’t even matter because of the movie makers replacing the Christian Missionaries committing violence against the population with “upper castes” instead. One day hopefully, Bharat is free enough as a country to set these narratives in an honest manner. Today isn’t that day tho, but these moves create bad blood constantly. I have to deduct another point for this, even though this movie was already very lowly scored. It was originally 5/10, but I feel cheated enough to deduct 2 points.
I’m feeling a strong 4 on this one
🌞🌞🌞🌞
4/10
