302 thoughts on ““But now, all my dreams are broken.””
Untouchability obviously doesn’t matter when it comes to rape.
I’d say it seems like the only thing that matters
I meant that in the sense of: the dalits are polluting and therefore “untouchable”; but when it comes to the most intimate form of touching, sex (in this case the rampant rapes of helpless dalit women by upper caste men), which also involves exchange of bodily fluids, all that is conveniently disregarded by these vile, hypocritical men.
Thanks a lot for blogging this, Anna. As an Indian I have to wonder, what the f**k is wrong with us.
It is so depressing I almost want to believe it is fake, but I don’t think it is.
To respond to the points raised by “risible” in comment #141, IDSN, NCDHR and such groups are not one-man fiefdoms but are admirable products of team work where they have upper caste Hindus and Christians, Muslims and Dalits, all working together. There is discrimination but much less violence in Dalits who choose another religion. To see Dalit discrimination in other religions, please see this brilliant new documentary, “India Untouched”, by K Stalin: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2007-May/009328.html
A lot has recently been happening on the Dalit Christians: a government commission has recommended that they be given SC status.
I’m so glad I’m mallu.
Andy – why do you say, I’m so glad I’m mallu. – is it b/c you think caste discrimination is less prevalent there and the atrocities that we see in this video do not seem to exist in Kerala? I’m just curious why you made this comment.
Regarding the landlord’s comment, it was pure nakkal. Frankly, I don’t have the intellectual caliber to explain what is nakkal to a non-Tamil audience. I don’t believe rest of the planet has equivalence of nakkal in their vocab/culture, though they might have something that approximates nakkal.
eg. Hillary Clinton visits South Park. Where’s the WMD ? Its in her …well, I hope you’ve seen that episode.
Or say, a holocaust joke. Bad taste? Sure, but a joke nevertheless.
Landlord is merely using nakkal to defuse a hot-button issue. UC’s raping dalits ? Yeah, earlier we used to rape a lot, but nowadays we are a bit careful, is what he’s saying.
Doesn’t mean he was personally raping a dalit, or whether his community was raping, or that they weren’t raping, or that he wasn’t raping – nothing can be inferred from what he said. It is a general nakkalified statement on how times have changed.
If you watch the recent crop of Tamil films especially those with Vadivelu & Vivek as sidekicks, you will come across several such remarks tossed across very casually. There are jokes on chopping up dalits simply because a UC’s moustache size was mocked at. A dalit beggar is fooled into sleeping with a UC for a plate of idli, with the result that UC gets venereal disease while dalit blackmails UC to buy her brother a scooter so they can beg more efficiently. Towards the end, the dalit becomes an MLA while the UC is taken to be castrated to reduce India’s “bobulation”. Dalit rescues UC and everybody’s happy. Lots of such instances. Very appalling from a human-rights standpoint, but this is what passes for third-world humor in Tamil films. Caste-violence, rapes, dalit huts set on fire, etc. are standard fare for TN comedy. I watch a lot of these. But then, there is a context to this and since I happen to be from that community, I find it funny. I cringe at the literally-translated subtitles – if some hapless ABD or firang rented them from Netflix he’d think TN is some sort of primitive jungle.
No comments about the rest of the video. I don’t even what to go there.
Very appalling from a human-rights standpoint, but this is what passes for third-world humor in Tamil films. Caste-violence, rapes, dalit huts set on fire, etc. are standard fare for TN comedy. I watch a lot of these. But then, there is a context to this and since I happen to be from that community, I find it funny
Wow, how can the jokes you cite be funny. these things still happen. Maybe, maybe, in the line of Chris Rock comedy, if a comedien from the dalit community made jokes like this. But you, being a “bram” – how can you possibly find this funny?
Would it have been funny to listen to British white people joke about killing and raping Indians? Is there any context in which this would be funny, especially if it is a white British person making the joke. How about Michael Richards screaming something like, “back in the day we used to hang you…” (i’m paraphrasing) to the black audience member who was heckling his act. Could that be considered funny in your book?
It’s disgusting to me that this humor goes on TN tv shows – just disgusting.
TN is some sort of primitive jungle.
Look, I don’t want to use inflammatory terms, but there are lots of very very embarassing aspects of Tamil society, with its obsession with film stars as politicians, the utterly ridiculous communal politics that govern local politics and promote goons like Ramadoss, the rampant female infanticide, the Tamil chauvinism (started by the DMK and associated movements in the 60s), the out-of-control reservation, and so on. Movies are a very good indicator of what plays well with the masses, and the most successful movies either focus on communal conflicts or vigilante violence, both of which are cringeworthy, to say the least. And I haven’t even brought up Vadivelu, Senthil, Goundamani, Khushboo, and Naghma 🙂
Yes, Tamilnadu has an impressive literacy rate, and good indicators of industrial and productivity progress, so I am not saying Tamilnadu is a basket case, but I think conditions in rural Tamilnadu are quite bad. (and bringing up Bihar/UP/whatever as comparisons doesn’t change this fact).
Regarding the landlord’s comment, it was pure nakkal.
I know exactly what “nakkal” is, and I didn’t see the landlord’s comments that way at all. I think there’s a limit to the extent that we Tamil speakers can be apologists for what our fellow Tamils speakers say/do, and this is pretty much it.
If that’s what passes for “nakkal” in rural TN, then people need to understand which places and situations are appropriate for “nakkal” and which are not. The practice of upper caste men raping Dalit women is almost certainly an occasion where “nakkal” is neither appropriate nor particularly desirable.
That wasn’t nakkal, that was thimiru.
What is “thimiru”?
Thimiru means arrogance/audacity.
Loosely translated, it means arrogance…usually a result of pride in one’s achievements/status, but not always.
thanks for the translation
Ak # 138 ,Pappu # 149
Ak:Thanks for asking because I was dying to know why Pappu needed that phrase 🙂
Pappu:
Glad to know “its along those lines”My guess was Tamilian barber !:-)
but I think conditions in rural Tamilnadu are quite bad.
You bring up a very good point. Growing up in major cities, I never picked up on such things, but now that you guys have started dissecting all this, it makes total sense.
Could we agree on the fact that the discussion is mainly about rural Tamilnadu, not the cities as much?
yes, thimiru over nakkal. frankly, i find much of the humour in tamil films to be overly vulgar, and completely disrespectful. but it is what the masses want – most tamil films with intelligent humour are overlooked and receive less commercial success. i suppose, from a business perspective, you supply whatever the demand is. but the fact that this is a demand – that people find funny the humiliation of others – is hard to digest. what is even more incendiary is that the tamil masses who would find nothing wrong with this man’s recounting of rape, are the same ones who protest when an actress says that men should not expect virginity from the women they marry. when it comes to the image of women and sex, tamilians can have some really, really fucked up views. and i agree with hema – for this, we should not be apologist.
runa – of course i would ask:)
pappu – i wish you luck/good returns in your endeavours.
Wow, how can the jokes you cite be funny. these things still happen. Maybe, maybe, in the line of Chris Rock comedy, if a comedien from the dalit community made jokes like this. But you, being a “bram” – how can you possibly find this funny?
You are directly transposing cultural acceptability norms from america to Tamil Nadu. There it is offensive for someone other than an African American to use the n-word, for e.g. But I don’t see many people thinking that way here. Lots of politically incorrect humor goes on all the time. having said that, certainly some here will react like you do, and if it was meant to be funny, i personally would think it was disgusting also.
To Rahul – Good nakkal tends to have lots of thimiru. Nakkal without thimiru is just tame. Have you seen Vetrikodikattu, for example ?
Look, rape-jokes, rape-themes are very common, almost cliche in TN films. There are women who have made their mark as “rape-actress” ie. if that actress appears in a scene, the audience knows that a rape-scene is going to follow. They expect it. They will howl if the actress isn’t raped. Lemme give you a UC film say Sindhu Bhairavi. In that film, Sindhu’s sister ie. that schoolgirl flirt who makes out with a boy behind the bush when Sindhu catches her – that actress, she must have been raped in atleast a hundred movies. I’ve seen Tamil films since my childhood, there is not a single film where she is not raped. There was this chap Thakkali who would always star as the fair-skinned UC who made rape-jokes, then follows college girls, then rapes dark-skinned dalit girl, then another dark-skinned chap Murali, who would inevitably beat up Thakkali in his role as the good-hearted dalit, and get Thakkali married to the victim. This was such a cliched standard subplot, almost every 80s Tamil film had this. All Vivek/Vadivelu have done is gentrified some of the cruder versions. If you cannot stomach the Vivek versions I described earlier, I wonder how you would have reacted to the older cruder ones.
Even your Mani Ratnam types are not immune to this nonsense. Take Indira, Mrs. ManiRatnam’s debut film, supposedly co-directed by Ratnam. 3 UC boys chase a dalit and rape her. So they do panchayat. The panchayat thalaivar says, ok, let the UC boys pay 10 rupees. 3 rapists, so 3.33 rupees per rapist. 10 rupee is the fine for raping one dalit. Now our hero Arvind Swami, yes the same cryptologist who saved us from Pakistani terrorists in Roja, what does he say ? He says, I will give you 100 rupees. UC panchayat thalaivar asks what for? Arvind Swami says, well, you said 10 rupees for 1 rape. Our dalits want to rape 10 UC girls, so I will give 100 rupees!
Do you find it funny ? Or disgusting ? In the theatre, everybody laughed, whether UC or dalit, male or female. This is as dignified as it gets. Atleast they introduced some mathematics in the rape theme. If I list what goes on in hardcore rural gaptaan ( Vijaykanth) flicks …
Look, if you are ABD and want to understand what is nakkal, what is rural TN, what is funny about rape-jokes etc., get Dish Network. Then get a monthly subscription to KTV. 4 Tamil movies per day. In 1 month you would have seen 120 movies. Atleast 80% of them will have a fair dose of the unsavoury elements described above. I happen to be from rural TN. I grew up there. So I am accustomed to this type of nasty humor. I can understand how some city people and all ABDs might find it disconcerting, unfunny, tasteless etc. But I don’t. It is my culture. I make no apologies for it. It is a cruder culture, certainly. But it is my culture. So why should I find it embarassing ?
WTF?????
Arvind Swami says, well, you said 10 rupees for 1 rape. Our dalits want to rape 10 UC girls, so I will give 100 rupees!
his point wasn’t that he found rape funny – it was that he found it disgusting that they put a price on the raping of girls. and the humour was not that he intended to rape these girls (he didn’t), it was that he basically gave them a taste of their own medicine.
look, the whole reason why i, as a woman, find these rape jokes so vulgar is that it puts women in a position of weakness, to the point of saying that women are unequal. would you find it funny if the roles were reversed – if a woman sexualy violated a man? if a man sexually violated a man?
like i said, TN has some really fucked up views on women and sex.
But it is my culture. So why should I find it embarassing ?
If you have to ask…
would you find it funny if the roles were reversed – if a woman sexualy violated a man? if a man sexually violated a man?
i would say, woman rapes man = exciting, sexy, sometimes funny
man rapes man = funny, dirty
(talking from tamil movie and masses perspective.)
Tambram:
“I happen to be from rural TN. I grew up there. So I am accustomed to this type of nasty humor. I can understand how some city people and all ABDs might find it disconcerting, unfunny, tasteless etc. But I don’t. It is my culture. I make no apologies for it. It is a cruder culture, certainly. But it is my culture. So why should I find it embarassing ?”
–> And where did you get this idea of nakkal in this context ? I can understand nakkal being used in daily exchanges between people in rural TN(or in movies for explicit comedy tracks). This is not a daily exchange between people in rural TN nor is this a comedy track in a tamil movie. It is an exchange between a subject and interviewer about a specific issue. You dont think nakkal is a stretch in this context ? From now on, should we start looking at any interviews with rural people and discount their observations because they might be nakkal ?
Invoking “I am from rural TN, so I have an understanding of that culture which city or foreign country bred types dont” doesnt go a whole lot in addressing the underlying crudity of the culture especially when you prefer to be in denial about it(as shown y your nakkal references).
FYI, I did grow up in rural TN but at some point, you start realizing some aspects of rural TN culture are plain regressive(when compared to the so-called “civilized” norms).
i would say, woman rapes man = exciting, sexy, sometimes funny
man rapes man = funny, dirty
i’m sorry, what i should have asked is – what is tambram himself is sexually violated by a man? would he still find it funny? humourous? because no woman who has been raped by a man (or a woman) has found any sort of humour in it.
tambram, after reading your disquisition, I realize that I don’t have a sense of humor. I guess I will just have to live with that.
ak, please. Why explain Tamil jokes to a Tamilian ? I know exactly what Arvind Swamy’s point was. I’m just saying its a rather nasty/regressive form of humor. Its like a Nazi math teacher teaching ratios and proportions by saying, if Hitler killed 25 Jews per day, what percentage of Germany would be exterminated in 3 months. See, I don’t have any expectations of refined taste from a Vijaykanth movie. But you would hope that a Mani Ratnam would not stoop to doing mathematics with rape – and yet, there it is.
Another example – take Balachander’s Achchamillai Achchamillai. Rajesh, the newly minted UC politician, stands atop the hill and surveys the village.
Start montage.
30 huts, but only 29 flags.
Rajesh – Why is 1 flag missing?
Thigs – Sir that hut is inhabited by dalit.
Rajesh – Do the needful.
3 thugs show up outside dalit hut.
Thug – So why are you not voting for UC ?
Dalit – I’m not interested in politics.
Thug – But I am interested in your wife!
Next scene, dalit kicked out of hut, dalit’s wife raped by thugs.
Next scene, cut to hilltop.
30 huts, 30 flags.
End montage.
In that film, rape is used so frequently to resolve disputes. At one point, UC Rajesh is afraid that the dalit party will gain upper hand in votebank. So he comes up with ingenious scheme – rape a UC girl & then throw her down a waterfall. Blame rape and death of UC girl upon a dalit boy. Scheme pays off remarkably. Next election all votes go to UC.
That movie won many awards, so I guess not just rural TN, but even members of the elite award committee are also quite blase about these tasteless transgressions.
sorry, tambram, but clearly you, the rural tamilian, missed the point. the panchayat did math – to show how crude people are in dealing with situations. arvind swami (anjd suhasini) never would have used math, except that the only way to deal with people like that was to talk to them in their own terms, even if he found doing math ridiculous in this situation. i guess that form of humour was a bit too sophisticated for you?
in any case, i can see that there is no point in continuing this argument – clearly our senses of ‘humour’ will never meet. but i would still be interested in your answer to my question re men – in particular, if it happened to you – being violated.
Tambram, I also just realized that the Oscars loved the holocaust humor in Schindler’s list and the Pianist. It was a real gas.
Question to everyone who is discussing tamil movies.
First off, don’t you think the movies are trying to portray what is going on in everyday life? Or am I reading too much into this?
Secondly, I always thought that towards the end of the movie, the thugs were always punished. Right?
I am asking because I have not seen any tamil movies in the past 2-3 years. And even the old movies I thought had a moral. No?
IatEP:
It is propagandist, not propogandist. Sorry, I am finicky like that 🙂
I believe that the popularity of movies with themes of communal violence and corrupt politicians is because they portray reality as experienced by many people.
The bad guys don’t necessarily get explicitly punished in every movie. For example, Kathal, which was a very successful movie on the dangers of a lower caste man dating a Thevar woman, had the lower caste man going mad and the woman being trapped in a loveless marriage. Now, by many sane measures, this is an unhappy ending, but hey, the woman got married in-caste and the guy was taught a lesson, so some people (cough, cough) might consider it a success.
Also, punishment usually involves a cycle of revenge and vigilante violence, and it is not clear to me what message that sends.
Tambram, I also just realized that the Oscars loved the holocaust humor in Schindler’s list and the Pianist. It was a real gas.
Slightly OT, but I didn’t ‘get’ any of the holocaust humor in Life is Beautiful.
had the lower caste man going mad and the woman being trapped in a loveless marriage
thanks for the spoiler, rahul. i was biding my time for years to watch this movie, but now…
In the theatre, everybody laughed, whether UC or dalit, male or female.
Laughter doesn’t always mean a statement is funny. Sometimes people laugh to express approval of a sentiment, rather than because they thought the statement was funny and acceptable (i.e. Arvind Swamy’s character in “Indira” successfully turns the tables on the UC folks by paying more money). Sometimes people laugh because they are embarrassed too.
I refuse to believe that rural Tamilians find rape jokes funny…they may make these statements more often than people in urban settings, but folks in rural areas understand insult, revenge and recrimination better than city folks do. Do you think for a minute the Thevar landlord in the video would use “nakkal” to make his point if the question was how many Thevar women had been raped by Brahmins in the village? He’d be off to get his aruval, lickety-split.
It’s just that since this particular discussion is about Dalit women, it’s suddenly ok for him to express his sentiments using thimiru (or “nakkal”) if you prefer…since, well, it’s just Dalit women.
ak, haven’t your parents told you that in Kathal, what’s important is not the destination, but the journey?
Also Tim Robbins digs his way out of Shawshank and spends the rest of his life on the beaches of Mexico.
Gee thanks, Rahul. I’ve been waiting almost 15 years to watch the last 15 minutes of Shawshank. Killjoy.
ak, haven’t your parents told you that in Kathal, what’s important is not the destination, but the journey?
quite the opposite – the destination is the key – journeys are evil, and always liable to sway a good girl away from her path of chasteness. as my dad once put it, ‘dating is a waste of time – you could be doing so many other things with your time, kanna, like reading books.’ my grandfather was a bit more blunt : no therinjifying of the vivaram before marriage. personally, i prefer the journey, and sometimes it’s far better than the destination.
Rahul,
I don’t think you should bring Kadhal into this. Your analysis of Kadhal’s dynamics is rather sloppy.
Here are two papers that go a bit deeper – Politics and Tamil Cinema, and a standard review of Kadhal.
Kadhal is a watershed moment in Tamil cinema. The response it got, especially from the Thevars, you had to see it to believe it. Kadhal itself was based entirely on a true story that Shaktivel Sir heard in a 2nd class train compartment. In that year itself, atleast 3 such incidents took place, remarkably similar to the film, after the film’s release, thereby validating the film’s premise that these things happen on a day-to-day basis and nothing really has changed. Murugan’s caste is never openly mentioned throughout the movie. Now Shaktivel Sir himself is a Thevar,as is Aishwarya, the girl who elopes with Murugan.
This whole resurgence in Tamil cinema – huge success of Pattiyal, Veyil’s entry into Cannes, you can trace every one of these things directly to Kadhal. Kadhal practically kickstarted this movement. Shaktivel Sir is God. Even Ratnam when asked to list the most significant Tamil films that year said Kadhal, Autograph, 7grc & two others I forget.
The thing about Kadhal is that its 100% authentic. Absolutely no pandering. Crude, yes. But that’s rural TN. Every artery and vein of Madurai is etched as-is. No makeup, no artifice, no decoration. Unlike ,say, Ratnam’s Indira where Suhasini makes the lower caste girls sing Nila Kaygiradhu in chaste Tamil – no lower caste women would use those words or that vocabulary or sing in carnatic ragas. Or Ratnam’s Bombay where Hindu Muslim Christian etc hold hands and sing an ARR song for peace. These are noble sentiments, but certainly daydreams in today’s India. They are not authentic and all the locals know its a fake. That’s what makes something like Kadhal stand head and shoulders above the rest, because it tells it like it is. Lowcaste Murugan can elope weith Thevar girl Aishwarya and even marry her, but that marriage is invalid. The community won’t accept and practically stone Murugan to death ( if Aish hadn’t given in, and even then its too late and he goes mad ). Anyway these things have been discussed and dissected to death in tamil mags & blogsophere so lemme stop here. Suffice it to say, Kadhal is probably the most significant Tamil cinema of this generation to date.
If you were being serious, hema, I’m sorry.
Unlike ,say, Ratnam’s Indira where Suhasini makes the lower caste girls sing Nila Kaygiradhu in chaste Tamil
That’s easy to explain…there’s already another song that starts with “nela kayudhu”!
Rahul #190:
I’m hardly ever serious. Why start now?
It is my culture. I make no apologies for it. It is a cruder culture, certainly. But it is my culture. So why should I find it embarassing ?
You asked the question –
You know in the past there were a lot of violent jokes from colonizers about the colonized. Again I ask, would you find it funny if some white person made jokes about raping a Tamil (whatever the caste)?? Probably not. There’s so many jokes from the past in the United States that are horrible and mainstream America has caught up and changed and we Indians, who come here to permanently immigrate or to work here, benefit so much from this b/c we can live for the most part peaceful, civilized lives. So glad some Americans learned to realize there’s parts of their culture that they should apologize for and work to change. If you live in America Tambram, I’m sorry you cannot find it embarrassing or want to apologize for this “comedy”. You should – b/c you reap the benefit of people, who did feel the need to be embarrassed or apologize for the racial and sexist vulgarity that was acceptable at one time in US. Thank goodness for their apologies and activism otherwise, I’m sure you’d suffer a great deal of indignity and suffering in the US. Thankfully, when white men would laugh about raping their black slave women – it’s no longer acceptable in mainstream culture.
Too bad whatever corporates are advertising during this comedy crap, don’t pull out. I’m not even sure if TV is run that way in India, but if it is the corps should pull out. But with attitudes like Tambrams, that’s just wishful thinking.
Tambram, see comments #28 and #30 where I refer to your article “Politics and Tamil Cinema”. I’ve read it many times over. I will just quote the last line of that article you hold up in your defense: Tamil cinema remains an embarrassment confined to Tamil Nadu.
hema, thank goodness! For a second, I felt as bad as if I’d said Norman Bates also cross-dressed as his mother in Psycho and murdered Janet Leigh in the shower.
If it was “nakkal,” it obviously wasn’t clear to the wife, who seems to turn away from the doorway (and out of camera frame) in disgust.
Tambram (#170):
I understand it’s your culture. I just don’t think it’s funny.
It’s certainly no funnier than a theater full of people laughing at nigger jokes. The humor is dishonest; it seeks to mollify and placate people who would otherwise object to a thoroughly disgusting practice.
No need to apologize for it. But I think you’re wrong to tolerate it. Fine, it’s your culture. But there’s danger in assuming that anyone’s culture is sacrosanct, and should never be changed because it’s just what it is.
goddamn, rahul, i really haven’t seen shawshank – and didn’t even read the spoiler until hema pointed it out. if you must do spoilers, please stick to irrelevant movies – like zoolander, or anchorman. or maine pyar kiya.
journeys are evil, and always liable to sway a good girl away from her path of chasteness.
Well, too late now for that ship to come back to port.
goddamn, rahul, i really haven’t seen shawshank – and didn’t even read the spoiler until hema pointed it out.
Hema, how could you?
As for maine pyar kiya, the pigeon that Salman uses to deliver his love letter gets swallowed by a hawk moments before it reaches Bhagyashree. Salman waits in vain for many years, losing hair, growing mad, and developing an annoying habit of walking around bare-chested in the process. Bhagyashree remains a good little girl who has a proper arranged marriage with a groom of the right gotra.
I meant that in the sense of: the dalits are polluting and therefore “untouchable”; but when it comes to the most intimate form of touching, sex (in this case the rampant rapes of helpless dalit women by upper caste men), which also involves exchange of bodily fluids, all that is conveniently disregarded by these vile, hypocritical men.
Thanks a lot for blogging this, Anna. As an Indian I have to wonder, what the f**k is wrong with us. It is so depressing I almost want to believe it is fake, but I don’t think it is.
To respond to the points raised by “risible” in comment #141, IDSN, NCDHR and such groups are not one-man fiefdoms but are admirable products of team work where they have upper caste Hindus and Christians, Muslims and Dalits, all working together. There is discrimination but much less violence in Dalits who choose another religion. To see Dalit discrimination in other religions, please see this brilliant new documentary, “India Untouched”, by K Stalin: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2007-May/009328.html
A lot has recently been happening on the Dalit Christians: a government commission has recommended that they be given SC status.
I’m so glad I’m mallu.
Andy – why do you say, I’m so glad I’m mallu. – is it b/c you think caste discrimination is less prevalent there and the atrocities that we see in this video do not seem to exist in Kerala? I’m just curious why you made this comment.
Regarding the landlord’s comment, it was pure nakkal. Frankly, I don’t have the intellectual caliber to explain what is nakkal to a non-Tamil audience. I don’t believe rest of the planet has equivalence of nakkal in their vocab/culture, though they might have something that approximates nakkal. eg. Hillary Clinton visits South Park. Where’s the WMD ? Its in her …well, I hope you’ve seen that episode. Or say, a holocaust joke. Bad taste? Sure, but a joke nevertheless. Landlord is merely using nakkal to defuse a hot-button issue. UC’s raping dalits ? Yeah, earlier we used to rape a lot, but nowadays we are a bit careful, is what he’s saying. Doesn’t mean he was personally raping a dalit, or whether his community was raping, or that they weren’t raping, or that he wasn’t raping – nothing can be inferred from what he said. It is a general nakkalified statement on how times have changed.
If you watch the recent crop of Tamil films especially those with Vadivelu & Vivek as sidekicks, you will come across several such remarks tossed across very casually. There are jokes on chopping up dalits simply because a UC’s moustache size was mocked at. A dalit beggar is fooled into sleeping with a UC for a plate of idli, with the result that UC gets venereal disease while dalit blackmails UC to buy her brother a scooter so they can beg more efficiently. Towards the end, the dalit becomes an MLA while the UC is taken to be castrated to reduce India’s “bobulation”. Dalit rescues UC and everybody’s happy. Lots of such instances. Very appalling from a human-rights standpoint, but this is what passes for third-world humor in Tamil films. Caste-violence, rapes, dalit huts set on fire, etc. are standard fare for TN comedy. I watch a lot of these. But then, there is a context to this and since I happen to be from that community, I find it funny. I cringe at the literally-translated subtitles – if some hapless ABD or firang rented them from Netflix he’d think TN is some sort of primitive jungle.
No comments about the rest of the video. I don’t even what to go there.
Very appalling from a human-rights standpoint, but this is what passes for third-world humor in Tamil films. Caste-violence, rapes, dalit huts set on fire, etc. are standard fare for TN comedy. I watch a lot of these. But then, there is a context to this and since I happen to be from that community, I find it funny
Wow, how can the jokes you cite be funny. these things still happen. Maybe, maybe, in the line of Chris Rock comedy, if a comedien from the dalit community made jokes like this. But you, being a “bram” – how can you possibly find this funny?
Would it have been funny to listen to British white people joke about killing and raping Indians? Is there any context in which this would be funny, especially if it is a white British person making the joke. How about Michael Richards screaming something like, “back in the day we used to hang you…” (i’m paraphrasing) to the black audience member who was heckling his act. Could that be considered funny in your book?
It’s disgusting to me that this humor goes on TN tv shows – just disgusting.
Look, I don’t want to use inflammatory terms, but there are lots of very very embarassing aspects of Tamil society, with its obsession with film stars as politicians, the utterly ridiculous communal politics that govern local politics and promote goons like Ramadoss, the rampant female infanticide, the Tamil chauvinism (started by the DMK and associated movements in the 60s), the out-of-control reservation, and so on. Movies are a very good indicator of what plays well with the masses, and the most successful movies either focus on communal conflicts or vigilante violence, both of which are cringeworthy, to say the least. And I haven’t even brought up Vadivelu, Senthil, Goundamani, Khushboo, and Naghma 🙂
Yes, Tamilnadu has an impressive literacy rate, and good indicators of industrial and productivity progress, so I am not saying Tamilnadu is a basket case, but I think conditions in rural Tamilnadu are quite bad. (and bringing up Bihar/UP/whatever as comparisons doesn’t change this fact).
Regarding the landlord’s comment, it was pure nakkal.
I know exactly what “nakkal” is, and I didn’t see the landlord’s comments that way at all. I think there’s a limit to the extent that we Tamil speakers can be apologists for what our fellow Tamils speakers say/do, and this is pretty much it.
If that’s what passes for “nakkal” in rural TN, then people need to understand which places and situations are appropriate for “nakkal” and which are not. The practice of upper caste men raping Dalit women is almost certainly an occasion where “nakkal” is neither appropriate nor particularly desirable.
That wasn’t nakkal, that was thimiru.
What is “thimiru”?
Thimiru means arrogance/audacity.
Loosely translated, it means arrogance…usually a result of pride in one’s achievements/status, but not always.
thanks for the translation
Ak # 138 ,Pappu # 149
Ak:Thanks for asking because I was dying to know why Pappu needed that phrase 🙂
Pappu: Glad to know “its along those lines”My guess was Tamilian barber !:-)
You bring up a very good point. Growing up in major cities, I never picked up on such things, but now that you guys have started dissecting all this, it makes total sense.
Could we agree on the fact that the discussion is mainly about rural Tamilnadu, not the cities as much?
yes, thimiru over nakkal. frankly, i find much of the humour in tamil films to be overly vulgar, and completely disrespectful. but it is what the masses want – most tamil films with intelligent humour are overlooked and receive less commercial success. i suppose, from a business perspective, you supply whatever the demand is. but the fact that this is a demand – that people find funny the humiliation of others – is hard to digest. what is even more incendiary is that the tamil masses who would find nothing wrong with this man’s recounting of rape, are the same ones who protest when an actress says that men should not expect virginity from the women they marry. when it comes to the image of women and sex, tamilians can have some really, really fucked up views. and i agree with hema – for this, we should not be apologist.
runa – of course i would ask:)
pappu – i wish you luck/good returns in your endeavours.
You are directly transposing cultural acceptability norms from america to Tamil Nadu. There it is offensive for someone other than an African American to use the n-word, for e.g. But I don’t see many people thinking that way here. Lots of politically incorrect humor goes on all the time. having said that, certainly some here will react like you do, and if it was meant to be funny, i personally would think it was disgusting also.
To Rahul – Good nakkal tends to have lots of thimiru. Nakkal without thimiru is just tame. Have you seen Vetrikodikattu, for example ?
Look, rape-jokes, rape-themes are very common, almost cliche in TN films. There are women who have made their mark as “rape-actress” ie. if that actress appears in a scene, the audience knows that a rape-scene is going to follow. They expect it. They will howl if the actress isn’t raped. Lemme give you a UC film say Sindhu Bhairavi. In that film, Sindhu’s sister ie. that schoolgirl flirt who makes out with a boy behind the bush when Sindhu catches her – that actress, she must have been raped in atleast a hundred movies. I’ve seen Tamil films since my childhood, there is not a single film where she is not raped. There was this chap Thakkali who would always star as the fair-skinned UC who made rape-jokes, then follows college girls, then rapes dark-skinned dalit girl, then another dark-skinned chap Murali, who would inevitably beat up Thakkali in his role as the good-hearted dalit, and get Thakkali married to the victim. This was such a cliched standard subplot, almost every 80s Tamil film had this. All Vivek/Vadivelu have done is gentrified some of the cruder versions. If you cannot stomach the Vivek versions I described earlier, I wonder how you would have reacted to the older cruder ones.
Even your Mani Ratnam types are not immune to this nonsense. Take Indira, Mrs. ManiRatnam’s debut film, supposedly co-directed by Ratnam. 3 UC boys chase a dalit and rape her. So they do panchayat. The panchayat thalaivar says, ok, let the UC boys pay 10 rupees. 3 rapists, so 3.33 rupees per rapist. 10 rupee is the fine for raping one dalit. Now our hero Arvind Swami, yes the same cryptologist who saved us from Pakistani terrorists in Roja, what does he say ? He says, I will give you 100 rupees. UC panchayat thalaivar asks what for? Arvind Swami says, well, you said 10 rupees for 1 rape. Our dalits want to rape 10 UC girls, so I will give 100 rupees!
Do you find it funny ? Or disgusting ? In the theatre, everybody laughed, whether UC or dalit, male or female. This is as dignified as it gets. Atleast they introduced some mathematics in the rape theme. If I list what goes on in hardcore rural gaptaan ( Vijaykanth) flicks …
Look, if you are ABD and want to understand what is nakkal, what is rural TN, what is funny about rape-jokes etc., get Dish Network. Then get a monthly subscription to KTV. 4 Tamil movies per day. In 1 month you would have seen 120 movies. Atleast 80% of them will have a fair dose of the unsavoury elements described above. I happen to be from rural TN. I grew up there. So I am accustomed to this type of nasty humor. I can understand how some city people and all ABDs might find it disconcerting, unfunny, tasteless etc. But I don’t. It is my culture. I make no apologies for it. It is a cruder culture, certainly. But it is my culture. So why should I find it embarassing ?
WTF?????
his point wasn’t that he found rape funny – it was that he found it disgusting that they put a price on the raping of girls. and the humour was not that he intended to rape these girls (he didn’t), it was that he basically gave them a taste of their own medicine.
look, the whole reason why i, as a woman, find these rape jokes so vulgar is that it puts women in a position of weakness, to the point of saying that women are unequal. would you find it funny if the roles were reversed – if a woman sexualy violated a man? if a man sexually violated a man?
like i said, TN has some really fucked up views on women and sex.
If you have to ask…
i would say, woman rapes man = exciting, sexy, sometimes funny man rapes man = funny, dirty
(talking from tamil movie and masses perspective.)
Tambram: “I happen to be from rural TN. I grew up there. So I am accustomed to this type of nasty humor. I can understand how some city people and all ABDs might find it disconcerting, unfunny, tasteless etc. But I don’t. It is my culture. I make no apologies for it. It is a cruder culture, certainly. But it is my culture. So why should I find it embarassing ?”
–> And where did you get this idea of nakkal in this context ? I can understand nakkal being used in daily exchanges between people in rural TN(or in movies for explicit comedy tracks). This is not a daily exchange between people in rural TN nor is this a comedy track in a tamil movie. It is an exchange between a subject and interviewer about a specific issue. You dont think nakkal is a stretch in this context ? From now on, should we start looking at any interviews with rural people and discount their observations because they might be nakkal ?
Invoking “I am from rural TN, so I have an understanding of that culture which city or foreign country bred types dont” doesnt go a whole lot in addressing the underlying crudity of the culture especially when you prefer to be in denial about it(as shown y your nakkal references).
FYI, I did grow up in rural TN but at some point, you start realizing some aspects of rural TN culture are plain regressive(when compared to the so-called “civilized” norms).
i’m sorry, what i should have asked is – what is tambram himself is sexually violated by a man? would he still find it funny? humourous? because no woman who has been raped by a man (or a woman) has found any sort of humour in it.
tambram, after reading your disquisition, I realize that I don’t have a sense of humor. I guess I will just have to live with that.
ak, please. Why explain Tamil jokes to a Tamilian ? I know exactly what Arvind Swamy’s point was. I’m just saying its a rather nasty/regressive form of humor. Its like a Nazi math teacher teaching ratios and proportions by saying, if Hitler killed 25 Jews per day, what percentage of Germany would be exterminated in 3 months. See, I don’t have any expectations of refined taste from a Vijaykanth movie. But you would hope that a Mani Ratnam would not stoop to doing mathematics with rape – and yet, there it is.
Another example – take Balachander’s Achchamillai Achchamillai. Rajesh, the newly minted UC politician, stands atop the hill and surveys the village. Start montage. 30 huts, but only 29 flags. Rajesh – Why is 1 flag missing? Thigs – Sir that hut is inhabited by dalit. Rajesh – Do the needful. 3 thugs show up outside dalit hut. Thug – So why are you not voting for UC ? Dalit – I’m not interested in politics. Thug – But I am interested in your wife! Next scene, dalit kicked out of hut, dalit’s wife raped by thugs. Next scene, cut to hilltop. 30 huts, 30 flags. End montage.
In that film, rape is used so frequently to resolve disputes. At one point, UC Rajesh is afraid that the dalit party will gain upper hand in votebank. So he comes up with ingenious scheme – rape a UC girl & then throw her down a waterfall. Blame rape and death of UC girl upon a dalit boy. Scheme pays off remarkably. Next election all votes go to UC.
That movie won many awards, so I guess not just rural TN, but even members of the elite award committee are also quite blase about these tasteless transgressions.
sorry, tambram, but clearly you, the rural tamilian, missed the point. the panchayat did math – to show how crude people are in dealing with situations. arvind swami (anjd suhasini) never would have used math, except that the only way to deal with people like that was to talk to them in their own terms, even if he found doing math ridiculous in this situation. i guess that form of humour was a bit too sophisticated for you?
in any case, i can see that there is no point in continuing this argument – clearly our senses of ‘humour’ will never meet. but i would still be interested in your answer to my question re men – in particular, if it happened to you – being violated.
Tambram, I also just realized that the Oscars loved the holocaust humor in Schindler’s list and the Pianist. It was a real gas.
Question to everyone who is discussing tamil movies.
First off, don’t you think the movies are trying to portray what is going on in everyday life? Or am I reading too much into this?
Secondly, I always thought that towards the end of the movie, the thugs were always punished. Right?
I am asking because I have not seen any tamil movies in the past 2-3 years. And even the old movies I thought had a moral. No?
IatEP:
Slightly OT, but I didn’t ‘get’ any of the holocaust humor in Life is Beautiful.
thanks for the spoiler, rahul. i was biding my time for years to watch this movie, but now…
In the theatre, everybody laughed, whether UC or dalit, male or female.
Laughter doesn’t always mean a statement is funny. Sometimes people laugh to express approval of a sentiment, rather than because they thought the statement was funny and acceptable (i.e. Arvind Swamy’s character in “Indira” successfully turns the tables on the UC folks by paying more money). Sometimes people laugh because they are embarrassed too.
I refuse to believe that rural Tamilians find rape jokes funny…they may make these statements more often than people in urban settings, but folks in rural areas understand insult, revenge and recrimination better than city folks do. Do you think for a minute the Thevar landlord in the video would use “nakkal” to make his point if the question was how many Thevar women had been raped by Brahmins in the village? He’d be off to get his aruval, lickety-split.
It’s just that since this particular discussion is about Dalit women, it’s suddenly ok for him to express his sentiments using thimiru (or “nakkal”) if you prefer…since, well, it’s just Dalit women.
ak, haven’t your parents told you that in Kathal, what’s important is not the destination, but the journey?
Also Tim Robbins digs his way out of Shawshank and spends the rest of his life on the beaches of Mexico.
Gee thanks, Rahul. I’ve been waiting almost 15 years to watch the last 15 minutes of Shawshank. Killjoy.
quite the opposite – the destination is the key – journeys are evil, and always liable to sway a good girl away from her path of chasteness. as my dad once put it, ‘dating is a waste of time – you could be doing so many other things with your time, kanna, like reading books.’ my grandfather was a bit more blunt : no therinjifying of the vivaram before marriage. personally, i prefer the journey, and sometimes it’s far better than the destination.
Rahul, I don’t think you should bring Kadhal into this. Your analysis of Kadhal’s dynamics is rather sloppy. Here are two papers that go a bit deeper – Politics and Tamil Cinema, and a standard review of Kadhal.
Kadhal is a watershed moment in Tamil cinema. The response it got, especially from the Thevars, you had to see it to believe it. Kadhal itself was based entirely on a true story that Shaktivel Sir heard in a 2nd class train compartment. In that year itself, atleast 3 such incidents took place, remarkably similar to the film, after the film’s release, thereby validating the film’s premise that these things happen on a day-to-day basis and nothing really has changed. Murugan’s caste is never openly mentioned throughout the movie. Now Shaktivel Sir himself is a Thevar,as is Aishwarya, the girl who elopes with Murugan.
This whole resurgence in Tamil cinema – huge success of Pattiyal, Veyil’s entry into Cannes, you can trace every one of these things directly to Kadhal. Kadhal practically kickstarted this movement. Shaktivel Sir is God. Even Ratnam when asked to list the most significant Tamil films that year said Kadhal, Autograph, 7grc & two others I forget.
The thing about Kadhal is that its 100% authentic. Absolutely no pandering. Crude, yes. But that’s rural TN. Every artery and vein of Madurai is etched as-is. No makeup, no artifice, no decoration. Unlike ,say, Ratnam’s Indira where Suhasini makes the lower caste girls sing Nila Kaygiradhu in chaste Tamil – no lower caste women would use those words or that vocabulary or sing in carnatic ragas. Or Ratnam’s Bombay where Hindu Muslim Christian etc hold hands and sing an ARR song for peace. These are noble sentiments, but certainly daydreams in today’s India. They are not authentic and all the locals know its a fake. That’s what makes something like Kadhal stand head and shoulders above the rest, because it tells it like it is. Lowcaste Murugan can elope weith Thevar girl Aishwarya and even marry her, but that marriage is invalid. The community won’t accept and practically stone Murugan to death ( if Aish hadn’t given in, and even then its too late and he goes mad ). Anyway these things have been discussed and dissected to death in tamil mags & blogsophere so lemme stop here. Suffice it to say, Kadhal is probably the most significant Tamil cinema of this generation to date.
If you were being serious, hema, I’m sorry.
Unlike ,say, Ratnam’s Indira where Suhasini makes the lower caste girls sing Nila Kaygiradhu in chaste Tamil
That’s easy to explain…there’s already another song that starts with “nela kayudhu”!
Rahul #190:
I’m hardly ever serious. Why start now?
It is my culture. I make no apologies for it. It is a cruder culture, certainly. But it is my culture. So why should I find it embarassing ?
You asked the question –
You know in the past there were a lot of violent jokes from colonizers about the colonized. Again I ask, would you find it funny if some white person made jokes about raping a Tamil (whatever the caste)?? Probably not. There’s so many jokes from the past in the United States that are horrible and mainstream America has caught up and changed and we Indians, who come here to permanently immigrate or to work here, benefit so much from this b/c we can live for the most part peaceful, civilized lives. So glad some Americans learned to realize there’s parts of their culture that they should apologize for and work to change. If you live in America Tambram, I’m sorry you cannot find it embarrassing or want to apologize for this “comedy”. You should – b/c you reap the benefit of people, who did feel the need to be embarrassed or apologize for the racial and sexist vulgarity that was acceptable at one time in US. Thank goodness for their apologies and activism otherwise, I’m sure you’d suffer a great deal of indignity and suffering in the US. Thankfully, when white men would laugh about raping their black slave women – it’s no longer acceptable in mainstream culture.
Too bad whatever corporates are advertising during this comedy crap, don’t pull out. I’m not even sure if TV is run that way in India, but if it is the corps should pull out. But with attitudes like Tambrams, that’s just wishful thinking.
Tambram, see comments #28 and #30 where I refer to your article “Politics and Tamil Cinema”. I’ve read it many times over. I will just quote the last line of that article you hold up in your defense: Tamil cinema remains an embarrassment confined to Tamil Nadu.
hema, thank goodness! For a second, I felt as bad as if I’d said Norman Bates also cross-dressed as his mother in Psycho and murdered Janet Leigh in the shower.
If it was “nakkal,” it obviously wasn’t clear to the wife, who seems to turn away from the doorway (and out of camera frame) in disgust.
Tambram (#170):
I understand it’s your culture. I just don’t think it’s funny.
It’s certainly no funnier than a theater full of people laughing at nigger jokes. The humor is dishonest; it seeks to mollify and placate people who would otherwise object to a thoroughly disgusting practice.
No need to apologize for it. But I think you’re wrong to tolerate it. Fine, it’s your culture. But there’s danger in assuming that anyone’s culture is sacrosanct, and should never be changed because it’s just what it is.
goddamn, rahul, i really haven’t seen shawshank – and didn’t even read the spoiler until hema pointed it out. if you must do spoilers, please stick to irrelevant movies – like zoolander, or anchorman. or maine pyar kiya.
Well, too late now for that ship to come back to port.
Hema, how could you?
As for maine pyar kiya, the pigeon that Salman uses to deliver his love letter gets swallowed by a hawk moments before it reaches Bhagyashree. Salman waits in vain for many years, losing hair, growing mad, and developing an annoying habit of walking around bare-chested in the process. Bhagyashree remains a good little girl who has a proper arranged marriage with a groom of the right gotra.