By Devansh Singh

Abstract

‘Geeli Pucchi’ is a refreshing take from a Bollywood plagued with caste neutrality. This article is a review of the film that has brought intersectionality to light on the big screen.

Bollywood has taken a “progressive” step of bringing queer narratives to the mainstream with characters like Laila Kapoor (Kalki Koechlin) in Margarita with a Straw and Arjun Kapoor (Fawad Khan) in Kapoor and Sons. These characters expressed their desires i.e., sexuality. But are these characters’ desires devoid of political identities like caste? Usually, the characters written in Bollywood are void of caste identities and their impact on their stories. This not only obfuscates caste boundaries but also tries to ignore caste identities and their roles in people’s lives. Even when Caste is included, it has mostly been used to bring caste-based violence to the fore (Article 15, etc.). But Dharma Production’s Geeli Pucchi presents a fresh view on a more intimate form of oppression propagated by Brahmanical cis-het-patriarchy against queer identities belonging to the lower caste and the Brahman Community itself. It’s a story of Bharti Mandal and Priya Sharma. Bharti is a queer Dalit woman who comes from a lineage of midwives whereas Priya is an Upper-Caste Brahmin woman. This essay will try to understand the depiction of their lives in Geeli Pucchi with an intersectional perspective of gender and caste.

The concept of intersectionality is a framework to analyze how a person’s social and political identities interact to create an oppressive or privileged environment. The individual identities interact together and not in isolation. As Kimberly Crenshaw pointed out, individuals belonging to different marginalized identities go through different forms of oppression based on all their political and social identities. Applying Crenshaw’s arguments to the Indian context, Queer Dalit Women like Bharti go through a form of discrimination that has been customized by the Brahmanical Patriarchy for them specifically. On the other hand, upper-caste women like Priya Sharma go through a different form of discrimination propagated by structures of their own Brahmin Community. Both their experiences might differ in intensities and impact both in different aspects of their life.

Bharati Mandal is a queer Dalit woman working in a male-dominated workplace where she is harassed for not being a conventional – fair, shy, feminine – woman by her co-workers. The taunts also imply that the reason she is single is because of the masculine nature of her lifestyle. But, then Priya Sharma the upper-caste fair, feminine, married woman comes to work in the same factory. Her sexuality is compared with that of Bharati, and she is jokingly asked to teach Bharati to have a more feminine representation. Moreover, she is expected to serve the upper-caste clique when they are celebrating Priya’s birthday at the office with her even clearing out their leftovers. These microaggressions are not only a representation of the caste dynamic but also a representation of patriarchy governing women’s sexuality. Bharati a Dalit woman is expected to imitate the upper-caste woman to be considered appropriate and accepted in society. At the same time, Priya who checks all the boxes for the ideal type of women’s sexuality is accepted and praised for it. This is a prime example of intersectionality because Bharati is discriminated against as she is a Dalit and a Woman. Her experience is unfortunately unique owing to both her identities. It is not always clear that the discrimination against Bharati is owing to her caste or her gender. This obfuscation has been pointed out by Mary E. John (2015), Crenshaw (1991), etc. where the discrimination meted out to marginalized women is because of a combination of various identities.

Bharati is living in a world of Brahmanical Patriarchy which is imposing structural violence and discrimination against women like her who belong to the Dalit community. The first evidence of her caste oppression is a refusal of a job that she wanted and was qualified for. Not only was she not given a fair chance to even apply for the job but the job was given to Priya who was underqualified, and inefficient and received the job owing to the Palm Reading skills she learned growing up in her Brahman household, a fact that she is proud and joyous about. Moreover, she is offered a different cup because she is a Dalit in a Brahman household. Maybe owing to her queer Dalit resistance to the rules of the patriarchy she could go higher on the economic ladder, but the Brahmanical Patriarchy wouldn’t let her forget her caste in a world imposing and imitating the Brahman virtues.

The ‘innocent and sweet” upper caste Priya Sharma was no different than the rest of the Brahman world. She had not only internalized patriarchy but had abided by the rules of the patriarchy to remain accepted in the ‘clique’ that is the Brahman world. She befriends Bharati but the moment she gets to know about her Dalit identity, in that moment she drops her hands out of Bharati’s. When at the office they throw a small party for Priya’s birthday Priya asks Bharati to wait outside the office while she goes in. She not only doesn’t invite Bharati in but avoids even looking at Bharati. However, this indirect untouchability doesn’t stop Priya from using Bharati’s home to have sexual intercourse with her husband in another attempt to feel more connected and more included in her Brahman household despite having unclear feelings for Bharati. This reinforces the caste structure where Dalits are supposed to facilitate Brahman’s lives. The one fact that Bharati is not a Brahman, but a Dalit has changed everything.

There is a sad similarity in Bharati’s and Dhrubo Jyoti’s situations where they both had to come out as queer people and as Dalit again. Dhrubo Jyoti says that he can’t be a Dalit as well as a queer simultaneously and Bharati’s situation accentuates this point because Priya was comfortable with Bharati’s queerness to some extent, but she couldn’t accept the fact that Bharati is a Dalit because of the internalization of the patriarchy. Priya has a sense of comfort with Bharati’s queer identity, but she isn’t as comfortable with her Dalit identity.

Bharati posits the tools of the Brahmanical patriarchy to take away an opportunity from a member of the Brahman Community. In this situation, there is an intersection of caste, capitalism, etc. Since Bharati feels betrayed she advises Priya to have a child with Shyam and be happy like Kavita. She even helps Priya conceive by providing her sex education apart from her house. Here, an interesting observation would be how Bharati uses her ancestral midwife knowledge to protect herself and her emotions against the Brahman world. Priya being the nice upper caste woman not only lets Bharati do her job while she is away but also recommends Bharati to her boss. Her boss only accepts the proposition because it is coming from Priya. Here, to an extent capitalism and caste contradict each other because the boss doesn’t want to hire Bharati but since he still needs her, her position eventually becomes permanent because she is more efficient, and Priya left her job. This is a depiction of Menon’s point that usually, capitalist globalization undermines traditional patriarchies and caste hierarchies, Dalits abandon traditional occupations and enjoy the new anonymous worlds that replace the “old worlds” the loss of which ecological frameworks mourn. But this doesn’t mean these structures are free from caste biases as the Boss only accepts Bharati initially because Priya wanted her to be there till she returns. Here, Priya’s “kindness” is ridden with a sense of patronage, and she hoped that it would be easier to get her job back from Bharati provided her position in the office. So, the conclusion is that capitalism to an extent can ignore the caste hierarchies as it wants efficiency to win but the important phrase is to an extent.

An important question that follows in mind when viewing is if Bharati’s success in getting the job is taking away from feminism while her queer Dalit resistance fights to win against Brahmanical Patriarchy? The answer is way more complicated than the question. The question brings in the complication that Menon raises is caste the primary contradiction or is gender, where she talks about the destabilizing of the feminist movement because of issues like caste. Similarly, here we can’t find a straightforward answer because Bharati’s various identities intersect, and these identities achieve success but at the same time, Priya too is a woman who in the end loses her career. But intersectionality anyway is about pointing out discrimination or privilege achieved because of the overlap or intersection of various identities.

To conclude Bharati Mandal a queer-Dalit woman was marginalized and discriminated against owing to her identities as a queer-Dalit woman. She was bullied and harassed because of her masculine sexuality. She was discriminated against based on her caste affecting her employment. These actions against Bharati are a representation of the aggression and oppression propagated by Brahmanical Patriarchy which expects people belonging to a separate caste identity to do a certain job. But at the same time, these structures oppress the desires of members of their community. Menon describes how people are produced as ‘proper’ men and women through rules and regulations of different sorts; some of which we internalize, some of which have to be violently enforced. As one can see Priya Sharma’s sexuality is more rigorously governed by her family than Bharati’s. In the end, Priya was influenced to leave her job to take care of her kid. Brahmanical patriarchy not only tried to stop Bharati from achieving her desires by shaming her, and obstructing her from receiving a well-deserved job but it also affected Priya who herself had rigorously internalized and benefited from it.

Author’s Bio

Devansh Singh is an aspiring lawyer in the third year of his law school journey at Jindal Global Law School.

Image Source: Screencap from the film ‘Geeli Pucchi’