soundings soundings doi: 10.5325/ soundings.104.4.0362 Soundings, Vol. 104, No. 4, 2021 Copyright © 2021 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA Re-Visioning Caste in Indian Cinema AKSHAYA KUMAR, IIT INDORE Abstract Adding nuance to the accusation of sustained caste blindness against Indian cinema, this article situates Nagraj Manjule’s Marathi blockbuster Sairat (2016) within the trajectories of Marathi cinema, and vis-à-vis the historical traffic between the Hindi film industry and its southern counterparts. The article grapples with sociological and formal valences of realism and melodrama, which co-constitute Sairat, so as to argue that the re-visioning must address the “invisible” embeddedness of caste in universalized abstractions; or more appropriately, in its (mis)translations away from the “limiting” particularity of caste politics to be subsumed under more universally legible aesthetic of social justice. Keywords: Nagraj Manjule, melodrama, realism, caste, Dalit They say love is blind, it doesn’t see caste. But the ques- tion of caste always creeps in. It isn’t so easy to fall in love in India without the spectre of caste looming large. Caste is the foundation of our society. It’s a reality that you need to have a special talent to avoid. Bollywood has that talent, I don’t. The only divide there is in Bollywood—where love stories are material—is of class. — nagraj manjule, “I want a break” 1 [T]he relation between popular text and social context is at best indirect and that it is only at the level of form that we may hope to grasp the ideological significance of Indian film cultures. Given the ready-made content and character types with which the popular cinema This content downloaded from