SPECIAL ARTICLE Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 7, 2022 vol lViI no 19 57 The Making of ‘Sisoti’ The Churning of Caste Relations in Manthan Chahat Rana, Rita Kothari Caste has remained implicit in Bollywood, appearing as class or as an unmarked subjecthood located in generalised north Indian identity. Through our article, we seek to understand what might be the grammar of caste representation in the film Manthan , which, in fact, is remembered more as a film about the “Amul experiment,” than about caste. How the word “society” transforms into “sisoti” in the film and how this process of translation leaves the villagers with a residual meaning are analysed in this article. This spillover of meaning eventually helps the characters deconstruct and recalibrate caste relations in the film. Chahat Rana (ranachahat11@gmail.com) is a journalist with the Caravan. She completed her degree in English literature from Ashoka University where she wrote her thesis on Dalit literature. Rita Kothari (rita.kothari@ashoka.edu.in) is a professor of English and the director of the Masters in English Programme at Ashoka University. A gendas of social transformation and hurdles on the ground are usually seen as temporary and bureaucratic problems, which can be ironed over a period of time. However, the incompleteness of social transformation or even unintended consequences may provide us with interesting in- sights into the leftovers of translation—as processes of meaning- making that always leave residues behind. So, when a well- meaning upper-caste man—or pardesi 1 —arrives in a rural part of the world to change, organise and increase the effi- ciency of economic goods, it may be assumed that the task is arduous but ideologically well-placed. However, what are some of the meanings that escape this agenda, and how does it reveal a lack of self-reflection in the well-meaning pardesi? Such questions underpin our discussion of Shyam Benegal’s Manthan (1976), a proud addition in his acclaimed oeuvre. The film is remembered as one that introduced Smita Patil and also which enshrined the unusual “Amul experiment” 2 in the cinematic and popular mode. A cross between feature film and documentary, Manthan has slipped through the cracks as far as academic film studies are concerned. The few scholars who have delved into analysing the film have viewed it as part of the project of parallel cinema to serve a social function. 3 We have eschewed comparing the film both in its moment then, and even now to Amul, thereby avoiding the mimetic mode to which it may have been originally put. It is rather a different question of the “original” and “translation” that interests us and in following that interest we seek the rules of this story unto itself in the film. As students of literature, we employ a close reading of the film, pay special attention to language, which we show has a constitutive, rather than an instrumental role. “At the beginning of translation is the word” (Derrida 2001: 180) and so we enter this cinematic space of social transformation through the word “society.” This later emerges as “sisoti”—a term fondly, though unwittingly, adapted by the Dalit characters in the film to represent their vision for the future. We dwell upon the transfer of meaning located in the word “society,” referring to the cooperative society the protagonist aims to establish. This well-meaning intention of an upper-caste city dweller calls into question the travel that he makes not only physically and met- aphorically to the context, but also the travel and transfer of the word “society” to his audience. The audience, as such, com- prises both the people who resist the idea of “society” and those who embrace it. Formed by different castes and experiences as well as material and ideological investments, the audience are key interlocutors who engage in the redefinition of “society.”