The Caste of Casting: Thilakan and ‘Backward’ Articulations in Malayalam Cinema

The Dialectics of Caste, Casting and Outcasting

The extradiegetic spill of cast personas has been studied in connection with the star-fan phenomenon. Madhava Prasad, for instance, discusses how the star system exceeds the ‘narrative framework of the film-as-story’ and acquires an autonomous existence (Prasad, 1999, p. 5).

Prasad explains how the cast body of a star outgrows the cinematic and spills over to the extradiegetic domain. The concerns determining the constitution of a cast body as a star are also pertinent in a caste-ridden society. In an influential study of the making of the star persona of the savarna actor and politician M.G. Ramachandran ⁹ , titled The Image Trap, M.S.S. Pandian argues that the obliteration of the distance between real and reel images was crucial for M.G.R.’s success as a politician. He analyses how the reproduction of the cast image of a proactive subaltern boosted the savarna caste body’s political future in no uncertain terms:

…it is not enough if you are a good man, you must create an image that you are a good man. Every man must have an image. Take Nagi Reddy or S. S. Vasan or myself. Each of us has a distinct image. The image is what immediately strikes you when you see a person or hear his name. You put forward an image of yourself if you want to get anywhere (MGR qtd. by Pandian, 1992, p. 89).

The creation of an image acceptable to the public was identified as central to a ‘man’s’ success in life. As far as MGR was concerned this image was conferred on him by cinema. The image of the politician MGR drew substantially on his subaltern cast identity, not his savarna caste identity. The film hero MGR was transformed into the real MGR through the careful marketing of myriad biographies. Political platforms, newspapers, pamphlets, films, calendars, and party posters were used with extraordinary skill in constructing this biography (Pandian, 1992, p. 91). The effective obliteration of the distance between the reel and the real was managed through ‘rituals of consecration carefully carried out by engineering and reinforcing the aura during MGR’s public appearances’ (Pandian, 1992, p. 105). The imitation of cast life in his everyday caste life bestowed him an image of the messiah of the underprivileged that proved consequential enough to make him the chief minister of Tamil Nadu between 1977 and 1987. The substantial impetus MGR’s savarna Nair caste body lent this process of cast–caste conflation cannot be overstated, notwithstanding the Dravidian legacy of the state. An analysis of the mechanisms of such conflations on a backward caste body however might be disparate. While an upper caste body benefits from the cast image of a subaltern, the subaltern backward/lower caste body triggers a different dynamic. The obliteration is not absolute for M.G.R who can take on his subaltern ‘cast’ image without being one. The limitless possibilities of impersonation that the extradiegetic spill confer on an upper caste body assume constrictive dimensions in the case of a subaltern caste body.

The said obliteration of the distance between the reel and the real operates differently in actors from the avarna communities, particularly in Malayalam cinema. The reel–real confluences in/from a Dalit actor are substituted by aspirations for dissociation in backward caste actors. While expectations of realistic portrayal of ‘Dalitness’ from a Dalit actor are high, the backward caste actor is dissociated from their caste identity. The relative absence of discourses on being ‘backward’ have allowed for an erasure of ‘backwardness’ in Malayalam cinema, despite the remarkable investment of OBCs in the film industry at various levels. The dissociation of caste identity from the backward caste body ensures their invisibility onscreen as well as in the film industry. The savarna outrage against the Dalit actor P. K. Rosy following the screening of Vigathakumaran, the first documented Malayalam film, is an exemplary case in point. Rosy had to flee from her homeland for having played the role of a Nair woman in the film. However, there are not enough documents to suggest a similar response to J. C. Daniel, the filmmaker, who played the role of the Nair male in his film. After the fateful event at Capitol Theatre, the film Vigathakumaran was also screened in ‘Nagarcoil, Kollam, Alappuzha, Thrissur, and Thalassery but couldn’t collect half the production cost’ (Gopalakrishnan, 2013, p. 24). Insufficient socio-financial support intercepted Daniel’s cinema dreams. He was unacknowledged and absent from the history of Malayalam cinema for long. ¹⁰ Chelangat Gopalakrishnan describes how Daniel was not mentioned in the history of Malayalam cinema because he was a Christian. At the same time there are no references to a possible persecution following his Nair cast identity in the said film, unlike P. K. Rosy. While Rosy’s Dalit identity is projected as the reason for her victimisation, Daniel’s Nadar backward cast identity is not cited anywhere in the discourses on the film Vigathakumaran. Daniel is dissociated from his Nadar backward caste self as much as P. K. Rosy is identified by her Dalit Christian identity. The dissociation of backward caste identity allows for an invisibility of ‘backwardness’ which is central to establishing Nair dominance in Malayalam cinema on the one hand while limiting the visuality of caste to an essentialised depiction of ‘Dalitness’ on the other.

The cast/caste dialectic in Malayalam cinema has been studied mostly in relation to Dalit actors, especially Kalabhavan Mani. ¹¹ The studies argue how Dalit actors are often cast in marginalised roles and celebrated for their naturalistic acting. The cast persona is expected to involuntarily inscribe a ‘Dalit life’. Actors are not expected to act, but to live out their destitute outcaste real life. Kalabhavan Mani’s reiteration of a poverty-ridden past was in no way insignificant in determining his immense fan base drawn from a predominantly lumpen popular, as was his mastery in singing folk songs. These attributes also ascertained support from a patronising savarna public by providing reasons enough to be compassionate for a destitute Dalit and relief at his expertise in folkish, rather than modern forms of expression. He is cast in roles that allow him to relive his indigent caste life. The Dalit actor Vinayakan was subject to similar forms of interrogation regarding the realist intent of his roles in cinema. Vinayakan’s defiant, politicised offscreen Dalit stance did not save him from the extremely offensive, bigoted questions bent on finding a correspondence between the real and reel lives. In an interview following the success of the film Kammattipadam, Vinyakan was asked if he had a story like the character he played, a gangster, who had to resort to violence. ¹² The urge to cast Dalit bodies in films to ‘relive’ their lives signals an essentialist perspective in the domain of acting as well as in the film industry. The politicised articulations of Dalit identity beyond the screen on the part of the actors themselves fail to translate into the diegetic domain. ¹³ Expectations of such confluence confine non-savarna actors to certain type roles while preventing their forays into disparate and challenging representations. Their inability to become complete actors ¹⁴ is founded much less on their acting skills than on their segregated social identity.

Backward caste visuality, on the contrary, is determined by dissociating caste/cast identities in Malayalam cinema. The dissembling of backward caste identity by multiple modes of dissociation presupposes the possibility and popularity of the cast presence onscreen. Allusions to the Nadar caste identity of the yesteryear star of Malayalam cinema, Sathyan, might not be of assistance to him as it would be for the Nair actor-star Mohanlal. ¹⁵ Ratheesh Radhakrishnan, in his analysis of Sathyan’s ascendancy as a star of the cinema of unified Kerala, points out how the conditions that allowed for the dissociation of Nadar caste identity from the cast identity of might have been pivotal to the construction of Sathyan’s stardom. ¹⁶ In his analysis of the two different endings the film Thiramala (Wave, 1953) screened in Thiruvithamcore and Malabar, Radhakrishnan describes how the dissociation of Sathyan from his Nadar caste identity was feasible in Malabar, where, unlike in Thiruvithamcore, the caste community was absent from its ‘social imaginary’ (Radhakrishnan, 2015, p. 138). The conditions which rendered the Nadar caste identity incognito in Malabar seasoned Sathyan for the star cast (Radhakrishnan, 2015, pp. 136–138). Disembedded from his own caste, Sathyan is free to be cast as other caste identities (a Nair character in Thiramala), other than his own. The backward caste body is assigned savarna or Dalit roles in an attempt to render backward caste presence in Malayalam cinema inconsequential and invisible.

The carefully scripted roles of Sreenivasan, a successful mainstream filmmaker from the Thiyya ¹⁷ backward caste, assume significance in such a context. Although a detailed study of Sreenivasan’s cast persona is beyond the purview of this article, the deliberate attempts in his films to avert himself from being trapped in the Nair–Dalit dyad exhibit his efforts to evade bigoted forms of cast/caste dialectics in Malayalam cinema. S. Sanjeev and C. S. Venkiteshwaran point out how Sreenivasan attempts an even play with the structures that trap him in roles that suit his physique. He has to opt for a detour as attempts to be the hero prove counterproductive. ‘He can establish himself at the centre only by proving his ineligibility to be (at) the centre’ (Sanjeev & Venkiteshwaran, 2002, p. 23). The language of humour he created was based on self-mockery that enabled laughter at the cast self, invalidating any fixed cast/caste contingencies. The strategy of mocking his cast identity allows him to constantly dissociate himself from the cast/caste determinations which would limit him to either the dominant or victim male casts while creating a caste body eligible to be visualised in mainstream popular cinema. ¹⁸ OBC visibility in (Malayalam) cinema is marked by multiple forms of encounters with the mechanism of invisibility in place, eventuating interruptions in the constituted structure of the cinematic (public) in various ways. Thilakan’s engagement with the vocabulary of caste occasions a disturbance in the projected image of a progressive film industry.

The next section discusses how the dissembling of cast/caste identities determined the screen persona of the Ezhava actor. It analyses the consequent homogenising that happened to the cast identity of the actor, the questioning of which marks a moment of tension eventuated by backward caste visuality in Malayalam cinema.

Star-centric Realism vs. Social Realism

K. Surendranatha Thilakan (15 July 1935 – 24 September 2012), popularly known by his stage/screen name Thilakan, was a veteran Malayali stage and cine actor who worked in more than 200 Malayalam films. He received various prestigious awards for his outstanding performances onscreen, including three National Film Awards, 11 Kerala State Film Awards, and the Padma Shri in 2009. Thilakan is regarded as the father or karanavar/n in Malayalam cinema. Although his first performance as a father was in the film Ulkadal (Depths of the Sea, 1979) most of his critically acclaimed father roles appear from the early 1990s. The construction of Thilakan’s screen persona as a father coincides with the transitional phase of stardom in Malayalam cinema. The late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed the transit from the yesteryear star duo of Nazir and Sathyan to the Mohanlal–Mammootty duo of the post-Mandal era. ¹⁹ C.S. Venkiteshwaran identifies the 1980s as the period of momentum in Malayalam cinema when it secured the status of a film industry and entered a new phase of film history that pivoted around its superstars (Venkiteshwaran, 2011, p. 122). Compared to the other South Indian and Bollywood cinemas, Malayalam cinema of the period is understood to be exceptionally refined, mostly on account of its adherence to social realist and rationalist narrative traditions. ²⁰ Concerns of a new star-centered film economy deteriorating the high standards of an aesthetically superior Malayalam cinema were raised from various quarters starting in the 1990s. Meena T. Pillai, for instance, identifies it as ‘a post- liberalisation phase of Malayalama cinema’ that manifested in an ‘ideological manipulation and seductive containment of an earlier history of egalitarian socialist values of Kerala’s social reform movements’ (Pillai, 2017, p. 53). ²¹

Even as feudal undertones prevailed from a much earlier period in Malayalam cinema (which may be traced back to the earlier mentioned hesitations regarding the conferring of the title of the first filmmaker in Malayalam to J. C. Daniel on account of his non-Nair caste identity), the progressive vocabulary of social realism allowed the plentiful production of savarna life disguised as narratives that dealt with ‘egalitarian socialist values’ and ‘socialist paradigms’. Earlier narratives disguised as social realism were founded on thematically poor albeit upper caste reformist bildungsroman plots which showed the savarna left revolutionaries reforming avarna communities and leading them towards enlightenment. The transition hence was revivalist in nature, not unprecedented. With the emergence of the era of stars in the late 1980s and 1990s, star-centric realism took over from what social realism had already assembled. Films began to be made for the star who was in his turn nurtured by a savarna aesthetics couched as social realism.

The prominence accorded to the star induced a narrative streamlining whereby the star became the central concern of the script much to the detriment of other actors whose relevance in the plot is to catalyse events for the star to display his heroism. For a non-savarna actor, this implied further invisibility onscreen. Although the coincidence of the emergence of the star at the turn of the decade and the Mandal moment ²² requires thorough research in the context of Malayalam cinema, one might cautiously assume that this crucial moment in the history of OBC representation in the public space translated into cinema as renewed attempts at subsumption of OBC visuality. The OBC was transformed into a module attributed with features of regressive traditionalism. The post-1990s witnessed the production of some films on backward caste communities like Kattukuthira (The Wild Horse, Puram & Vishvambharan, 1990), Perumthachan (The Master Builder, Nair & Ajayan, 1990), Venkalam (Lohithadas & Bharathan, 1993), Rajashilpi (Master Sculptor, 1992), Sallapam (Chat, 1996), and more. These films however represented the unrefined and underdeveloped lives of backward caste communities in habitats determined by their caste occupations. ²³ While the public space was distraught with the demands for 27% OBC reservation in modern government jobs, the cinematic space visualised their habitats in traditional caste occupations like toddy tapping, carpentry, sculpting, masonry, and so on. The overpowering Brahminical male star who had emerged from the disguise of the progressive male hero of social realism provided a critical juncture to project a modern Hindu self against all other forms of traditional temporalities.

The Brahminical Hindu male was encoded in the star body of Mohanlal and Mammootty albeit in different ways. The Osellas examine how Mohanlal’s Travancore Nair caste identity qualifies him to be the average Malayali alter ego while Mammootty’s (Brahminical) Nair cast identity renders his Muslim body desirable to the public (Osello & Filipo, 2002). The Nair Hindu identity was quintessential in determining the star status of the Malayali actor. Although a detailed analysis of the star system in Malayalam cinema is not the concern of this article, the backdrop it provides for the study of Thilakan’s backward caste invisibility in Malayalam cinema is indispensable. The prominence of the Brahminical star conveniently allowed for the obliteration of modern OBC visuality which was pivotal in determining the domains of production, distribution, and consumption in Malayalam cinema, not to mention the formation of modern Kerala. Pre-existing forms of modern backward caste invisibility in Kerala’s film industry acquired a more nuanced form of erasure in the 1990s. The reinforcement of such mechanisms of invisibility ensured Malayalam cinema’s (dis)engagement with the issue of caste in general and OBC visibility in particular while restoring Nair hegemony as central in determining the cinematic. Thilakan’s temporary ban from the Malayalam film industry was provoked also by his denigration of the star system in Malayalam cinema and the Nair lobby which sustained it, the analysis of which will be taken up in the second part of the article. By the late 1980s, the characters played by Thilakan undergo a certain streamlining into a cast of regressive masculinity particularly embodied by savarna paternity. Through the figure of the Nair father, Thilakan was to provide an ‘other’ masculinity to validate the hegemonic masculinity symbolised by the Brahminical Nair star-actor.

Thilakan and the Domain of Regressive Traditionalism

Thilakan was embedded into the domain of regressive traditionalism in multiple ways. He appears as the ruthless Ezhava male in several films of the 1990s. Two films Kaattukuthira (The Wild Horse, Puram & Vishvambharan, 1990) and Bhoopathi (Lord of the Earth, Joseph & Joshiy, 1997) are of interest here, specifically, because both of them engage with the narrative of Ezhava retribution (or its untenability) against feudal atrocity. In Kaattukuthira, Thilakan plays Kochu Bhava, the son of a toddy tapper who was mercilessly hacked by the feudal lords for having a sexual relationship with Manorama, the daughter of the Kshatriya landlord. Kochu Bhava grows up to be a spiteful liquor baron determined to ruin the life of the Kshatriya family. However, his plans for vengeance are sabotaged by his son who falls in love with a woman of the same Kshatriya lineage. Kochu Bhava disagrees with the marriage and in a moment of despair, his son and the Kshatriya woman commit suicide in the tharavadu which he buys to begin his new distillation unit. Kochu Bhava regrets his vengeance and is driven to repentance.

In Bhoopathi, Thilakan is cast as Chindan, son of the Ezhava coconut tree climber Koran who worked for the landlord Mahendra Varma Thampuran. The landlord puts him through untold miseries and maims his right hand, making him a cripple for life. Chindan flees from his homeland and ends up being the underworld don Bhava. He lives to avenge his family. However his plans do not succeed and in a moment of desperation, he blows himself and landlord up with a human bomb. The narrative is structured in a way that represents Bhava as the spiteful villain while featuring the Thampuran as a transformed man who nonetheless falls prey to the vindictive Ezhava. The Ezhava male in these films is one trapped in the confines of a rigid traditionalism that holds on despite the transit to a modern temporality. The economic mobility achieved by Kochu Bhava or Don Bhava does not help him escape the traditional markers that the backward caste has branded them with. The Ezhava identity attributed to Thilakan in both these films anticipates submission to savarna lords, regrets its lack, and pays for its absence. Kochu Bhava loses his son while Don Bhava loses his own life in the midst of seeking vengeance. The will for confronting savarna violence is depicted as inexpedient and unacceptable and as one that will necessarily entail self-destruction.

While these films cast Thilakan as an unscrupulous and spiteful backward caste male who is unable to move away from the temporality of the traditional, most other films drew on the paternal image of Thilakan transforming him into the father in Malayalam cinema. In these films too, however, the regressive Ezhava cast identity of Thilakan’s other roles operates as the spectral presence in a Brahminical star-centered economy. Thilakan as the savarna Nair father of post-matrilineal society in Kerala proves a convenient mode of enclosing backward caste in the domain of regressive traditionalism. The savarna father embodies a residual masculine consciousness of a matrilineal past best relinquished for the assertion of the modern male. He represents the domain of a primitive masculinity, an impediment that stands in the way of the Nair community’s transit to modernity. The next section analyses how the screen persona of Thilakan was constructed as the savarna Nair father of post-matrilineal Kerala. It also traces the history of how the savarna Nair father operates as a domain of the residual masculinity in Malayalam cinema.

The Father Thilakan

Thilakan’s father characters from the late 1980s onwards epitomise men who are immoral, wily, egoistic, and masochistic, or utterly helpless. His presence in the domestic domain of the house is constricting and intimidating to his wife, children, and others. His relationship with his son is delicate and strained. He is too harsh on his son (Sphatikam (Crystal, Bhadran, 1995)) and envies him for his mastery of carpentry (Perumthachan (The Master Carpenter, Nair & Ajayan, 1991)). He is adamant in his stand and unconcerned about the others in the family (Manjadikkuru (Red Seeds, Menon, 2008)). He terrorises and tortures his wife physically or/and psychologically and rapes his stepdaughter (Namukku Paarkan Munthirithoppukal (Vineyards for us to Live, Padmarajan, 1986)). He puts himself and his family through humiliating circumstances with his illicit relationships (Narasimham (The Lion Man, Ranjith & Kailas, 2000)). The father embodied by Thilakan is the opposite of everything ‘civilised’ and ‘progressive’.

The regressive paternal masculine persona imposed on Thilakan was founded on the image of a male with little visibility or power in the public domain. The savarna paternal casting of Thilakan ensured his reduced visibility or invisibility from the public space in cinema as well as of cinema. It ascertained the invisibility of his cast body and caste body from accessing the publics generated by the modern (film) industry. Within the film, this erasure was governed by his cast identity of a regressive paternal male. The father played by Thilakan is homebound and less frequently found in a public space. He is either a retired government officer as in Sphatikam (Crystal, Bhadran, 1995), Narasimham (The Lion Man, Ranjith & Kailas, 2000), Kilukkam (Jingle, Nagavalli & Priyadarshan, 1991), Sandesham (Message, Sreenivasan & Anthikad, 1991) and Chinthavishtayaya Shyamala (The Pensive Shyamala, Sreenivasan, 1998) or the soon-to-be-retired employee as in Kireedam (The Crown, Lohithadas & Malayil, 1989). He is content to be at home with family. On occasions where he is seen in the public it is only to be loathed, feared, or mocked. The virile father in Pavithram (Pristine, Balachandran & Rajeev Kumar, 1994) is an object of ridicule. His desire to father a child in his old age makes him a laughing stock in society. Chenkol (Sceptre, Lohithadas & Malayil, 1993) displays a desperate father who is driven to peddle his daughter for sustenance. In Mookilla Rajyath (In a Country Without a Nose, Jayachandran et al., 1991) he is the forsaken father who escapes from the mental asylum and roams the street like an orphan. The father’s entry into the diegetic public is limited and uneventful. The modern public domain, demarcating the material domain of the dominant male, is inaccessible to the regressive masculinity embodied by the savarna father. The diegetic anxiety to prevent the father from embodying the realm of the modern is determined by a Nair apprehension of owning the paternal masculinity of a legally dead matrilineal society. The constitution of a modern Nair community was founded on the exclusion of the father who was marked off as a vestigial presence of a decadent matrilineal past.

The Savarna Father and Regressive Masculinity

In the early twentieth century fatherhood was a relatively new gauge for determining normative masculinity in many matrilineal communities in Kerala, especially the Nair caste community. Richard Collier and Sally Sheldon differentiate between the terms paternity and fatherhood explaining that even if a man fathers a child biologically he transforms into a father only when he is entitled by law to be responsible for the child. Paternity refers to the status of a man who has ‘biologically fathered a certain child’, while fatherhood is ‘a contingent social construction through which the law has sought to attach men to children’ (Collier & Sheldon, p. 7). Men in Nair matrilineal families were not expected to shoulder the burden of their wives and children. The absence of a legal contract in the custom of marriage in the matrilineal kinship system shielded men from the responsibilities of the child and the mother who lived in the maternal tharavadu. This practice of copulation unchecked by legal binding went on till the social implementation of the Marumakathayam Act of 1933. ²⁴ Fathers were guests who visited their families in their matrilineal tharavadus once in a while. In his autobiography Jeevithapatha (Paths of life) Cherukad Govinda Pisharadi, a twentieth century Malayali author, recalls that ‘The father is a guest in a matrilineal tharavadu…. The child might be theirs, but the guardian was always the uncle’ (Cherukad, 1974, p. 42). Cherukad does not hide his resentment at his brother-in-law’s guest visits to meet his daughter three or four times a year. As the karanavan of his tharavadu, he was entitled to the guardianship of his sister’s daughter and he was not willing to part her love with her biological father. Cherukad reminiscences the sense of grudge and discomfort he had felt whenever he found the child telling that she was her father’s daughter and how he would compel her to say that she was Kuttiyammavan’s daughter (Cherukad, 1974, p. 193).

It was commonplace for these proto fathers unbound by any legal obligation to be in multiple sexual liaisons. E. M. S. Nambuthirippad reflects on the prevalence of polygamy in his community.

Compared to the masculinity attributed to the karanavan, the guardian of his sister and her children, the father figure was unrestrained by any legal or social contract to take emotional or financial care of the wife or children. The father could copulate with several women without any moral dilemmas of being immoral or illicit. These unchecked sexual practices and the matrilineal kinship structure that legitimised them came under colonial censor and coincided with the community’s drive to modernity. Even though the Marumakathayam Act of 1932 outlawed the ‘uncivilised’ system of kinship, the transit from matrilineal paternity to patriarchal fatherhood could not have been smooth or complete. This is manifest in the narratives of post-matrilineal savarna men where the father is conspicuous by his absence or promiscuous presence. The regressive father appears as a spectre of a promiscuous past that has to be exorcised for the progressive, modern (son) to emerge. The savarna father of the post-matrilineal era is the other male, the denial of whom marks a complete rupture from a shameful past as well as the evolution of the modern Nair present.

The denial of the regressive father determined the literary and visual popular in Kerala in various ways. The stories of M. T. Vasudevan Nair, a veteran writer in Malayalam, are exemplary in this regard. These narratives drawn from savarna nostalgia of the Nair community quickly got accepted as the middle-class Malayali’s nostalgia. The absent father is one determining aspect of M. T.’s narrative world. He is the one who is either longed for or wished away, but never there in the present. He is either a distant memory or an unpleasant presence who visits once in a while. Stories like Nurungunna Srinkhalakal (Fragile Relations) and Attupokatha Bandhangal (Unbreakable Bonds) profile the father and son as victims of unexpressed love. Stories like Ente Pirannaal Sammanam (My Birthday Gift) and Ninte Ormaykk (In Your Memory) reflect on the humiliations endured due to a fatherless childhood. Father is an unexplainable absence in Kuttyedathi and Oppol, two very popular stories of M. T. His book of memoirs Ammaykk (To Mom, Nair, 2005) recollects the memories of an extremely irresponsible and insensitive father who begets a daughter in another woman in Ceylon and forgets the responsibilities towards his son. M. T. shares the utter dismay at having had to write the school annual exams with students availing fee concession only because his father forgot to send any money.

The specter of this inordinate male pervades M.T.’s scripts, from Murapennu (Cousin Sister, Nair & Vincent, 1965) onwards. The bed-ridden father in Nirmalyam (Offerings, Nair, 1973), the father who lives abroad with another family in Enn Svantham Janakikkutty (My Dear Janakikutty, Nair & Hariharan, 1988), the father who is spineless to own his son and abandons his mother in Adiyozhukkukal (Undercurrents, Nair & Sasi, 1984) and Sadayam (With Compassion, Nair & Malayil, 1992), the father who leaves home in Olavum Theeravum (Wave and the Shore, Nair & Menon, 1960), the absent father in Neelaththamara (The Blue Lotus, Nair & Kechery, 1979; 2009) and Panchagni (Sacred Fires, Nair & Hariharan, 1986), the envious father who kills his son in Perumthachan, and so on, are some instances of how infirmity determines the masculinity of the father. The fathers in certain other films are either dead or unknown or just do not make a difference at all. Unnimaya’s father in Parinayam (Wedding, Hariharan, 1994) is a simpleton whose presence or absence is inconsequential when it comes to his daughter’s ex-communication from the community. The misfortunes of his daughter paralyse him. In Olavum Theeravum, the father forsakes the family and leaves the mother with no alternatives other than to choose the sex trade. The modern identity of the son is dependent on his disengagement with the missing father or the opponent father.

Thilakan’s screen persona is modelled on this residual savarna fatherhood who occupies the domain of the traditional. Actors like Kottarakara Sreedharan Nair, Madhu, Nedumudi Venu, and many others, have been cast in similar father roles and forms of disengagement with their sons, wives, and the others. The father’s association with the traditional order, like caste occupation, polygamy, multiple relationships, and so on, provokes palpable tension between him and the others who have already crossed over to modern citizenry. However, unlike the other fathers in Malayalam cinema, the regressive masculinity attributed to Thilakan followed him offscreen on account of his defiance of the Nair lobby as he called it.

Caste–Cast Dissociation and the Invisible Ezhava

Thilakan was not ignorant about the dynamics of being Ezhava in a savarna public space, nor was he reticent. When asked about his education in an interview, Thilakan speaks in detail about his reason for joining SN ²⁵ (Sree Narayana) College Kollam for his graduation. He describes how his father had expressed a wish to see his son join the community college. Thilakan says that his choice of college had nothing to do with his love for the community. On the contrary, it was because of the institution’s legacy in cultivating artistic skills. It was the alma mater of many artists of the time. He does not hide his sarcasm while recounting his experience during the interview. The principal who was seated right below a portrait of Narayana Guru on which was printed, ‘One caste, one religion, one God for man’, forced him to fill the religion column on the application form. Thilakan recalls how he walked out of the room in defiance. The principal however had to give in to the compulsions of Thilakan’s relative who was an active member of SNDP (Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam is a sociocultural organisation founded in 1903 by Dr Padmanabhan Palpu to unite Ezhavas as a community as well as to disseminate and execute the philosophy of Sree Narayana Guru, ‘One Caste, One Religion, One God for man’).

On another occasion Thilakan talked about being rejected from speaking in AIR (All India Radio) on account of his caste identity. In 1955, Thilakan wrote to AIR expressing his desire to act in radio dramas. He was called for the audition but rejected. His voice was not suitable for broadcasting, he was told. This upset Thilakan as many people had told him that his voice was amazing. His friends suggested that he write to AIR again under a savarna caste surname, preferably Nair. A year later he wrote back to AIR again but as Surendran Nair. He auditioned again, and this time, he was selected. What changed on the second occasion was the surname, not the voice. This was an epiphanic moment for him as he realised that caste mattered and had he been an upper caste, he would have scaled higher summits. ²⁶

Thilakan’s choice to use the vocabulary of caste to convey the injustice he had to endure in the workspace is of significance considering the enduring yet unaddressed prevalence of casteism in the film industry. He expressed his disapproval of the film industry’s dependence on two stars for whom scripts were being rewritten, dates were being rescheduled and artists and technicians whimsically chosen on multiple occasions. In another interview after the ban, with Johny Lukose, Thilakan spoke about the ‘various satellites spinning around Mohanlal and Mammootty under the misconception that their survival depended on stars’. ²⁷ His concerns about being sidelined in the workspace and denied potential roles were driven by his displeasure at the series of streamlined characters, belonging to the domain of regressive traditionalism, assigned to him after a point of time. His disclosures were however interpreted as emotional outbursts or baseless accusations of a senile man. He was interrogated about his supposed inconsistency in naming people on different occasions despite his insistence that he was not against certain people or stars in Malayalam film industry, but against the system. ²⁸ Thilakan’s resolve to act in a film directed by Vinayan added insult to injury, provoking immediate proscriptive action against him. As general secretary of the trade union MACTA Federation, ²⁹ T. G. Vinayakumar aka Vinayan had initiated several reform measures to better the labour conditions of below-the-line employees in the film industry, much to the chagrin of those who found such concerns of labour inconsequential. Vinayan refused to comply with the demands of a star-dependent economy which eventually culminated in an unofficial ban against him ³⁰ Technicians and artists were warned not to cooperate with him or work on his films. However, Thilakan chose to stand by him. Unheeding the ban enforced on Vinayan by AMMA (Association of Malayali Movie Artists) and FEFKA (Film Employees Federation of Kerala), Thilakan acted in Vinayan’s film Yakshiyum Njaanum (Yakshi and Me, 2010).

Soon after Thilakan was removed from two films for which he had already given his call sheet. Following Thilakan’s decision to act in Vinayan’s film, FEFKA wanted him dropped from the movie Christian Brothers (2011), ³¹ for which his dates were already taken and the call sheet signed. Likewise, FEFKA threatened the director Sohan Roy with non-cooperation if Thilakan was given a role in his film Dam 999. Roy was driven to cast another actor Rajat Kapur in the wake of being deterred by calls for non-cooperation by FEFKA if Thilakan was involved. The director comments on his helplessness after being notified ‘by about one hundred and fifty technicians and their association, that if Thilakan was a part of “Dam 999”, they would not cooperate with the film shoot. It is impossible to shoot the film without the support of these technicians’. ³² In January 2010, the septuagenarian actor came out to the media about his ostracisation from the multiple organisations in Malayalam film industry AMMA and FEFKA. ‘They want to deny me my livelihood. These associations act like a mafia and they have even threatened to kill me. The artist in me would commit suicide if they continue this’, he said. This public disclosure was followed by Thilakan’s suspension from AMMA citing his public tirade against them as indisciplined and irresponsible. The pertinent problem of the denial of the right to work raised by Thilakan (and the earlier complaint of being denied potential roles) was however passed over as trivial and considered a senile rant that deserved zero consideration. The absence of a written statement banning the actor and the hesitancy to engage with the contemporaneity of caste in modern Kerala added to the precariousness of Thilakan’s enunciation. The reluctance to address the caste question vilified the target of caste violence and empowered its perpetrators.

In the press meet held by the Executive Committee of AMMA on 1 April 2010, Innocent, the then president of AMMA explained to the media that Thilakan was banned from lifelong membership of AMMA because ‘he was not willing to retract his “accusations” against AMMA and its members. In order to maintain the discipline of the association, Thilakan was being expelled.’ ³³ Thilakan had to stay away from cinema, his workspace since the early 1970s, for one whole year. His reiteration of caste-based discrimination in the workspace earned him the label of a senile person who engages in accusations and rants aimed at maligning the image of AMMA and its members. The pertinent issue of caste-based injustice and the subsequent denial of the right to work were camouflaged by a series of accusations levelled against Thilakan. In the character assassination that ensued, the problem of caste was safely averted and interred. The then vice president of AMMA, Ganesh Kumar, attributed Thilakan’s statements to his infirm disposition. ³⁴ Ganesh Kumar claimed that ‘AMMA had allowed Thilakan many privileges, considering his age, ailments, and his impulsive behavior, nevertheless he won’t be allowed to humiliate the Association and its great actors like the dignified and noble Madhu sir anymore’. Even as there is no direct reference made to Thilakan’s backward caste identity and its bearing on his infirmity, a definitive comparison is drawn between Thilakan and ‘a dignified and noble Madhu sir’ aka Madhavan Nair. As though to underscore the difference between the two, the honorific title is used to address Madhu while considered redundant for Thilakan, despite the latter being only two years younger than Madhu (Madhu was born in 1933 and Thilakan in 1935) and both of them being versatile and popular actors in their own ways.

Ganesh Kumar’s usage, that is, the ‘dignified and noble Madhu sir’ cannot be a random selection from the 486 members of AMMA, but a carefully sifted one intended to magnify all that Thilakan was not; Nair and hence dignified, noble and sir. In the comparison pursued between Thilakan’s infirmity and Madhu sir’s nobility, the factor that is invisible and yet decisive is caste. The backward caste identity, which Thilakan was adamant enough to assert, permits him to be slighted. The act of speaking out against caste-based discrimination in the workspace jeopardises the non-savarna body’s right to claim progress as he is inadvertently pushed to the realm of the irrational and the traditional. Thilakan’s resolution to speak the language of caste marked the onset of the construction of his offscreen image as a regressive, infirm male. The invisibility conferred on caste in Kerala camouflages caste violence in subtle ways often to the detriment of the non-savarna body. It entitles the film industry to enumerate on the basis of caste without being held accountable for bigotry. The victim of caste assault is transformed into the one who asked for it while the casteist stands justified for their supremacism.

The interviews and memoirs published and telecast by various visual and literary mediums sought to draw parallels between the traits of regressive paternal masculinity that Thilakan was made to act onscreen and his real character. His relationships were audited and the heartlessness of his decisions was questioned. In an interview, Nere Chovve (Face to Face) telecast on Manorama News, John Lucas, anchor of the programme, asked Thilakan whether or not his enemy was just a figment of his imagination. As though in justification of his doubts regarding Thilakan’s honesty, the interviewer prods deeper into the actor’s personal life, citing instances of how he had abstained from talking to his mother for 30 years and how he had relationships with more than one woman.

The book Maha Nadan (The Great Actor, Rajesh & Rajesh, 2013), a collection of memoirs and write-ups on Thilakan, published after Thilakan’s expulsion, draws on a similar construction of Thilakan as a proud, impulsive, and temperamental male who picks up sudden and unwanted fights. Bhagyalakshmi, a dubbing artist, remembers Thilakan as a gullible person who can be easily misled. She says in ‘Mahaprathibayude Oppamulla Nadathangalil’ (During the Walks with the Genius, p. 35) that he fought with everyone because he was least bothered about understanding the truth. In the article ‘Prathibhayude Prakhyapanam’ (The Declaration of a Genius, p. 52) the South Indian director Lal Jose remembers that Thilakan was paranoid and judgemental. Sathyan Anthikkad, another Malayalam director is sceptical about Thilakan’s claim of the existence of a Nair lobby. AMMA’s definition of Thilakan as an infirm male is reproduced in these texts. Unlike M.G.R, the obliteration of the cast–caste divide sought to malign the actor Thilakan. It reinforced Thilakan’s regressive masculinity which makes him unfit to be in a modern ³⁵ spatiality. The regressive traditionalism attributed to the cast identity of Thilakan’s spills out to the backward caste body. The cast identity overdetermines his caste identity eventuating in Thilakan’s proscription from the multiple modern publics constituted in/by Malayalam film industry.

Access to modern forms of living was a key demand of the Ezhava reform movement led by Narayana guru. Demands for entry into public spaces and the right to education and work were foremost in the early movements for self-dignity of the Ezhavas in the late twentieth century. Such forms of visibility in the public domain were identified as central to the social mobility of the community. Access to education and employment was impossible if they were not allowed in public spaces. Caste restrictions prevented Ezhavas from getting admission to educational institutions and jobs, although there was a marked increase in literacy and English education among them. Investments in industry and technology were hence considered indispensable for the upliftment and modernisation of the community along with the reformation of social and religious practices.

‘Strengthen by organisation, liberate by education’, was the motto of Narayana Guru who himself initiated various enterprises like the one for weaving at his ashram in Varkala. For Narayana guru, the pilgrimage to Sivagiri was not important for its religious dimension but for the social enlightenment it would possibly stimulate.

In the wake of government jobs being monopolised by savarna Hindus, Guru was insistent on training in skills that would aid the purpose of employment and social mobility. He encouraged experimentations in the realms of industry which he felt was significant for the modernisation of segregated communities. The need to confine backward caste identity to the domain of traditionalism proceeds from the necessity to annul the mobility and visibility achieved by the community in various domains of Kerala including the Malayalam film industry. The assertion of the modern secular Nair male as the hegemonic masculinity in Malayalam cinema is contingent on the invisibility conferred on the backward caste identity, apart from other causalities. Containing Thilakan’s desire for and occupation of the modern identity of a seasoned and professional but politicised Ezhava actor is pivotal for the assertion of the Brahminical assertion in the film industry.

The proscription of Thilakan offers insights into the transformed but persisting practices of segregation in modern workspaces. In her study of the labour space in Malayalam film industry, Darshana Sreedhar Mini observes how the permeation of the logic of neoliberalism prevents any recognition or redressal of inequity in the cine workspace.

The priority accorded to concerns of capital and profit impact the below-the-line workers as well as the other vulnerable sections in a system ridden by caste and gender segregations. Mini explains how the unofficial ban against Vinayan, the formation of FEFKA, ³⁶ the hostility towards WCC, ³⁷ and so on, are manifestations of a labour space that is structurally unequal and driven by a neo-liberal patriarchal capital. Thilakan’s proscription from various labour organisations in the film industry following his choice to speak against caste-based discrimination in the work space embodies the bigoted mechanisms of savarna hegemony as it recklessly intervenes in the labour/life of an above-the-line artist or actor, born into an avarna community. The refusal to comply with the Nair lobby and the restrictions it posed on his cast identity coupled with his non-Nair caste status cost Thilakan his job and self-respect. The mechanisms of outcasting are rendered invisible given the enforced eradication of the use of the vocabulary of caste in the domain of the modern public in Kerala. Thilakan’s resolve to engage in the ‘disgraceful’ vocabulary earns him various forms of proscription from the modern publics generated by the film industry. The backward caste body here is cast as regressive and abominated for his lack of progressive outlook.

Explaining the pervasive absence of the term caste in R. K. Narayan’s autobiography, Pandian points out how the upper caste language of caste ‘masquerades as something else and makes its muted modern appearance’ (Pandian, 2002, p. 1735). The backward caste actor Thilakan’s stance against unequal treatment in a star-driven film industry disturbs the Nair-engineered secular foundations of Malayalam film industry, and transforms him into a traitor of the fraternity. In what may be referred to as a moment of visuality in the representational history of Ezhava masculinity in Malayalam cinema, the otherwise unmarked Ezhava male asserts his non- Nair caste identity over his Nair cast identity. The consequential ban on Thilakan from AMMA ³⁸ points to the consequences of caste–cast contingency on a backward caste body. His cast identity overdetermines his caste identity, transforming the regressive traditionalism attributed to the Nair vestigial masculinity onscreen onto the (backward) caste masculinity offscreen. The infirmity attributed to Thilakan arises from the choice he made to speak about the caste-based discrimination in the work space which instantly marks his difference from the others who, either owing to their savarna caste or a sheer lack of option, choose to speak the language of the secular. Such a language ‘grounded in notions of progress, imagination of time as linear, civic sensibility and other markers of secular disposition’ (Pandian, 2002, p.1735) overpowers and establishes its authority over the language of caste. Thilakan’s disclosure about the overt presence of casteism in Malayalam cinema was the first of its kind, coming as it did from an insider of the industry. It was a public acknowledgment of the practice of caste-based discrimination in a film industry renowned for its secular ethics which often led to the production of social realist films, unlike the other Indian film industries.

Unlike the savarna caste body of MGR, where the overdetermination of savarna caste identity by the subaltern cast identity favoured the actor in achieving political mobility, for the backward caste actor Thilakan, it meant multiple forms of proscription and a loss of credibility. Thilakan was suspended from AMMA for over a year while an unofficial ban prevented television producers from hiring him in their serials. His character and personal life were displayed for public scrutiny by print and visual media. The modern backward caste presence is for once made visible in Malayalam cinema. Yet the visibility is earned at the cost of being vilified and proscribed from the various publics created in/by Malayalam cinema.