Sanskritization on Screen

TL;DR Summary

Many popular Indian films take Adivasi and Dalit-Bahujan cultures and reframe them as timeless Hindu traditions, a process sociologists call “Sanskritization” and Dalit critics describe as Brahmanical appropriation.¹²³ This matters because it erases real histories of land loss, caste violence, and resistance, while selling audiences a spiritualized, upper-caste friendly fantasy of the nation.¹⁴²³

Introduction: When “Culture” Quietly Changes Caste

Think of Sanskritization like a software update that overwrites the original operating system but keeps the same hardware. A community’s rituals, gods, and clothes stay on screen, but the logic behind them gets rewritten to match upper-caste Hindu expectations.¹⁵

Sociologist M. N. Srinivas coined “Sanskritization” to describe how lower castes adopt upper-caste practices—like vegetarianism or Vedic rituals—to climb the social ladder.⁶ Dalit and caste-subaltern scholars now argue that this process, far from liberating, actually deepens Brahmanical power by forcing marginalized groups to imitate their oppressors rather than challenge the hierarchy itself.¹⁶ In contemporary Indian film criticism, especially from Dalit-Bahujan and Adivasi writers, this idea becomes a powerful lens on how cinema absorbs and sanitizes indigenous and Dalit worlds into a feel-good Hindu national story.¹⁴²

What Critics Mean by “Sanskritization” in Film

In social science, Sanskritization describes lower castes and tribes adopting “high” Hindu customs to gain status, which Dalit scholars now critique as a regressive, anti-emancipatory move.¹⁶ In cinema, critics stretch the term: they use it for moments when films take distinct Dalit or Adivasi practices and slot them into a Brahmanical or pan-Hindu framework, often erasing their unique cosmologies, histories, and politics.¹⁷⁸

Ishita Roy’s essay in CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion argues that Sanskritization, far from dissolving caste, reproduces it by glorifying Brahmin norms and blocking subaltern-led transformation.¹ When this logic moves to cinema, it shows up as stories where liberation looks like joining the mainstream Hindu fold or reconciling with feudal landlords, rather than challenging caste, land relations, or state violence.¹⁴²

Case Study 1: Kantara and the “Hinduisation” of Adivasi Ritual

If Sanskritization were a movie trailer, many critics would point to Kantara as the teaser. The Kannada blockbuster centers on the coastal ritual of Bhoota Kola, tied to local spirit deities and complex land histories, but several Adivasi and Bahujan writers argue that the film recodes this into a Hindu devotional spectacle.⁹

A 2023 feature on indigenous representation in Homegrown notes that Kantara portrays Tulu Adivasis praying to mainstream Hindu gods like Shiva and Vishnu alongside the spirit ritual.⁹ Critics argue this collapses a distinct, spirit-centered cosmology into a generic Hindu framework that foregrounds devotion and harmony over land rights and caste conflict.⁹⁸ The land dispute in the film resolves through divine intervention rather than political organizing, which some read as a shift from material struggle to mystical Hindu nationalism that celebrates a sacred rural order.⁹⁸

Dalit and Bahujan commentaries, including pieces highlighted by Dalit Voice and other anti-caste platforms, frame Kantara as an RSS-friendly distortion of Adivasi lifeworlds.¹⁰³ They argue that its aesthetic realism—mud, sweat, and forest—makes the ideological move harder to spot: the world looks indigenous, but the story’s moral spine is majoritarian Hindu.¹⁰²³

Case Study 2: Adivasi “Types” in Hindi and Regional Cinema

Mainstream Hindi cinema has long treated Adivasi characters like stock icons rather than complex people: half-costume, half-caricature.⁷⁸ A study in the journal South Asian Popular Culture that surveyed Hindi films argues that Adivasis appear as “others” whose cultures are stylized and simplified for urban audiences, rarely reflecting real political and economic struggles.²

Analyses of Adivasi representation in Malayalam cinema show similar patterns: aboriginal characters appear as comic, foolish, exotic, or even criminal, while “civilized” modernity remains upper-caste and urban.⁸ Feminist and Adivasi writers note that Bollywood often renders indigenous communities invisible altogether, or uses them as local color without exploring their land dispossession, displacement, or confrontation with mining and forestry projects.⁷⁸

This is a softer form of Sanskritization: the films might not literally show them turning into Hindus, but they strip out autonomous political agency and reinsert them as quaint components within a larger national myth built around upper-caste Hindu modernity.¹²³

Case Study 3: Dalits on Screen, from Stereotype to Counter-Cinema

Dalits have often fared no better. Research on Hindi and regional cinema notes that Dalit characters historically appear as shabby, meek, or pitiable, reinforcing caste Hindu sensibilities rather than challenging them.⁷ An article on Dalit literature and representation points out that mainstream cultural production long denied Dalits narrative subjectivity, instead positioning them as background to upper-caste drama.¹¹

Recent Tamil film scholarship shows how hero-centric narratives, usually shaped by dominant-caste creative teams, either erase caste entirely or treat it as a sentimental obstacle to be overcome by individual greatness, not social transformation.⁴¹² In this frame, “uplift” often resembles Sanskritization: Dalit characters succeed when they align with dominant norms, not when they question them.¹¹³

Against this backdrop, studies of Pa. Ranjith’s films (Madras, Kabali, Kaala, Sarpatta Parambarai) highlight them as a radical break.¹⁴¹³¹⁵ Academic and journalistic analyses argue that Ranjith not only names caste and shows structural violence, but also centers Dalit protagonists as agents of resistance, saturated with Ambedkarite symbols, hip-hop, and working-class solidarity.¹⁴¹³¹⁵ Instead of Sanskritization, his cinema tries to “de-Brahmanise” film language by treating Dalit spaces, styles, and rituals as sites of political imagination, not as raw material to be folded into Hindu national cohesion.¹⁶⁴¹²

How to Spot Sanskritization in a Film: A Cinephile’s Checklist

Like spotting a glitch in a high-budget VFX scene, recognizing Sanskritization means learning to see what has been smoothed over. Dalit-Bahujan and Adivasi critics implicitly offer several diagnostic questions.¹⁴²³

Ask these while you watch:

• Whose gods are on screen?If a film builds around a specific Adivasi or local deity but keeps cutting back to pan-Hindu gods or temple imagery, it may be absorbing a distinct cosmology into a Brahmanical one.⁹⁸
• Who gets to speak politics?If land, forest rights, or caste violence enter the story only to be resolved by a noble landlord, a benevolent cop, or a divine miracle, rather than collective organizing by the community itself, the film may be replacing subaltern politics with paternalist Hindu harmony.¹⁴²
• Where did the anger go?Dalit and Adivasi testimonies and literature are often blunt, angry, and explicit about oppression, as shown in studies of Dalit writing.¹⁷ If a film inspired by such histories turns that anger into vague “sadness,” “fate,” or “karmic justice,” it may be smoothing caste into spiritual suffering that fits Hindu philosophical comfort zones.¹⁷
• What counts as a “happy ending”?If the climax celebrates returning to tradition, obeying elders, or reconciling with feudal power without structural change, you are likely seeing a script that restores Brahmanical order.¹⁴² Anti-caste cinema, by contrast, often embraces uncomfortable endings—ongoing struggle, partial victories, or radical reimaginings of community.¹⁶⁴¹²
• Who makes money and decisions off-screen?Articles on Dalit and Adivasi representation repeatedly stress that most mainstream films about marginalized communities are written, directed, and produced by non-Dalit, non-Adivasi creators.⁹⁷⁸ If no one from the represented community holds real creative power, the risk of appropriation and Sanskritization rises dramatically.

This checklist will not give a yes/no verdict, but it will train you to see patterns that Dalit-Bahujan and Adivasi critics have flagged for years.¹⁴²³

Why This Matters: Culture as Caste Infrastructure

Dalit and subaltern scholars argue that Sanskritization is not a neutral process of “cultural integration” but a mechanism that makes caste hegemony look like voluntary cultural choice.¹⁶ When films glamorize this, they help naturalize a social order where the path to respectability runs through imitation of Brahmanical norms and erasure of autonomous Dalit and Adivasi identities.¹⁴²³

Cultural studies research on Dalit aesthetics suggests that alternative cultural production—Dalit literature, films, and music—seeks instead to “de-Brahmanise” culture by centering subaltern experience and asserting the politics of difference.¹⁷¹¹ Pa. Ranjith’s filmography, for example, has been described as a radical platform for anti-caste assertion that refuses to dissolve Dalit identity into generic “poor man” suffering or Hinduized patriotism.¹⁴¹³¹⁵

For cinephiles and critics, this means that watching is never just aesthetic. Every time a blockbuster folds a distinct Adivasi ritual into a Hindu spiritual arc or treats Dalit emancipation as assimilation into upper-caste respectability, it shapes what audiences think “justice” and “modernity” look like.¹⁴²³ Learning to see Sanskritization on screen is, therefore, a way of refusing caste’s cultural camouflage.

The Nuance: Not Every Influence Is Appropriation

The line between cultural exchange and appropriation is messy, and serious critics acknowledge it. Srinivas’s original Sanskritization model described many lower-caste communities who strategically adopted certain practices in a deeply unequal system, which makes the phenomenon understandable even if, as Dalit scholars argue, it blocks more radical change.¹⁶ Similarly, some communities may today choose to reinterpret their rituals within broader Hindu frameworks on their own terms, blurring the boundary between internal evolution and external imposition.¹²

On film, representation is also shifting. Recent features highlight that some Indian movies now cast indigenous actors in indigenous roles, foreground land rights, or collaborate more closely with the communities depicted, challenging old stereotypes.⁹³ Even Pa. Ranjith’s work, while widely praised, faces critiques that its heroic Dalit protagonists might oversimplify lived complexity or map Ambedkarite politics into familiar commercial tropes.⁴¹²

For a serious viewer, this nuance implies two moves at once:

• Stay alert to how Brahmanical norms quietly define what counts as “universal” or “spiritual” in cinema.¹⁴²
• Remain open to the fact that communities constantly negotiate and remix their own cultures, and not every overlap with Hindu forms is imposed from above.¹²

The goal is not to police films for ideological purity, but to develop a sharper, historically grounded reading habit that listens carefully to Dalit-Bahujan and Adivasi voices when they call out erasure.

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Footnotes

1. https://homegrown.co.in/homegrown-creators/film/is-indian-cinema-television-finally-embracing-realistic-indigenous-representation ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³

2. https://hubsociology.com/sanskritization-and-its-influence-social-change/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶

3. https://feminisminindia.com/2018/09/27/adivasi-community-invisible-unheard-hindi-movie-industry/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

4. https://www.academia.edu/125271746/Jaisa_Desh_Waisa_Vesh_Explorations_on_the_representations_of_Adivasis_in_popular_Hindi_cinema ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

5. https://triumphias.com/blog/concept-of-sanskritization-with-suitable-illustrations/ ↩

6. https://triumphias.com/blog/concept-of-sanskritization-with-suitable-illustrations/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

7. https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/safm.2.2.107_1 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

8. https://feminisminindia.com/2018/09/27/adivasi-community-invisible-unheard-hindi-movie-industry/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

9. https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/safm.2.2.107_1 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

10. https://homegrown.co.in/homegrown-creators/film/is-indian-cinema-television-finally-embracing-realistic-indigenous-representation ↩ ↩²

11. https://www.academia.edu/125271746/Jaisa_Desh_Waisa_Vesh_Explorations_on_the_representations_of_Adivasis_in_popular_Hindi_cinema ↩ ↩²

12. https://journal.ijresm.com/index.php/ijresm/article/download/2585/2538/3217 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

13. https://journal.ijresm.com/index.php/ijresm/article/download/2585/2538/3217 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

14. https://www.ijfmr.com/research-paper.php?id=44910 ↩ ↩² ↩³

15. https://cinemaspice.in/2024/07/21/from-reel-to-real-pa-ranjiths-impact-on-dalit-representation-in-tamil-nadu/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

16. https://twocircles.net/2022jul22/446418.html ↩ ↩²

17. https://www.ijfmr.com/papers/2023/6/11309.pdf ↩ ↩²