Dakxin Chhara. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

Growing up [as a member of the] Chhara [community], when did you first realise society already had a label for you?

Being Chhara in Ahmedabad, where I live, that’s definitely not a privilege, because that is a historically stigmatised community. When we were kids, we didn’t know about the historical stigma. We were surprised that we were always allowed to sit on the last bench, not on the first bench. But slowly, slowly, when we realised the history of the nomadic and denotified tribes, then we came to know why the rest of the communities or the societies in Gujarat or in Ahmedabad keep a distance from us. They keep thinking that we are criminals, we are thieves, robbers, and we will rob them. So being Chhara for myself, as a Chhara community member, I’m so proud of my community. For the rest of the society, they’re still habituated to look at us as if we are born criminals.

Was there a moment when theatre and filmmaking became your way of pushing back, when you realised this is survival, this is resistance?

Since my childhood, I always wanted to be a filmmaker. And there was no teacher, no tutor, no guru to teach us. Because being a Chhara in Ahmedabad, finding a guru in the cultural industry or creative industry, that was next to impossible. So I learned filmmaking and theatre—I’m an autodidact. I learned my own by watching films, by making films, by cracking the fundamentals of editing and shooting and everything.

Before 1998, we used to do a community theatre for community development or raise the community issues in our own dialect, which is called Bhantu, B-H-A-N-T-U. Bhantu is a dialect; it does not have a script. We used to do street theatre in the community, raising education, women’s issues, operation issues, or alcoholism.

But when Budhan Sabar in West Bengal was brutally killed in the police custody by Inspector Ashok Roy, and the interim judgment of that particular case of Justice Romapal of Kolkata High Court appeared in a small magazine, and that magazine traveled from eastern part of India to western part of India in our library where we used to do theater—that time I thought that we should make a play on that and we should not just entertain or give the message to the rest of the society, but we should raise the voice.

About the DNTs, and that for so many years, the DNT people have been suffering for so many generations. How long will we keep suffering? And ask the government a specific question: Are we second-class citizens? So with this question, we started theatre and all the theatre plays and the filmmaking—that is the last question we always ask. Are we denotified and nomadic tribes (DNT)? Are we second-class citizens? Why don’t you consider us as normal human beings? Like you, a normal citizen. Why do you consider us thieves or robbers? Because that is a colonial stigma. Why is it not still wiping out?

In your professional journey in theatre and film, did you ever feel you were being tolerated rather than welcomed? What resistance did you face?

Honestly, the film industry inherently is a very expensive medium. And that is dominated by the 15 per cent of the population of this country who are telling their story to the 85 per cent of the population. Neeraj Ghaywan recently stated that, and I agree with him. So when we want to tell our narratives through films or through theatre, there are no resources. There is no system to tell our narratives, and we have to depend on those 15 per cent creative minds that they will tell our stories. And because of this, I also face a lot of hurdles to get funds to make films. Even still, I have a lot of problems actually getting the funds to make films. And even funding to do theatre.

So for theatre, what we did was adopt Grotowski’s style of theatre, the Polish director. Like he used to call the poor people’s theatre, the poor theatre. We call it street theatre. Which does not require a lot of money. So we manage with the theatre, but we could not manage with the films. As I said, it’s inherently an expensive medium, and it’s dominated by the upper caste people. These entire resources are dominated by the upper caste people. So, I’m still not able to crack this dominant class dominance to tell my stories.

I’m just giving an example. For 2-3 years, I have been working on a script that is called Timirpanthi. Timirpanthi is the Pilgrimage of Darkness. That is a literal translation. It’s a Gujarati novel that is written based on the Chharas’ art of thieving, but in a positive context. So it’s a very good writer, a very senior writer who wrote this novel. And I always wanted to make a film, actually, to work on that. We written script and we narrated the script to so many studios in Gujarat, in Bombay. Everyone calls this a great story. Nobody gave us money to make the film.

And after 6 to 7 years of continuous efforts, I also got tired, and I told that elderly writer—I told him that I’m sorry because you are already 85 years old and I’m not able to make this film because nobody’s giving us money. You please give the rights to anyone, and maybe someone will make the film. So at least your dream will be realised, and you will see the film on the screen. And as I actually told him, he started to talk with a few other filmmakers. Immediately, people bought the rights for that book. And now people are making it. The same people to whom I narrated. It’s a very clear indication that they didn’t want to tell my story, but they want to tell my story to themselves. They didn’t want to tell the story to me. So that’s a design that we—it’s difficult to crack.

And we are trying to solve this problem of how our creative minds, the creative minds from the marginalised communities in filmmaking, in the theatre, or any sort of art form, how they can actually access the resources to tell their stories. We cannot depend on this all 15 per cent dominant resources, they will not give us at all, ever, their resources to tell our stories.

How different is advocacy when it comes from lived experience instead of sympathy or theory? Can people really speak for communities when they’ve never walked in their shoes?

For example, what Pa. Ranjith, the way he tells the story, or other filmmakers in Tamil, the way community people are telling their story, it is impossible for the other committee members to tell our story. They cannot actually be in our shoes. It is impossible because they didn’t live that reality.

For example, there is an incident that happened in Maharashtra where 6 members of the same family were arrested for a very gruesome murder that happened in Nashik in a very remote village. The 6 members of the same family were all arrested. And they all got life imprisonment and the death penalty from the lower court to the high court and to the Supreme Court of India. Now, from 2003 to 2016, they were in jail, and they were on death row. Virendra Ichalkaranjikar, a lawyer, came to know about this case, and found out that there are very basic loopholes actually in this case. Even these people should not be in custody for a single day, forget about the death penalty.

So he challenged the High Court’s ruling in the Supreme Court. Fortunately, the Supreme Court granted his application, and they reopened the case. And after several years, 2003 to 2016, he points out that this is number 1, 2, 3, 4. They are not the real culprit. Culprits are someone else. They are not culprit.

Now, this is the real story. I wanted to make the film. I had written the script and the synopsis. Netflix wanted to make the series. Netflix wanted someone else but I am a community member, and I want to tell the story because this is a DNT story. And they said I could not direct it because I am not a recepient of a National Award. Or you have not made many films. I mean, I made many films, but not the award-winning films. And they just wanted to assign a filmmaker from Pune from a Brahmin background, and they said, this director can justify the story. I didn’t feel that, that he could justify the story. And then I cancelled that deal.

So, this is the way the industry looks at the filmmakers or the narrators who are coming from the oppressed communities, that you are not able to tell your story. We will be clearly able to tell better way, we will tell to yourself.

A workshop at Budhan Theatre. Through Budhan Theatre and decades of grassroots performance, Chhara demonstrates how art becomes a tool to confront state violence, social stigma, and everyday exclusion. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

Let’s talk about Budhan Theatre that you founded in the late ‘90s. What was the idea, and did you imagine it would train hundreds of actors and travel so widely?

Budhan Theatre was not a thoughtfully started theatre group. It was the reaction of the community members when Budhan Sabar was brutally killed in the police lockup in February 1998. And Mahashweta Devi, they’re supposed to have a meeting, the first national convention of the nomadic and denotified tribes in Ahmedabad in June 1998. Budhan Sabar was killed in February 1998. So it was a reaction, actually, from the community.

I just wanted to understand what actually happened with Budhan in the police lockup, how brutally he was beaten because of the 35 injuries he had, 35 bone cracks on his body. I mean, he was horribly beaten. So it was not surprising for us that what happened with the Budhan, but it was important to express what actually happened with the Budhan and what can happen with many Budhan kind of people in the DNT communities.

So Budhan Theatre started with the reaction, with the expressions of the community members, what happened with the Budhan Sabar. But eventually, when we started, we performed in 1998 at the first convention of the denotified and nomadic tribes, and then we started to perform a Budhan play at many places. And slowly, slowly, I found that, okay, when we perform, this mainstream society in the system looks at us differently.

For example, at the moment when I’m speaking with you, for someone, maybe I’m just a criminal or a person from the criminal tribe. But when I perform, after the performance, when the audience came and shook hands with us, hugged us, that was a very different kind of experience for me. So we realised that there is something, a very different power actually in this art form.

And we started to continue the theater and whenever atrocities happened with the DNT members, like Pinarayi Kale was actually killed in Baramati, and the counter was Deepak Pawar in Solapur. These people were brutally killed, and we made the play actually on that. We performed hundreds of shows on stage, on melas, in the conference rooms, under the tree in the forest areas. Wherever we find the people of the space, we used to perform.

And we performed because we could see that some sort of acceptance is coming, actually from the extreme side, which never actually tried to come near to us. So these two extremes were coming together, and theatre was becoming a bridge between DNT communities and the rest of the society, the system, police, judges, and lawyers. And they also started to listen to us because we were telling our story through theatre. So, they also sit together for 1 hour or half an hour and watch our play, and they can also understand what DNTs are actually going through. And we slowly found the support for this cause.

So this was the process of Budhan. I think till now we performed more than 1,000 shows across India. We did 52 plays, and some of the plays, like Budhan, we did more than 500, 600 shows, and we are still doing them. So it’s a fourth generation in the Chhara community who are doing the same play in a different context, by adding contemporary issues. Budhan’s play is still there even after 25 years of Budhan’s death.

You fought a legal battle against the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation in 2004 after DNT families were evicted. What did that court victory change?

When we started theatre in 1998, in 2003 or 2004, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) were tasked to beautify the entire city. But in this beautification, they were making people vulnerable and forced to migrate from the city area to somewhere else.

One of the DNT localities, which was under the then Chief Minister, Modi, it’s a Maninagar area. Maninagar is the political constituency of Narendra Modi. So one of the DNT community used to live near the railway station. And their houses were also bulldozed. Obviously, the way we were using theatre to raise the community’s voices, we also started to raise our voices against this bulldozing of the houses. And we made a play called Bulldozer. And we performed that play in many areas of Ahmedabad city. And we got a huge support actually from the civil society.

We performed the show in front of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s commissioner at the gate of his home, which is not allowed. Performances are not allowed actually in that area. But we went there, we did a hunger strike. And during the hunger strike, we were also performing the play. Then, for so many years, from 2004 to 2008 or ‘09 maybe, we were continuously lobbying and having a dialogue with the corporation, but they were not listening to us. Because for them, we are a kide makode, insects. You just go outside the city. You don’t have any rights. You don’t have any housing rights.

And then we decided to file the case in the Gujarat High Court. And we won the case in the Gujarat High Court. And AMC challenged us in the Supreme Court. In the Supreme Court, we never had money. We still don’t have money. But fortunately, many lawyers came forward to help us. The reason was that we did a Lower Depths play. Maxim Gorky’s Lower Depths. And that play we actually did into the bulldozed basti. I mean, all the houses were actually bulldozed by the bulldozer. And we did the play in the night, actually in that basti. And all the actors there, we used the lighting, a different kind of experimental environmental play. So many lawyers came forward to help us, even in Delhi.

So in the Supreme Court, Advocate Megha Jani and her colleagues helped us. We won the case in the Supreme Court, I think in 2012, 2011 or 2012. But even after victory in the Supreme Court for their housing rights, 112 families, the government didn’t allow the pakka houses to these people. After, I think in 2017, when there was an election and Vijay Rupani’s government, they implemented the Supreme Court’s order in 2017, not 2012. So, after 5 years of the Supreme Court order, they implemented that. I mean, that’s also a criminal act for me, because they should be immediately allotted the houses, because it’s the Supreme Court of India.

But fortunately, they didn’t demolish their houses from 2012 to 2017, and they allotted the houses. And the locality of people who are living in this, they very fondly call their residents Budhan Theatre Colony in the nearby area of Maninagar basti. This was a long battle from 2004 to 2017. Almost 13 years. And then we got small, pakka houses for our community members.

But I think I must say that inthe theater, such a kind of using the theatre and simultaneously fighting the legal battle, I think such incidents happen first time in India that through the theatre you can actually get the housing rights for the people who are not able to even raise their voices. They were begging. They sell the maps at the crossroads. They clean ears at the bus stand and the railway station. So poorer among the poor, they got housing rights because of the theatre activity.

You’ve made over 120 movies and TV projects. Do you feel DNT communities are finally being seen in Indian cinema, or are they still invisible?

I didn’t see any DNT’s [representation] in Indian cinema at all. I mean, I’m going to accept Nagaraj Manjule’s film. I don’t see any film that is based on the denotified tribals’ narrative like Jai Bhim. Jai Bhim, the community, we call it madari, snake charmers in Gujarat. So, Jai Bhim is on DNT’s narratives. I don’t know what it is called in Tamil Nadu, but that was our narrative. And it was very similar to what Budhan faced in the police custody, the same kind of torture we saw in the Jai Bhim film, in the same brutality.

India’s nomadic and denotified tribal narratives are completely missing in Indian cinema. No one is talking about these communities. Yeah, they are talking, but they are using a very derogatory terms. The way, for example, there was a film called Khel, and there are so many films in which there are dialogues where people use the kanjari word in a very derogatory way. I am a kanjari, actually. I call Chhara in Ahmedabad, but in Maharashtra, we are kanjari. In Madhya Pradesh, we are kanjari and kanjari bhat. So they portrayed the film industry, Indian cinema portrayed the kanjari word as a community of prostitutes.

So yeah, we have a reflection in the Indian cinema, but in this term, not our narratives. Even Indian cinema, even Indian writers, they use our names as abuse word. In many Punjabi films, you can notice usages of takra and kajra. So this is the word, but Kanjari is a community. You cannot use that. It’s illegal and unconstitutional. But because we are in OBC, in Maharashtra and in Rajasthan, in Gujarat, the Atrocities Act does not actually apply to us because we are not in the Scheduled Caste or the Scheduled Tribe. If the Kanjari community were to fall into the Scheduled Caste or the Scheduled Tribe, they could file a case against him. How can we file the case against actually filmmaker?

So I was referring to the film Khel, cricketer Ajay Jadeja. Ajay Jadeja acted in that, and Sonali Bendre. So there was a scene in the police station where Gulshan Grover is talking with Sonali Bendre, and he’s says, in Hindi, “Arey samjhao apne dost ko, yeh toh kanjere kanjare, dalle hai dalle, yeh police station, court ke chakkar kiske liye bane hai, inhe logon hi ke liye bane hai.” Hey, explain to your friend, these are gypsies, pimps, for whom are these police station and court visits made, they are made for these people only.) So, this was the dialogue for my community.

So, this is the way Indian cinema uses India’s DNT names. We are too far. Indian cinema, I think, when the filmmaker from DNT, when they will represent their narrative in Indian cinema, I think then only we can lay claim to our narrative, and this is our film. Until and unless that happens, I don’t see any reflection.

So to fill this gap of representation in Indian cinema, Budhan Theatre is starting, actually, I mean, it’s dreaming to start the school that is called Nomad School of Filmmaking and Performing Arts. And before we start the school in a formal way, we are conducting filmmaking workshops across India and calling denotified nomadic tribes, Dalit, and marginalised community youth to learn the filmmaking art. Basics in the beginning, and a more intense workshop will be taken 2027. In 2028, we will start it formally.

So in future, I mean, that’s why I came to Chennai, because I wanted to meet Pa. Ranjith, if he can come and conduct some of the workshops. I’m also talking with Nagaraj Manjule and many other filmmakers from the marginalised community who can come and tell their stories, and community youth can actually learn from them, and they can learn the popular format, how to tell the story actually in a popular format. And then we can actually plant them into the creative industry. So maybe in future, after 10, 15 years, we can see that in Indian cinema, like Dalits and indigenous communities, the DNT people’s and DNT community’s narrative will be there in the Indian cinema. So to fill the gap, I hope we will be able to start this school in 2028.