MRIGAYA - A Close Study

Mrigaya (1976) is, by far, one of the best movies directed by the celebrated film maker, Mrinal Sen. Based on the short story by Bhagvati Charan Panigrahi, this film is set in a fictitious Santhal village, Taldanga, against the backdrop of colonial rule of the British Raj in India. The film, made at the peak of the State of Emergency (1976), adopts the colonial fiction to denounce administrative oppression. Although this is not a historical film in its real sense, history is nevertheless present since it portrays real events, such as the revolt of the Santhals (1855-1856) who were forced to evacuate their ancestral lands under pressure from powerful Zamindars, as also rapacious moneylenders, who were permitted by a British law of 1793, to dispossess their debtors. There is a three dimensional historicisation created in this film; the three worlds of ‘real’ history are – the State of Emergency and the Naxalite period of the mid-70s when the film is made, the story of the Santhals living in the colonial period in India during the first half of the 20^th century (the story of the Taldanga village being fictional) and the Santhal Rebellion of 1855-1856. Imperial history just shows facts and never goes beyond that. Sen provides an alternate discourse on history where he portrays the living conditions, the different indigenous practices and various other ‘truths’ about the Santhals which history does not tell us.

The film is set in the context of Taldanga, a fictitious Santhal village in colonial India, in the grip of a cruel Zamindar who’s also a Mahajan (moneylender), British colonial masters and incursions by wild beasts who destroy their crops, an enlightening parallel. The film starts with a Panchayat meeting where the Mukhiya (head of the Panchayat) is told by Mundra that the latter’s crops were destroyed by wild boars; hence he would not be able to pay back his loans as well as the land revenue to Govind Sardar, the Mahajan. Ghinua, Mukhiya’s son (Mithun Chakraborty), draws a parallel between the wild animals and the Mahajan – ‘Jaisa janwar, waisa hi Mahajan’. We are told by a tribal woman that the Mahajan often takes the daughters or the wives of his debtors who cannot pay him back, to his bungalow and rapes them. When Mundra says that he cannot pay his taxes to the Mahajan, he is asked by the latter to let his daughter, Dungri (Mamata Shankar), go to his bungalow. Ghinua vehemently protests this and he asks Dungri to go to her hut immediately. Thus, we see Ghinua’s open defiance to the Mahajan as he resists his oppressive act.

There is a hierarchical system of the ruling class represented in this film. There is the British colonial master, the Commissioner, then there are his soldiers and police officers, most of whom are Indians, and then comes the Mahajan, Govind Sardar. Besides them, there are many loyalists of the respective rulers, like the interpreter of the Commissioner, who is addressed as ‘Babu’ by his master (representative of the English speaking educated middle class who assisted the British in their clerical work), followed by the followers and accountant of the Mahajan. There is a strong nexus among all these three levels of the ruling class, which, Ghinua is not conscious of. Although he detests Govind Sardar, his heart is filled with awe and reverence for the Commissioner. He greatly admires the Commissioner because both of them share the common passion of hunting. Ghinua addresses him as ‘Bare Raja Babu’ and says these words to Dungri when he takes her to the Commissioner to introduce her after their marriage – ‘Angrez saab sabse bara Raja, who toh Devta hain’. Ghinua is also liked by the Commissioner for his hunting prowess. When the Commissioner’s wife draws Ghinua and Dungri, making a portrait of them, she is praised by the Commissioner who says that the portrait is a ‘masterpiece’. Maybe both Ghinua and Dungri get sympathetic treatment from the Commissioner and his wife because they are seen as the Oriental ‘other’, exotic beings, and quite different from the other Indians. The Santhals were at the bottom of the social order in the Indian society.

Quite contrary to Ghinua’s belief that the Commissioner is a good man, Shalpu (Shamit Bhanja), a freedom fighter, also a Santhal, is conscious of the nexus between the British Raj and the Zamindars, which is reflected through his words – ‘Angrez humara dushman, Mahajan humara dushman’. The concept of hegemony is seen here, since the Commissioner faces no act of dissent from the Santhals except Shalpu, thereby, making us believe that they were ruled with their own consent. This is a case of partial hegemony because although almost all the villagers resist the Mahajan, they do not have a voice of rebellion against the British, other than Shalpu. Gramsci states that the oppressed have a dual consciousness – one, beholden to the rulers, and complicit with their will; the other, which is capable of developing into resistance. The ruling class can achieve domination not by force or coercion alone, but also by creating subjects who willingly submit to being ruled. Placed at the bottom of the social and economic order, tortured and exploited by the upper class Mahajan, the Santhals, like Ghinua, maybe thought that the British will help to discard the economic inequalities and social prejudices, so dominantly featuring in the Indian society for centuries.

The Santhals, as portrayed in the film, provided passive resistance against the colonial masters but did not actively participate in any kind of active rebellion, with the exception of Shalpu. The British Commissioner tries to shoot a swinging bottle but fails, although Ghinua, with his arrow, succeeds to do so. Sen wittily shows the supremacy of the native’s pre-historic bow and arrow over the modern technological tool of warfare, namely the rifle. This scene is followed immediately by a scene from the past, from history, of the Santhal Rebellion. There is careful juxtaposition of the colonial ‘present’ in the film with the historical ‘past’ of the Santhal Rebellion. Previously, there is a reference to this bloody rebellion of 1855-1856 when Abdul, the Commissioner’s guard, finds a human skull and tells his master that probably, it was that of an Englishman, killed by the Santhals. Mukhiya tells the story of the rebellion to Shalpu’s mother, which was led by Shidhu and Kanu Murmu, who are real persons and not fictitious characters. Mukhiya’s words echo the previously stated fact that the villagers of Taldanga did not participate in active dissent against the Government – ‘Who din ab nahin rahe, tej nahin raha, jor ab nahin raha, hum thuth hain’. There’s something more than just blaming themselves to be ‘thuth’ or cripples. The Santhals, who were marginalized in the Indian society, failed to think of themselves as Indians fighting for freedom. They lack the feeling of collective identity in the Nationalist Movement. The Mukhiya, Ghinua and other villagers do show passive resistance when Dora, a Mahajan loyalist, informs the police about Shalpu’s presence in the village, which the villagers deny after the arrival of the police officers. Mukhiya hails Shalpu as ‘Tu hi humara Sidhu, tu hi humara Kanu’ and the villagers chase off Dora. We are told that Shalpu, along with other Extremist freedom fighters, has looted a government bank and therefore, was wanted by the British. In the end, Dora leads the police to the secret hiding-place of Shalpu and kills him with his own rifle. Dora gets a reward of five hundred rupees, as promised by the British Commissioner.

To both Ghinua and the commissioner, a big ‘shikar’ is a game; this is probably why Ghinua reacts like a terrible ‘hunter’ when the Mahajan tries to steal his wife. He slays him; an avenged man, he brings his ‘trophy’, to the only man who will understand him, the English ‘Bare Raja Babu’. But Ghinua’s trust is betrayed and he is handed over to the court by the Commissioner. Ghinua asks the Commissioner why Dora gets five hundred rupees as a ‘prize’ for killing Shalpu, a person liked by all the villagers and he gets death sentence for killing the Mahajan, who is ‘sabse khatarnak, khun-khar janwar’. Even the villagers fail to understand why Imperial Justice sentences Ghinua to be hanged to death.

Mrigaya (The Royal Hunt) is one of the finest specimens of postcolonial cinema. As a postcolonial text, the film explores the many facets of indigenous culture of the Santhals in colonial India and juxtaposes historical truths with this fictitious story. The various indigenous practices of the Santhals are shown in the film like their dancing, dressing, language, marriage ceremony. There’s even a scene where Dungri and Ghinua enjoy the mythological story of The Mahabharata, performed through dance and music, as a means of entertainment in the village. From a Feministic point of view, Dungri represents the oppressed sex who is under a double state of patriarchal domination; the British Raj and the Mahajan as the ruling class and also as prey to the sexual exploitation by the usurper landlord, namely Govind Sardar. Sen delves into the past in a two-fold way; first, painting the condition of the tribal people in colonial India in the early 20^th century and then, further back to the past, by referring to the Santhal Rebellion in 1855-1856. Sen also tries to connect the past history of colonized nation to the present state of neo-colonialism and semi-fascism in a postcolonial nation, which was once colonized. By neo-colonialism, I am talking about the Santhals in an Independent India, who are still treated as colonized subjects by the upper caste ruling class, and are still subject to economic and social exploitation, beautifully represented in Mahasweta Devi’s Shishu. This perhaps explains why the villagers of Taldanga did not want to participate in an active rebellion against the British Raj. They wanted economic and social equality from their internal oppressors, like the Mahajan; only then could they think about rebellion against the external oppressors, namely the British. They could never think of themselves as a constituent class of the collective whole of the National struggle for freedom. Even after gaining Independence, the condition of the Santhals remains the same; which is synonymous with the plight of North-Eastern ‘Indians’ who can never embrace their Indian identity because of social prejudices.

Sen, also tries to allegorically connect this theme of oppression and dissent to the present politics of Independent India, which was in a turbulent state during the time of the film’s making. Besides the State of Emergency imposed by the semi-fascist Indira Gandhi government, the Naxalite movement in Bengal was at its peak in the mid 70s. Sen chose the national language, Hindi, for this movie despite the fact that he was primarily a regional film maker. Maybe, this was done to reach out to a bigger audience on a national level. When the film ends, there appears on screen, some lines in English, saying ‘Stand up, stand up, stand up. Remember the martyrs who loved Life and Freedom’. This English statement was perhaps included by the director to connect to the educated Left intelligentsia, which was on a rise in the political scene of India. Mrinal Sen is a Communist thinker, with his movies like Calcutta 71 and Padatik dealing with the Naxalite movement in Bengal. Most of his films deal with the economic exploitation and the poverty-stricken condition of the lower section of the society. A parallel can be drawn between the Repressive State Apparatus of the Central Government led by Indira Gandhi and that of the State Government led by Siddhartha Shankar Ray with that of the British Raj’s soldiers and judicial system, as portrayed in Mrigaya.

In Amit Prakash’s Jharkhand: Politics of Development and Identity (2001), the structure of ‘internal’ exploitation, where Indians also exploited the people of the Jharkhand region in the colonial past, has been brilliantly portrayed. The British Sarkar–Indian Zamindar nexus, with the ‘brown’ Sarkar taking over in 1947, was marked by a degree of continuity, with Jharkhand emerging as a ‘colony’ of Bihar. Colonial paternalism negotiated with them by directly managing the mineral resources and simultaneously excluding the tribal elite from playing any significant role. This was the fall-out of the twin policies of protecting and ‘civilising’ the region. What is distressing is that there seems to be a continuity in the approach of ‘civilising’ Adivasis (native Indian tribals), locating ‘development’ and ‘integration’ as extremely desirable and believing that the ‘majority community’ needs to protect Adivasi customs. Although this marks the triumph of colonial hegemony in post-colonial India, Prakash is clear in locating the problem also as a part of the nationalist agenda, which accorded a very low priority to the Adivasi question.