ABSTRACT
Masaan was released in 2015 and it was a France-India coproduction. The movie got rave reviews at Cannes Film festival and was awarded the Un Certain Regard prize for the director with a promising career. However, the audience in India hardly paid a lip service as it dealt with issues like caste system and State oppression. Caste issues are considered archaic in the popular consciousness and the narrative weaved around them is that modern India is hardly evolving. The new generation allegedly does not confront these issues on a daily basis.
Masaan on the lines of movies like Pariyerum Perumal (2018) weaves the discourse that there might be a possibility to overcome caste barriers through education, thereby alluding to the possibility of creating some common ground: economic progression and education, which can make different castes inhabit together. In the light of this very discourse, this chapter aims to examine the implicit narrative that caste, like its Western (and also Oriental now) counterpart, class, needs to be a surmountable phenomenon, as opposed to the need of its complete abolition, and to delve into the question of (Indian) cinema vacillating on almost all occasions at suggesting this absolute eradication of caste.
