RECLAIMING HISTORY THROUGH DALIT VISIONS IN TAMIL CINEMA

ABSTRACT
Tamil Dalit cinema has emerged as a vital cultural space for contesting hegemonic narratives and reclaiming marginalised histories. This study undertakes a qualitative analysis of Asuran (2019) and Karnan (2021), examining how these films mobilise cinematic form and narrative to articulate subaltern memory and collective resistance. Grounded in the theoretical frameworks of memory studies and subaltern historiography, the paper investigates how these works reconstruct the visual archive to foreground Dalit experiences of caste violence, trauma, and dignity. The analysis focuses on recurring visual motifs that signify bondage, forests as terrains of both refuge and rebellion, and collective bodies as symbols of solidarity, to reveal how these films craft a politics of remembrance that challenges the Brahminical scripting of Tamil identity and history. Beyond close textual analysis, the study also engages with audience reception and public discourse to explore how Tamil Dalit cinema functions as a pedagogical and ethical site of witnessing. The paper argues that Dalit cinema transforms spectatorship into an active practice of counter-memory, re-inscribing erased voices into the cultural consciousness of South India and reshaping the nexus between film, history, and political subjectivity.