Ramulamma & The Dora's Tools

Disclaimer: I think I'm trying to grapple with ideas and theories that may be too complex for me. Please pardon my lack of proper articulation, but I just had to write about it.

Although I've been thoroughly enjoying London thus far, it's been a few weeks and I've been feeling a little nostalgic. I do miss New York, my family, and my friends. But one thing I don't think I can get in London by myself is my familiar Telugu-New-York-ness. Going home and speaking Telugu, going to the Hindu temple in Flushing, seeing Aunties and Uncles at Indian parties, stuff like that. I don't know how to explain it exactly. I suppose it's a lack of "the usual dose" of "Teluguness" or teluguthanam in my life. I felt the same way when I was in Kerala last January. In fact, now that I think about it, it was probably my first experience in a completely non-Telugu setting. Previously, all my travels were with family or family friends who were all Telugu. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't phone very often and so I don't get to speak Telugu here in London.

Whenever I get that feeling in New York (if I don't go to Queens for a while), I go online and watch a Telugu movie. This time, I decided to watch "Osey Ramulamma", a non-Tollywood Telugu movie. I'll forewarn you: I'm not very good at narrating stories. Set in rural Telangana, the story is about a Dalit girl, Ramulamma, who is raped by the local dora or landowner/vassal. After giving birth to the baby, the dora tries to kill her. She escapes but loses her entire family. She is then taken in by a childless couple in another village. The dora of that village soon discovers her beauty and attempts to rape her. When he approaches her, Ramulamma kills him. She then learns that this dora is the son of the dora who raped her. She is forced to flee and takes up arms with the local Naxal/Maoist group. The rest of the movie is about the dora tries to kill her and how she narrowly escapes every time. Eventually, when she is to be hanged, she manages to kill the dora. However, her hanging was under the auspices of the police, so as soon as she kills him, they arrest her (again) and she is likely to be finally executed.

What struck me most about this film is that it didn't show the typical love story narrative found in Telugu movies. This is, perhaps, a good reason why I still remembered this movie ten years after I first watched it. "Osey Ramulamma" was made in 1997. To my knowledge, movies at the time and even before rarely left the forward caste wealthy perspective. Nowadays, there has been a shift to the urban middle class educated setting as seen in "Happy Days" or "Koncham Ishtam Koncham Kashtam" while still maintaining the forward caste narrative. "Osey Ramulamma" showed struggle on multiple levels: class struggle, caste struggle, and women's struggle. There are multiple references made those three struggles and identities throughout the movie - something you don't always hear in other Telugu movies.

Watching her struggles, all I could think about is Audre Lorde's quote "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Audre Lorde was a notable black lesbian feminist who challenged the first wave of feminism early on and made great strides in providing alternative radical theory and practice in combatting racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression. She wrote an essay with the title of the quote that criticized a New York University (NYU) conference on women's issues. She argued that ignoring the differences between women is not the way to real change; they need to be acknowledge and tackled. The conference was organized by white women who still adhered racism indirectly (the token inclusion of the black lesbian, etc.) In their attempts to fight for gender equality, they may achieve short term goals, but without the inclusion of all women and accepting the different women be they of color, old, poor, lesbian, trans, disabled, real change cannot be realized.

Perhaps I am taking this quote too literally in my interpretation of "Osey Ramulamma" and perhaps I didn't properly analyse the essay. But as Ramulamma continued to use violence and quite literally the master's tools (the same guns his goondas used), this quote kept running through my head. By using the same tactics as he did, Ramulamma, in her struggle against caste, class, and gender oppression, would perpetuate a system that may not have the same oppressions, but perhaps others. This is, very likely, a realize why people are disillusioned by the Maoist struggle in India right now and why the leftist agenda is cast as a fringe movement. There are inherent weaknesses in the struggle.