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Paper short abstract:

Reflecting on the production of Broken Gods, a film that documents the growing participation of India’s indigenous groups in state sponsored projects of conversion to Hinduism, this paper reflects on the limits of collaborating with communities in troubled times.

Paper long abstract:

This paper reflects on the limits of collaborating with communities in troubled times. Between 2017-19, I was involved in the production of Broken Gods, a film that documents the growing participation of India’s indigenous groups in state sponsored projects of cultural erasure and conversion to Hinduism. The film was envisaged as a collaboration with indigenous activist and filmmaker Dakxin Bajranje Chhara, and with indigenous communities from the western India region. However, such collaboration became problematic due to different levels of indigeneity at work; and to contrasting religious-political affiliations. Collaborative techniques such as feedback resulted in challenging censorship claims that could only be resolved by reclaiming the importance of critique. This paper will address two interlinked dilemmas linked to the theme of responsibility and who speaks for whom. The first is an ethico-political question: what does it mean to collaborate with marginal indigenous communities whose members are aligned with powerful right-wing projects? Who speaks for whom and what are our responsibilities as researchers? The second is an aesthetic-representational one: while visual anthropology has embraced experimentation and reflexivity as canons for assessing good films, and especially good practice, how do we engage with indigenous or activists’ concern with truth?