Paper short abstract:

The presentation will rely on a documentary movie produced by a local Dalit activist in Nagpur in the aftermath of the Khairlanji massacre. The images of the exhumation of dead bodies show how shining India’s underlying violence and the popular response against it were staged by the local movement.

Paper long abstract:

In 2006, the massacre in Khairlanji and the name Khairlanji itself became a symbol of continuing caste violence. Thanks to the work of the Dalit intellectual Anand Teltumbde, the name Khairlanji also started being associated with the idea that caste violence was not merely an archaism that the developmental work of the Indian state would gradually overcome, but a structural reality of the Indian state and the Indian economy itself.

The presentation will rely mainly on a documentary movie produced by a local Dalit activist in Nagpur in the aftermath of the Khairlanji massacre, where a Dalit family was brutally massacred by a crowd with the implicit support of the local authorities. The Marathi documentary film “Khairlanji” was circulated in Nagpur among protestors on CDs and never circulated elsewhere. I got hold of it while doing fieldwork in Nagpur on the protests. It denounces caste violence and emphasizes the betrayal of constitutional values by the state itself, thus showing rebellion as a necessary democratic vigilance. Through images of the exhumation of dead bodies of the victims, I will show how shining India’s underlying violence and the popular response against it were staged by the local movement.