The Dangal as Cultural Critique

A number of anthropologists have commented in passing that wrestling tournaments are anomalous cultural events because they are situations where caste concerns are explicitly laid aside (Beals 1964: 107; D. N. Majumdar 1958; Mandelbaum 1970: 182–183, 331–332; Orenstein 1965: 201, 232, 254). Majumdar writes: “No caste restrictions are observed in choosing the combatants. All feelings of superiority and inferiority are laid aside, and a Thakur can wrestle with a Chamar or Pasi” (1958: 304–305).

I was told a story of the Banaras wrestler Jharkhande Rai’s wrestling bout with Vijay Kumar, the national champion from Delhi. A group of men went with Jharkhande Rai from Banaras to Delhi where the bout was to be fought. There they looked into Vijay Kumar’s caste background and discovered that he was a low caste person and would not, therefore, have the necessary buddhi (wisdom) to wrestle with the twice-born Jharkhande Rai.

The bout began and before anyone realized what was happening Vijay Kumar grabbed Jharkhande Rai by his janghiya and in one smooth movement picked him up and threw him to the ground. At this point in the story the narrator laughed at his own conceit and explained that Vijay Kumar’s body seemed to swell and glow with a bright radiance “and we all looked toward heaven wondering from where his strength had come.” Undoubtedly it was rigorous self-discipline cast in the light of a transcendent supernatural ability which had enabled Vijay Kumar to overcome his “natural” caste-based inability.

Because of the staged caste confrontation that characterizes many bouts, I suggest that dangals are important commentaries on Indian social life. The commentary aspect of the dangal turns on the synoptic reification of the natural body as an icon of identity. In other words, the stark terms of success and failure in conjunction with a particularly somatic way of life suggest an alternative reading of Indian social organization. They suggest a critique of caste hierarchy through positing a body politics of almost barbaric self-determination.

In practical terms this is nothing more than the very real possibility that a Chamar wrestler may put his knee on the neck of a young Brahman and flip him onto his back and into ignominy. But the caste status of the particular wrestlers only adds a degree of irony and poignancy to this picture; who a wrestler is in terms of caste rank is, in fact, beside the point. In a world based on rigid caste ascription where the individual is subordinated to the social whole, and where much social interaction is guided by an implicit belief in the veracity of contagious impurity, fate, and auspiciousness, it is unnerving to see a person write his own destiny in terms other than those prescribed by social precedent and cultural mandate. For the spectator the question raised might be put something like this: If the body of the wrestler can be made to march so effectively—and with such heroic consequences—to the tune of a different drum, than what is to be made of the rest of culture? Where is there room for the subtle distinctions of civilization in a world where the rules are written in terms of muscles and morals rather than rank and status? Regardless of what category of person is in the pit, it is intriguing, challenging, and not a little frightening to see a person turn an established system on its head, even when everyone accepts the fact that it is just a game.

I am referring here to an ideological commentary on an ideological formulation. The dangal is not a form of sociopolitical protest, if by this one means a self-conscious project of radical change. It is, as I read it, a textual critique of an established worldview. This critique is based on the peeling away of the wrestler’s identity to reveal an essential man. In this sense, the wrestler stands as a naked caricature of individuality, a parody of asocial natural man stripped of all cultural trappings of any kind, and lauded for his personal and instinctive skill. In this formulation the emphasis placed on fame and making a name for oneself is particularly significant. In the drama of the dangal one can, for a moment, step out of the arena of ascribed status and risk a quick turn on the stage of pure individuality. For the wrestler and the audience alike, the dangal is a story of society in a different key. Where normally there is strict social hierarchy, the dangal suggests the possibility of individual achievement. In a world of strict rules of body purity wrestlers enact a ritual of physical contact saturated in sweat, mucus, and occasionally blood. It is not at all coincidental that there is an element of the horrific in this barbaric, anticaste drama.