Bare existence in black and white

Sanjam Preet Singh

“They are the guardians of the land. They guard someone else’s fields. Do the scarecrows have their own land?” The question makes you uneasy. Is something amiss in the narrative of “rangla Punjab”? As the development juggernaut rolls on, have some been left behind? There are many shades of rural life in Punjab. Randeep Maddoke’s documentary Landless captures the nuances in black and white. Situating the question of caste in the land relations of Punjab, the film looks at the systemic oppression of Dalit landless labourers by upper caste farmers.

In Social Change in Modern India, sociologist MN Srinivas says, “A feature of rural life in many parts of India is the existence of dominant, landowning castes.” Randeep travelled several villages in Punjab over a span of five years to document labourers and their relation with dominant, landowning castes. “Whenever I go from city to village, the list of things to be proud of gets shorter. Things that I could not learn by living in the village for two decades, I am starting to understand them now,” says the filmmaker.

According to Randeep, a filmmaker must be emotionally attached to the subject; only then will he do justice to it. Randeep, too, comes from a community of Dalit agricultural labourers of Maddoke village in the Moga district. He has seen his people suffer. 

As an activist with the Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union, he dreamt of Utopia. But he started seeing the binaries of caste and revolution after Dalit labourer Bant Singh was allegedly beaten up by the Jats in 2005 when he was fighting for to get justice for his gangraped daughter.

Subsequently, Randeep started travelling in Punjab, documenting agricultural labourers through photographs when his friends suggested him to make a film on the subject. “My only fear was editing, but my friends assured me that editing would be taken care of,” says Randeep. The cinematic grammar of Landless played out through long and metaphorical shots of fields, blades of grass and a moving train may make the audience uncomfortable. And that is the whole point of Randeep — to bring out the reality masked by the slogans of vikas. “If someone from the audience leaves while the film is still being screened, I will consider that as my achievement. It is not an entertainment film. The subject I deal with demands a certain visual treatment. The long takes may be boring, but the reality is there is no charm in the lives of Dalit agricultural labourers. Their lives are on a still mode. So, their narrative decides the visual language of a film,” he says as a matter-of-fact.

Two contrasting scenes stand out in the film. One is the in-your-face take on a seeri (agricultural worker) from Khandebaad village in the Sangrur district and the other is of farmers in a grain market. The seeri narrates how he was beaten up by an upper caste farmer and his son and how his land was confiscated. He speaks in a stoic manner, as if he has become habitual of the discrimination. The farmers, on the other hand, are loud while narrating their share of problems with expletives thrown in between.

If there are any misgivings about an end to caste discrimination after more than two decades of economic reforms, the film puts that to rest. Landless goads us into shedding the blinkers and facing the harsh reality.