Yesterday I wrote about the core story of the Tamil movie Jai Bhim which is based on an actual incident of police abuse and a segment of the life of Tamil Nadu activist lawyer K Chandru who later became a judge of the Madras High Court.
I said it is about the struggle for justice, and about how even one person with conviction and persistence can make a difference.
It is also very much about how we treat minority communities.
Jai Bhim showcases the inhumane attitude of some humans, especially those in authority, who mistreat or bully people just because they are seen as different or considered to be lower in society’s artificial superior-inferior scale.
If you can see beyond the film’s depiction of an incident that happened in India in 1993, you may be jolted by Jai Bhim’s no-holds barred look at the way the criminal justice system works and how we, as a society, have largely ignored or failed to protect the most vulnerable among us; and the way in which some of those in authority or of a “higher status” trample on the rights and dignity of the voiceless and the marginalised.
The producers, directors, actors and crew of Jai Bhim have given us a superbly-told story that transcends geographical borders, and I salute them for it.
Director TJ Gnanavel, in telling the tale of one incident in Tamil Nadu in 1993 and its impact on those involved, shines a light on the life of the Irular community – a tribe living in make-shift villages not far from urban centres in Tamil Nadu and parts of Kerala – and on how they fall prey to the powerful and become victims of false police cases.
There is one scene where a group of Irular beg government officials to give them a document to say they are members of the scheduled caste so that their children can be admitted to school. The officer tells them since they have no documents to prove they are residents of the village or even Indian citizens, he is unable to given them this certification.
They are also told their names cannot be included on the electoral roll because they have no documentation. They are caught in a vicious circle.
They are the invisible people that every society has, like the thousands of stateless people in our midst, like the homeless in Kuala Lumpur, like the urban poor who feel God has been kind if they have enough food for the day, and like the refugees in Malaysia hoping for a new life.
How many Malaysians, for instance, care for the stateless in our own country? Stateless children are denied the basic right to education and adults have a tough time finding a job.
According to a UN report: “Statelessness can exacerbate the exclusion that minorities already face, further limiting their access to education, healthcare, legal employment, freedom of movement, development opportunities and the right to vote. It creates a chasm between affected groups and the wider community, deepening their sense of being outsiders: of never belonging.”
Nobody knows the actual number of the stateless in Malaysia but there are estimates. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says at least 10,000 people in West Malaysia have been denied nationality and that the figure in East Malaysia is unknown.
It says local NGO Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas (DHRRA), with technical support from UNHCR, managed to reduce the number of stateless people from an estimated 40,000 in 2009, to 12,400 at the end of December 2017.
The UNHCR notes: “During British colonial rule, a significant number of persons were brought to Malaysia from India and Sri Lanka to work in plantations. After Malaysia regained independence, this group and their descendants were entitled to acquire Malaysian citizenship under the Federal Constitution. However, the Malaysian Indian community has faced challenges related to identity documentation and confirmation of Malaysian citizenship for many years.”
Who can blame the UNHCR for putting it so very politely, and in politically correct language?
In 2014, N Surendran, the then Padang Serai MP, in expressing shock that 12,667 children were stateless simply because their parents’ marriage had not been registered, called it a “national crisis”.
This figure of 12,667, based on national registration department (NRD) records, was revealed by then home minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in Parliament.
In a comment piece in 2019, activist lawyer Eric Paulsen quoted the case of Letchumy Suppiah who was finally recognised as a citizen when she was 70, along with her daughters, who had all been unable to register their marriages, “thereby perpetuating the cycle of statelessness for their own children”.
Paulsen wrote: “While citizenship was eventually granted to all three generations in an out of court settlement by the NRD, this came only after decades of rejections and legal action.
“During this case, it was instructive to hear the judge’s exasperation at the NRD’s unrealistic demand for the stateless individuals to prove their citizenship, asking whether the NRD expected the applicants to dig up the graves of their forefathers to prove their links to Malaysia.”
I wish we had more judges like that.
Coming back to Jai Bhim and the Irular community, I understand that neither the authorities in India nor the rest of society pay much attention to them. Often, they are paid to catch snakes that have entered the homes of the “civilised” people or hired as cheap manual labour.
The Irular are expert snake catchers and most of the venom used by companies in India which produce antivenom medicine comes from the snakes caught by this community.
It is ironic that the genes of South Indian populations such as the Irular show the closest affinity to the 4,500 skeletal remains found in Rakhigarhi – part of the ancient Indus valley or Harappan civilisation – but they remain marginalised.
It reminds me of the Orang Asli in Malaysia. The First Malaysians still remain marginalised, and greedy businessmen, with the support of politicians in power, continue to drive them out of lands they and their ancestors have roamed for thousands of years.
It is fortunate that we finally have an Orang Asli MP in Ramli Mohd Nor. But that only happened in 2019, after the short-lived Pakatan Harapan government started paying attention to improving the lives of this community and Umno decided to field Ramli for the Cameron Highlands parliamentary seat.
I fear we won’t see much improvement in the lives of the Orang Asli yet. I fear some of them will continue to be hounded out of places they consider “ancestral land”, just as it happens to some indigenous people in Sabah and Sarawak. Remember the Penans?
Let’s also not forget the larger minorities such as the Chinese and Indians, many of whom feel they are being treated as second class citizens in their own land. That is one reason a good number of them, and some Malays frustrated with the direction of the country, have migrated to other countries, notably Australia.
It is not just Chinese and Indians who are unhappy, right-thinking Malays are also concerned about the injustice to fellow Malaysians.
The latest Malay to courageously voice this is Muhammed Abdul Khalid, once former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s economic adviser. He was reported as saying on Nov 4 that the RM11.4 billion allocation for the Bumiputera community under Budget 2022 dwarfed that of the Chinese and Indian communities put together (RM345 million).
“That is only around 3% of what the Bumiputera community received. What is important to me, as a Muslim, is the concept of fairness. Where is the fairness? It’s true there are many rich Chinese, but there are also many who are poor. Are we being fair?” he asked the Malay establishment.
There is also a perception among the Indian community that a disproportionate number of Indians are picked up for questioning by police in crime cases.
Coming back to the movie again, to provide authenticity, Gnanavel hired members of the Irular community to play the majority of the characters.
Actors Manikandan and Lijomol Jose, who play two central Irular characters in the story, spent more than a month with the Irular community to observe and live the way they lived – and it shows in their superb performance.
Top Indian actor Suriya Sivakumar brilliantly portrays the real lawyer Chandru. Unlike the lawyers portrayed previously by other actors, Suriya’s lawyer is believable and doesn’t, as part of his investigations, smash the faces of 20 or 30 gangsters or even a crooked policeman or two. That’s probably because it is based on a real person.
You can sense the character Chandru’s frustration and anger over the abuse of the marginalised community. Yet, he has to keep it in check as he believes in the law and the justice system. Suriya has commendably captured this inner battle, his eyes displaying the simmering anger, even as he coolly talks to the advocate-general or others.
It probably comes naturally to Suriya who runs an NGO called Agaram which helps underprivileged communities, particularly by giving their children an education. In fact, Suriya and his wife Jyotika, also a top actor, donated Rs 1 crore (RM560,700) to the Pazhankudi Irular Trust just before the release of Jhai Bhim on Amazon Prime.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.