Authors: Dr. Aniket Parmar
Abstract: Mari Selvaraj's Tamil film Pariyerum Perumal B.A., B.L. (2018) stages the encounter between a Dalit law student and the caste order of southern Tamil Nadu as a drama of endogamy, the mechanism that Dr. B. R. Ambedkar identified as the very essence of caste. This paper reads the film through Ambedkar's early sociology in “Castes in India” (1916), his analysis of inter-marriage in Annihilation of Caste (1936), and his account of constitutional morality in the Constituent Assembly. It argues that the film moves the question of caste violence from the spectacle of atrocity to its structural logic: the policing of who may sit, speak, study, love, and live beside whom. Through close readings of the opening sequence involving the dog Karuppi, the law-college episodes, and the film's refusal of a conciliatory ending, the paper shows how the film translates Ambedkar's theory into affective cinematic form. It further examines the politics of Dalit authorship and the burden of forbearance the film places on its protagonist, and concludes that the film's power lies in holding constitutional promise and social resistance in unresolved tension.
