Why sex crimes are portrayed as karma

There is a new socially conscious popular cinema emerging across India that tries to deal with gender issues usually in urban life, and ‘Pink’ (2016) was one such film that gained fame. Cinema across India has generally been sententious and where the older cinema relayed the more traditional social messages pertaining to matters like family values (‘Hum Aapke Hai Kaun’, 1994) and art cinema often deals with the exploitation and oppression of the marginalised classes (‘Ankur’, 1974), the newer films like Pink are about the lives of young from the urban middle-class, since stories about the young provide opportunity for romance and draw audiences. The latest film from the category is ‘Satyaprem Ki Katha’ which deals with the issue of date rape.

A factor to be recognised before proceeding further is that most of Indian cinema is constructed in the passive voice; people are placed in situations to which they react and this is different from Hollywood where individual motivation is the driving logic. My surmise is that this is because of causality not being centered on individual choice but on a ‘karmic’ given. In ‘Ankur’, it is the feudal family background of the protagonist where it is the custom of landowners to take lower-caste mistresses. This ‘karmic’ undercurrent also means that political films in India are the most pessimistic; hardly ever does the victim find his or her way out of misery —- although some films could conclude with an expression of resolve. 

Once we understand this tendency, we could expect that any sexual malfeasance portrayed in the films will be safely in the territory of designated villains. One cannot see the normal protagonist of the film involved in such acts and then having to wrestle with dilemmas about his own conduct. The villain, who is not individualised and made capable of reflection, regret or remorse, simply does what is natural to him. Even art films (by and large) cannot portray social rights and wrongs without treating some people as blameless victims. But instead of human villains they often introduce an entity called the ‘system’ to be duly blamed. But the system is also a ‘given’ like karma or destiny, which means that it is intractable.   

Coming to ‘Satyaprem Ki Katha’, the film is set in Ahmedabad and is about a good-hearted middle-class boy Satyaprem (Karthik Aryan) who is drawn to a beautiful girl Katha (Kiara Advani) who is from a rich business family; but she has a rich boyfriend Tapan — with whom she goes off after her Garba dance performance. Some months later Satyaprem’s family attends another festivity where they meet her parents, but she is absent since ‘she is unwell’. Satyaprem’s father goads him to make enquiries since having a rich daughter-in-law would be advantageous. Satyaprem manages to enter her gated community but finds that she has just slashed her wrists in a bid to kill herself. He saves her life and the consequence is that her parents recognize his worth and come home with a marriage offer. Satyaprem accepts it and the two are married but he discovers that Katha is turned off by the prospect of sex. She lies that she is ‘asexual’ but the truth eventually comes out that she was raped by Tapan after the Garba dance; she became pregnant and had an abortion. It is this trauma that has put her in her present emotional condition.  

If the message in ‘Pink’ — delivered stridently by Amitabh Bachchan — was around the woman’s right to say ‘no’, this film focuses on rape victims unwilling to bring charges against the perpetrators for fear of social disgrace. Satyaprem thrashes Tapan — who does not bring charges of assault — but the families eventually agree to file a complaint against him.  Still, a key point is whether Satyaprem could be so certain that Katha’s story is true. Unlike in ‘Pink’, we are not shown the actual event; this might be laudable for not being exploitative but can we accept such hearsay since Tapan would have to eventually stand trial in court?  

 ‘Bold’ subjects relating to gender issues are hardly ever handled satisfactorily and I tried of give reasons. The stories are always one-sided with ignominies heaped upon victims even when the audience is crying out for retribution. In ‘Satyaprem Ki Kahani’ one wonders if a rich family like Katha’s would act so helplessly — especially in view of her attempted suicide. Another film one might recall here is the Malayalam film ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ (2021) where we wish that the wife would get her revenge on her in-laws for her servitude instead of only walking out — so her husband can marry again and inflict more misery on someone else. But this one-sidedness is due to Indian cinema essentialising social conflicts in terms of the helpless victims of subjugation and the perpetrators. I would propose that for a truer picture of conflict — whether gender or otherwise — to emerge one must not only concede that the victims would offer resistance but that the perpetrators would themselves need to negotiate, since few situations are entirely without recourse. Still, what Indian cinema has evidently to contend with is nothing less than the notion of karma, which does not leave one with the freedom to act. 

(The author is a well-known film critic)