Episode five in season two of the popular Amazon Prime series Made in Heaven, titled ‘The Heart Skipped a Beat’, has garnered attention in the last few days, and rightfully so. The episode showcases the intercaste marriage of an accomplished and assertive Dalit woman, who insists on having a Buddhist wedding against the strong judgement and discomfort of her privileged caste in-laws.Millions of people formerly termed ‘untouchables’ converted to Buddhism, inspired by Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar’s call to conversion in 1956, breaking off their caste shackles. Millions more would follow in later decades. The episode is directed by the very talented Neeraj Ghaywan, a Dalit himself, who made a courageous move by portraying a Buddhist wedding on a mainstream global streaming platform. Prior to this collaboration with the elites of the Hindi cinema scene, he has given viewers hard-hitting stories that delve into complex subjects such as caste, patriarchy, sexuality and love in the most poignant, authentic and sensitive ways.Ghaywan’s Masaan and Geeli Pucchi take us through journeys of lives of unseen, invisible individuals, such as Deepak Kumar, a young man with aspiration, helping in his family’s caste-based occupation of burning pyres for the dead in the ghats of Varanasi, and Bharati Mondal, a queer labourer asserting herself in the world of upper castes and men. These characters are humanised in such a way that you can see the director has placed a piece of himself into the narratives. Before writing anything else, I must acknowledge that being the only vocal Dalit director in the Hindi film industry must not be easy. One must feel isolated and Ghaywan has been able to carve out a space for himself through the challenges of an industry that heavily relies upon kinship networks and the goodwill of ‘family friends’. Ghaywan’s current creative work for MIH, is a part of a long creative history.Yashica Dutt’s ‘Coming Out as Dalit’.Coming to the episode in question: in the first few minutes of the episode, you hear Pallavi Menke (portrayed by savarna actor Radhika Apte), an assertive, accomplished writer who has studied at Columbia University and has won a prestigious award, narrate her journey of ‘coming out’ as a Dalit to a hall-full of audience. This setting, the interview, and the words Apte’s Menke uses are eerily familiar. For those of us in India, and especially those from the anti-caste space but not limited to them, immediately saw the uncanny resemblance between Pallavi Menke and Yashica Dutt, who wrote the book Coming Out as Dalit and gave multiple interviews on the subject. So much so that many of us, myself included, thought Dutt was consulted for this episode.To me, the episode was bittersweet as a savarna actor played the role of an assertive Dalit woman activist, whom I could identify with. It was discomforting, to begin with, but it became unjust and unethical as soon as I learnt from Dutt that not only was she not consulted for the episode, but she wasn’t formally credited and no formal consent or permission was sought to use her story as a basis for creating Menke’s character. Dutt wrote a dignified note congratulating Ghaywan for his revolutionary episode and rightfully demanding due credit for her story and written work as inspiration for the storyline of the episode.The makers of the series, savarna producers and writers, collectively brought out a condescending statement discrediting Dutt’s demand, which they called ‘misleading claims’. In one of her interviews, Dutt sensitively pointed out the difference between Neeraj Ghaywan’s note on Instagram which acknowledged that she was the inspiration behind the ‘interview’ part of the episode, versus the collective statement. There is a difference, Dutt said, when two oppressed caste folks engage with one another in a respectful, dignified way vis-a-vis power-wielding savarna, who essentially look down upon her original contribution. One can understand the burdens Ghaywan might carry in being the only Dalit in the mainstream industry full of savarna who claim to be allies but who also mean ‘business’.Thus the makers’ failure to give journalist and writer Dutt due credit for her story and book inspiring their portrayal of an assertive Dalit woman writer is emblematic of a longstanding systemic and epistemic injustice. Misappropriation of oppressed caste communities’ narratives to forward one’s academic career, NGO funding and in recent years in the film industry, a race to look more diversity-aware and inclusive in dealing with creative subjects is being critiqued by vocal anti-caste activists and scholars. The fetishising and exoticising of oppressed communities’ experiences is not new. In several films from yesteryears and contemporary times, a savarna protagonist will play a saviour to helpless Dalit victims. Yet rising global awareness of inequalities and a new global market for stories from the margin have pushed savarnas to delve into topics they have never engaged with deeply. But the question is: Are they capable of the retrospection and self-reflection needed to create stories of the marginalised with respect and ethical collaboration?It certainly matters who owns the narrative when it comes to oppressed castes and indigenous communities, because their stories haven’t been represented in full honesty and respect by those who hold the power to publicise stories in the mass media. Yet it is not so much about whether only oppressed castes can represent their stories the best; it is about what intentions those in power have when they tell the stories of the oppressed. Do they have the best interests of the oppressed communities at heart? How do people in the industry and researchers ensure that they have the point of view and narratives of the communities they wish to creatively engage with? They will have to question their privileged caste location and point of view, as uncomfortable and confronting as this task may be. They will have to face the fact that their standpoint is limited because they have not engaged with oppressed caste communities beyond a transactional master-servant relationship. They will have to unlearn this ingrained superiority to discover their own humanity and to acknowledge the oppressed caste communities in their full capacity as humans, flawed and complex. Not only helpless victims or currently trendy assertive activists but also your Raj, Rahul and Poo of commercial Bollywood films! Where are the Kambles in any Indian film’s narrative? Corrupt gullible constables?The privileged caste makers will have to create content that speaks to the oppressed communities and not merely for the savarna gaze. They will have to go so deep in reflection as to find it problematic to embark on a creative project without representation of the community on their team, right from the research for the story, the writing part and casting. It is not sufficient to have a token representation of one talented director from within the community, who is anyway ‘low-hanging fruit’. He has made it there against the odds. What about those who are not able to enter due to savarna gatekeeping? The savarna filmmakers will have to put effort into looking for and creating more such representatives from the community themselves.In academia, research on Ambedkar’s work took centre stage predominantly since the 1990s, thanks to the assertive anti-caste counter public and their vernacular booklets and pamphlets which sustained the anti-caste discourse among the masses. It was not without struggle and backlash. In similar vain in Indian cinema, the works of Pa Ranjith, Mari Selvaraj, Nagraj Manjule from the regional film industry and Neeraj Ghaywan from the Hindi film industry have forced a shift in the narrative. The commercial production houses and streaming services headed by privileged caste folks are merely aping these trends, purely for financial gains, to reach an untapped viewership from the margin and garner the label of being progressive from the global viewership. The priorities are clearly different. The regional directors and storytellers completely debunked how Indian cinema is made and they questioned the narratives and portrayals of heroes and anti-heroes. Their protagonists are complex people, creating new film genres. Forcing others to follow suit. This is an achievement and an example of how with assertion and creativity, oppressed caste communities have shifted the dominant narratives.Oppressed caste communities who use multiple nomenclature to define themselves, are diverse groups of people, regionally, religiously, linguistically, by caste and class too. What ties them all together is that they have been part of and experienced two centuries of collective consciousness-raising movements across the country. The majority hail Babasaheb Ambedkar as their inspiration, and then you have regional revolutionaries who rejected the historical imposition of caste and stigma. In the South, you have Iyothee Thas who insisted on conversion to Buddhism and Periyar who called for the rejection of religion altogether. You have oppressed caste folks going into socialist-communist revolutions and you have people converting to Islam, Sikhism and Christianity. They all found their emancipation in different ways. Yet they have carved out a common identity despite regional and other differences, due to the movement’s solidarity and allyship over these centuries. It is far from perfect but my point is that these are complex groups of people, and they have unique narratives. As producers engaged in creating authentic stories, you will have to be mindful of whether your story is inspired by thousands or an individual and how you make sure that while you draw inspiration from the narratives of thousands to create one character, you don’t erase unique individual stories that have aided your creative process. It is your ethical obligation.Many of the communities across India who experience caste oppression, did not have the privilege of the anti-caste movement. They lived in close proximity to their oppressors in towns and villages. Coming from a ‘Bhangi’ community in Rajasthan, one can only imagine the ordeals Dutt’s family went through. The violence of not disclosing one’s oppressed identity, living in hiding, all this Dutt describes in her book, which I suggest everyone should read. This is a form of oppression. Her grandmother cleaned human excreta in remote Rajasthan, and approximately at the same time, my grandfather whipped himself and begged for alms as a Potraj in remote Maharashtra carrying the goddess’s temple on his head. Dutt’s grandfather got educated somehow and my grandfather inspired by Ambedkar came to the city, to toil and labour in Mumbai.My grandfather was a staunch Ambedkarite who converted to Buddhism and never climbed the steps of any Hindu temple, for he had felt enslaved by the religion to follow an undignified caste occupation. On the contrary, his son, one of my uncles, who as a young man was denied training in sitar playing, changed his last name and severed his family ties to live a life of anonymity. To us he was a lost one, living in hiding. Later, we saw the struggle of our cousin, the son of my uncle who couldn’t fully integrate as a ‘passing’ upper caste and eventually converted back to Buddhism. No one can say my uncle or his kids had it better by ‘passing’ as upper castes. As an oppressed caste, we have around us many such stories. Dutt wrote her story in full honesty, she did not expect applause for it, she wanted to feel part of the fervour that had begun post Rohith Vemula’s death which was bigger than any of us. She didn’t expect the amount of hatred and erasure that came her way either, for not being the ideal image of a Dalit, for there is none! I cannot highlight enough, that Dalits are a diverse entity.Apte’s character bore so many similarities to real-life Dutt, that dismissing her demand for credits publicly in a collective statement doesn’t land well for the makers of the show. The dismissive collective statement also shows who wields disproportionate power in building narratives or erasing them. The dismissal came after Ghaywan acknowledged Dutt in his Instagram note. Since there was an informal acknowledgement, there should have been formal credits too. It is about ethics and principles of engagement. Ghaywan also named books of a few authors which came to their aid in shaping the story of the episode. In academic practice, if you quote something without formal acknowledgement, it is called plagiarism. In the case of creative content and writing, it is a copyright breach.In their interview to Midday, the makers were prompt to pat their own back for taking a whole day to talk with and learn from Ghaywan’s experiences to create the episode in question. If the makers, most of them savarna women, wanted to truly engage with the issues of caste and marriage, a one-day conversation with Ghaywan would only mean scratching the surface. They cannot rely on one Dalit director’s labour to enlighten them on caste. They will have to open their eyes to the fact of how caste operates around them, how they are complicit. They will have to bring in more scholars and creative folks from the community to get a fuller picture. They can then happily applaud their creative process for also being ethical.If you look at the literature on decolonisation and ethical research practices, especially in the case of indigenous communities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, indigenous communities have created their own committees, protocols and policies for researchers to engage with them in a respectful, reciprocative and collaborative manner. Why can’t we demand such an ethical practice in the case of oppressed caste communities and tribal communities in India and extend it to the creative industry too? It was very easy for the makers to invite a few scholars or creative writers, especially those whose works inspired their work, to a formal consultation. It is about the ethics of acknowledgement. Oppressed caste knowledge and creative endeavours are not free to take. They can’t be brushed aside or lumped together as the experiences of thousands. A note at the beginning of the episode or the end, could have said: “For our storyline and characters we credit so and so individuals, whom we consulted, compensated fairly and drew inspiration from. Also, we acknowledge that in our society caste has a big significance in the matter of matrimony among other issues, and this story also draws from the experiences of thousands who are breaking the barriers of caste.” This could have been an example of ethical acknowledgement and collaborative practice. Would it have delayed their creative process? Well, it would certainly have brought out a more enriched creative work.Ange-Marie Hancock, a Black scholar, wrote a book in 2016 on intersectionality, to map and trace the genealogy of intersectionality-like thoughts and to lengthen the concept’s historical arc. She aptly notes that Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricial Hill Collins used similar language that sounded like intersectionality-like thoughts despite being from two distinct fields. She states, that if one were to argue that Crenshaw and Collins simultaneously (but not collaboratively) founded intersectionality in the late 1980s, then what shared sources did they have? Hancock answers this question by tracing intersectionality’s origins to activism. Because intersectionality-like thoughts and language existed in the activism lexicon and praxis, it also percolated in academia, among the scholars who described or did intersectionality at the same time, not knowing of each other’s works. I state this source to engage with the debate around the term ‘Coming Out’.Dutt used a discourse that exists in LGBTQI+ movements, on ‘coming out’ to embrace their truth. Dutt extended this framing to the experience of thousands of aspiring oppressed castes who choose to change their family name to escape blatant casteism. Dutt’s work validated their struggle. It resonated with them.Dutt has stated in several of her interviews and writings that followed her book, that her usage of ‘coming out’ itself is not radical, the term resonated with her, but her using the discourse to write her unique narrative is her contribution. Against the backlash she received from all corners, she continued to engage in conversation on this discourse that she has built over the years. Yet the makers in their collective statement brought into question her writing and intellectual work that is available in the public domain, by questioning the originality. They cited queer Dalit academic Sumit Baudh’s 2007 article which is not available in the public domain to state that he used ‘coming out’ in the caste context first. After the collective statement of the makers came out, Baudh went on X (formerly Twitter) to question Dutt, asking why she hadn’t credited him in her book for this article. He had ample time since 2019 to ask this question to Dutt, especially when he had also shared panels with her as late as April 2023. This is an example of savarna instrumentalising one oppressed caste person to bring down another. Instead of questioning the makers for their unethical ways, sadly Baudh turned to discredit Dutt viciously. In such a power play, meaningful solidarities within the oppressed caste are fractured, sometimes beyond repair.It is completely plausible that Baudh and Dutt used the framing of ‘coming out’ without knowing each other’s work, because the language and discourse already existed in the activist community, which does not take away the labour both put into bringing forth their narratives. By pitting Dutt, Baudh and to some extent Ghaywan against each other, the savarna makers have pushed aside their own responsibility of self-retrospection and commitment to create stories ‘bigger than themselves’, as they claim. This shows that the savarna, privileged caste and class content creators and filmmakers are not yet capable of ethical collaborative practice and representation of the marginalised.Swati Kamble is an anti-caste intersectional feminist researcher-activist. Her research broadly focuses on human rights and social justice movements, decolonisation and intersectionality. She has a PhD in socio-economics from the faculty of social sciences at the University of Geneva.