Marginalized Identities and the Nehruvian Nation-Syate in Pyaasa
Sanchit Jain Columbia University
Marginalized Identities and the Nehruvian Nation-State in Pyaasa Sanchit Jain
Columbia University
The Nehruvian nation-state was synonymous with state-sponsored economic development, buoyed by optimism about the future. Pyaasa, directed by Guru Dutt and released in 1957, stands out as a movie in the Nehruvian moment that is critical of the nation-state. The movie’s resolution appears to reject the state’s promise and take on a decidedly cynical note. This essay will argue that in this context, the marginalization is preserved and furthered by the nation-state’s modern institutions. These include the train, which is portrayed as threatening to the poor and divisive, as well as the police, who contribute to the marginalization of Gulabo’s character. This is complicated by the widespread literacy of characters, both major and minor, and which remains unexplained in the movie. Gulabo’s unexplained literacy is part of a larger pattern in which Gulabo is denied a past, in comparison to Vijay, whose past elevates him to mythic-tragic status. This allows for the audience to process and criticize his marginalization in a manner that is not afforded to Gulabo, whose story is left incomplete. Finally, the specific marginalization of both Gulabo and Vijay speaks to a larger marginalization within the populace. This is varyingly articulated through narrative, songs and picturization.
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I
ndia won independence from British colonial rule in 1947 and Jawaharlal Nehru became Prime Minister of the new nation. The Nehruvian nation-state was synonymous with “an emphasis on economic transformation”1 – state-sponsored economic development, buoyed by an optimism about the future. Pyaasa (d. Guru Dutt, 1957) is a film that stands out in this period as being unusually critical of the nation-state. Unlike Awara (d. Raj Kapoor, 1951), in which the ending upholds the institutions of the state, Pyaasa appears to reject the state’s promise and take on a decidedly cynical note. The key characters in the film include a poor, disenchanted and unpublished poet and a prostitute who helps him. This essay will focus on the relationship these marginalized characters have with the modern Nehruvian nation-state. It will argue that their marginalization is preserved and furthered by the modern institutions that can be found in the Nehruvian nation state. Furthermore, it will contend that their specific marginalization speaks to a more general marginalization of the public. Pyaasa is the story of Vijay, the poor poet who is ostracized from his family. His attempts to get published lead to his working for Mr. Ghosh whose wife Meena was Vijay’s girlfriend in college. A prostitute named Gulabo who has fallen in love with Vijay ultimately gets his poetry published. Mr. Ghosh only consents to this, however, after Vijay is considered dead. When Vijay returns from the hospital to claim what is rightfully his, he is disillusioned with the greed and lack of true friendship or integrity of those around him and rejects his true identity, thereby foregoing the wealth and fame that Vijay’s name has acquired. In the end, Vijay walks into the distance with only Gulabo by his side, leaving behind Mr. Ghosh, Meena, his brother and former friend. Vijay and Gulabo are both frequently seen in the street setting. Ravi Vasudevan calls this street the “space of physical and social mobility… [and] the space of the dissolution of social identity.”2 This might explain why both Vijay and Gulabo inhabit the space of the street. For Vijay, the space gives him the anonymity that he later embraces. At a practical level, Vijay often sleeps on park benches and roams the street because of his lack of a consistent income and ostracization from his family. For Gulabo, the street is where she is able to meet her upper class clients, for social boundaries between the rich and poor are broken down. The street is also where the two first meet, at nighttime, when Gulabo attempts to seduce Vijay with a song he wrote himself. This scene is interesting in that it’s situated at nighttime, which allowed Guru Dutt to incorporate elements of the style of film noir that was gaining popularity in Hollywood. These included “low-key lighting and chiaroscuro effects… oriented to generating a sense of instability in character perception and moral situation.”3 Some element of instability and an unclear morality is derived from the fact that this is a scene involving a prostitute attempting to seduce the protagonist, who follows her. At this point in the film, Gulabo’s morality is questionable for the audience for they are not made aware of her goodness of heart. She is later revealed to be the prostitute with a heart of gold, but 1 Ravi S. Vasudevan, “Shifting Codes, Dissolving Identities: The Hindi Social Film Of The 1950S As Popular Culture”. Making Meaning In Indian Cinema. ed. Ravi S. Vasudevan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 99-121. Print. P. 103. 2 Ibid, P. 110. 3 Ibid, P. 110.
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this is unclear when she is first introduced. Another element of the use of nighttime is the presence of the street lamp, which Vasudevan recognizes as a “signifier of both street and of night and therefore, of a physical, social and sexual drive.”4 Scenes involving Gulabo are often set at nighttime, when the street lamp provides the only lighting and is often visible in the frame. This street lamp is an indicator of both the sexual nature of Gulabo’s work (and the transgressions of the upper classes that avail of her services) as well as the sexual (or sensual) attraction that she later develops for Vijay, which will be discussed later in this essay. In this manner, the street is configured as a space in which sexual transgression takes place. Notably, this street is a modern space, marked by pavement, electricity and modern transportation. The film, however, is also critical of the street and the fact that it has become a space for the marginalized, including Vijay himself. Vijay highlights the plight of these marginalized people in the song Jinhein Naaz Hai Hind Par, where he walks down the street in the red light district of the city, pointing out the unbearable poverty and impoverishment. The song begins with a close up of Vijay’s face, which allows the viewer to see and be impacted by his distressed expression. The camera then alternates between looking at Vijay and looking at his surroundings (as Vijay does). This allows the viewer to observe Vijay’s own body language and expressions as well as the surrounding red light district through Vijay’s eyes. Another shooting mode used is to look at Vijay through the railing of a verandah as he walks down the street, allowing the viewer to also look through the eyes of the people on the street and in the neighborhood. This is challenging because the film forces the viewer to consider the viewpoint of prostitutes in the most literal sense. In the scenes that focus on Vijay up close, the background is unclear, except for a few occasions when the focus shifts to the background. One example of this is when the focus shifts to a scene of two women negotiating with a man about something. The lyrics (“yeh ismat ke saude” or the negotiations of chastity and selling of purity) help clarify that this refers to the prostitution of girls and the treatment of human beings as objects of business. Vijay’s constant rejoinder is to the invisible people who have pride in this land (“jinhein naaz hai hind par”) whom Vijay is unable to find anywhere (“woh kahaan hain”). By constantly raising this question, Vijay is pointing to the fact that there is such blatant prostitution (for which he uses the evocative imagery of trampled bodies, blood on the walls and more) that is continuing unnoticed and unchecked. The song is possibly the most blatant and outright critique of the new nationstate’s inability to solve its social problems and provide for its most marginalized citizens. Prostitutes might be considered the most marginalized for they’re economically and sexually (physically) exploited; they are also considered responsible and thus morally deprived for their sexual transgressions. The song is also useful in noting that Gulabo is not a uniquely marginalized prostitute character (her marginalization is explored later in the paper) – she is a victim of a larger problem of a lack of adequate response to prostitution. Despite the widespread degradation and impoverishment, literacy is widespread among the characters that inhabit the movie. Not only are the college-educated Vijay, Meena and Mr. Ghosh able to read and write, but characters ranging from Gulabo to the hospital nurse 4 Ibid, P. 115.
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and the wider public are able to read Vijay’s poetry when it is published. In fact, the poetry is such that it brings crowds of people together, as seen in the ceremony scene in which Mr. Ghosh, Vijay’s friend and others celebrate the success of the published work. Men dressed in traditional Indian dress populate the crowd. This is striking because the camera, originally in wide angle so as to give us a sense of the immense popularity of Vijay’s poetry as well as of the general population of the crowd, then moves to a close-up of Gulabo and her friend, Juhi. At this point, we already know that Gulabo can read. Gulabo’s ability to read is obviously critical to her identity and role in the narrative for it connects her with Vijay. It is her literacy that enables her to read and push for his poetry to be published. However, given that she is a prostitute, multiple questions arise. If she is able to read, why is she still a prostitute? The nature of her work is such that she is frequently exploited, as we see when she is denied her dues after spending time with a rich man in a car. A pimp, who appears to be unkind towards her, also coerces her. She is only protected when another man (Abdull Sattar) comes to her aid. Her literacy has not allowed her to a get a job that might be considered more acceptable in society – it is not liberating in this sense. We can also question where she learnt to read. Given that literacy levels in Nehru’s post-Independence India were not high, especially for women, this is a valid question to ask. The film does not attempt to answer this question. It is possible that she belonged to a higher class at one point but was found to have committed some social transgression and forced into prostitution as a result. This, like any other explanation, is only a hypothesis that could explain her literacy. This is part of the manner in which Gulabo has been characterized in the movie: we are not given any details about her background, how she entered the work of prostitution or how she is able to read. Gulabo is a character without a past but Vijay’s past is crucial to his identity, and helps in the movie’s configuration of him as a mythic-tragic character. Vijay’s past is such that he is never able to escape it, in his poetry or his life. The woman he loved in college is whom he dedicates his poetry to, whom he repeatedly encounters and must encounter if he is to get his poetry published; the family who forsook him repeatedly comes back to haunt him, acting as the fair-weather friend nobody wishes to have. This is not to say that every element of Vijay’s past is explained. For example, the movie makes no attempt to explore why he originally started writing poetry in the first place or why he chose to write poetry as a career. With regards to these questions, the only information the movie provides is that he has a natural flair for it – in college, he was able to conjure a verse of love for Meena on the spot. It is also noteworthy that flashbacks like the college scene appear a few times in the movie, but only from Vijay’s point of view. In this sense, at a formal level, Vijay’s character is whom we are given most opportunity to empathize with and understand as a full character. This might even be one of the principle criticisms of the movie – that in denying Gulabo a past, the movie is never really able to fully criticize her marginalization, for it never makes a complete effort to understand it.. Gulabo’s background is unknown and so, we cannot construct a narrative of tragedy for her. But this is not the case for Vijay. The fact that he went to college makes his poverty especially striking – here is a man, who is unable to work to even sustain himself (as his own mother recognizes), despite having gone to college – the only job we see him have is a peon or servant in the house of former classmates of his. Vijay’s story is tragic not simply of
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itself but also in comparison to that of these former classmates. The mythic-tragic element of Vijay’s character is also understood through the manner in which the camera looks upon him. In the ceremony scene towards the end of the movie, Vijay enters the auditorium and the rest of the audience turns to look at him when he starts to sing. The camera looks upon Vijay as the members of the audience would (the viewer is thus configured as a member of the audience). The architecture of the auditorium demands that the camera look up at Vijay in a low angle shot that depicts him as larger than life. The open doors behind him also provide natural lighting from the background that silhouette his body. With his arms outstretched, Vijay is not only a larger than life figure with a glow that emanates from behind him (almost like a full-body halo) but he is also a Christ-like figure (for Christ with his arms outstretched is his posture in a typical depiction of Christ on the cross). The parallel is striking for Christ sacrificed himself for the salvation of the Christians. The question that the viewer must confront at this point in the movie is whether Vijay’s selfsacrifice or sacrifice of identity is for the larger public. If this were so, what is Vijay able to give to the larger public? One way to answer this question is to look at the popularity of his poetry. Vijay’s poetry speaks to the poor living conditions of the general public and a general failure to achieve (in love, career and life). This appears to resonate with a larger public – Vijay’s poetry gives them occasion to find solace and comfort. This is a strange mutation of Benedict Anderson’s theory of imagined communities. As Vasudevan puts it, “Anderson… referred to the importance of print-capitalism” through which the “reader-subject imagines the simultaneous existence and activity of other members of the putative nation.”5 Anderson thus spoke of the nation as a locus where “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail… [there is a] deep, horizontal comradeship.”6 However, here, the comradeship (and possibly nationalism) seems to be the product of a shared experience of inequality or exploitation or a general failure in achievement. This seems to be more the nationalism of the anti-colonial type than of the optimistic post-Independence Nehruvian moment. In a sense, literacy (and education) are unifying, but not as a means of redeeming the nation-state (for this nation is not shown to have any part in providing education) but as a means of allowing for a joint critique of the nation-state. Vijay’s tragedy becomes everybody’s tragedy through the consumption of his poetry. The source of Vijay’s tragedy is up for debate. Guests at Mr. Ghosh’s dinner party recognize that his poetry is moving and even affirm that poetry (shayari) is not the domain of the rich or elite alone. A lack of talent is not the cause of Vijay’s inability to get published. The audience is given opportunity to come to this conclusion themselves, for the poetry is recited or sung at numerous moments in the film, each time equally moving. At the college reunion, Vijay is criticized because his poetry is sad and about poverty and destitution, which are topics that are deemed inappropriate for a celebratory occasion. However, this same poetry of sadness appeals to the wider public and so, it is probable that these criticisms were simply time-specific and not indicative of a real ‘problem’ with Vijay’s poetry. What is to be 5 Ravi S. Vasudevan, “Film Studies, New Cultural History And Experience Of Modernity”. Economic and Political Weekly 30.44 (1995): 2809-2814. Web. P. 2810. 6 Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1991. Print. P. 7.
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questioned, however, is the poets’ claim that everybody has a right to produce poetry. At the same reunion, Mr. Ghosh invites Vijay to visit him in his office; Vijay imagines that he wishes to publish his poetry and goes prepared for this. Mr. Ghosh informs him that this is not the case for his publishing house only publishes the poetry of well-known poets. He dismisses the poetry at this point and it appears that it is because Vijay is not already a celebrated poet. However, he does agree to publish the same poetry once Vijay is appeared to have died, on the behest of both Meena and Gulabo. It is possible, then, that Mr. Ghosh is opposed to publishing Vijay’s poetry because of his past relationship with Meena (he is unambiguously shown to be jealous) and the threat that Vijay poses to his own relationship with his wife, who is visibly moved by the poetry and to whom the poetry is often dedicated. There are three possible reasons for Vijay’s inability to get published: the somber mood of the poetry, his poor background and lack of renown, and his prior relationship with Meena. The first reason has been disproven but the second and third reasons are both partially responsible for his failure. Critically, these are not objective problems with Vijay’s character or his poetry. Instead, these are problems for Mr. Ghosh and indicate problems both with the society in the movie and the capitalist business enterprise Mr. Ghosh runs. That Vijay is rejected because of his background points to the monopolization of the means of production (of industry) by the elite, rich classes and the inability for those of the lower classes to enter this realm. It also speaks to the importance given not to the work (which is all that would matter in an ideal world) but the person responsible for the work. The publisher’s tendency to let his personal problems decide whom he can publish also speaks to another aspect of the same corruption in the new capitalist enterprise that was beginning to develop in the modern nation-state. The capitalist institution is one of the institutions responsible for furthering Vijay’s marginalization. Another such institution that he encounters is the medical institution. Vijay is admitted to a mental asylum after he insists that he is the Vijay whose poetry has been published but is not believed by any of the hospital staff or Mr. Ghosh and his close friend. Michael Foucault spoke of such mental asylums as spaces in which the “mad are not listened to” and where the practices of “psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis were instrumental in depriving mad individuals of a voice.”7 This is evident in the manner in which Vijay is treated: despite not having any mental illness, Vijay is admitted (presumably without the requisite tests and because this was asked for by Mr. Ghosh). Furthermore, his voice is ignored and he is restrained. All the other patients in the mental asylum are shown to be completely devoid of skills of comprehension and the place resembles a prison more than it does a hospital for the care of patients. His only means to escape is to leave with the help of Abdul Sattar, who is Vijay’s friend and a malishwalla. This scene speaks to a corruption (similar to that in the capital institution) of the mental institution, which is striking because it is an institution that excludes these patients from the rest of the world instead of attempting to rehabilitate them in the rest of the world. The scenes in the hospital and the mental asylum speak to the marginalization of another group of citizens – especially those whose condition was not generally highlighted in the media or film (possibly for the very reason that these 7 Lois McNay, Foucault: A Critical Introduction. New York: Continuum, 1994. Print. P. 2.
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institutions excluded patients from the rest of the world). Beyond modern institutions, there are symbols of modernity that further Vijay’s marginalization. The train is a symbol of modernity in India, introduced by the British in the mid-19th century. It allows for communication and travel within the country, acting as a uniting force – the railway is “a mode of transportation between places but also between social forms, as a democratizing agent.”8 It is also a harbinger of industrialization. It is in this exact context that the usage of the image of the train in Pyaasa is striking. The first time we view the train is when Vijay wakes up from sleeping on a bench by the river. In the background are visible other signs of modernity, ships (the vessels that brought the colonial powers to India, that transformed cities like Calcutta, Madras and Bombay into the port cities that they became). Not only are these in the background – these are what Vijay looks upon just after being woken up. As Vijay wakes up, he hears a car approach from behind and turns to find that Meena has arrived. The camera looks up at Meena in a low angle shot, as if looking up at her. As she leaves the car, a train, possibly carrying some industrial material, passes by. This creates a barrier between the two and as Vijay looks on, we see Meena return to her car and drive off. At this point, Vijay has also begun to walk away. There are numerous questions that could be raised here: how does Meena know where Vijay was sleeping that night? There is no indication as to how in the movie. The train, however, is crucial. In the manner the scene is constructed, Vijay is couched in between the river and its mighty vessels on one side, and the train on the other. The train restricts his access to Meena and in doing so, does the opposite of what it is traditionally known for – dividing instead of uniting (especially across class and/or gender boundaries). Meena, a member of the higher class, and seen here standing on physically higher ground (emphasized by the low angle shot), has access to modern modes of transportation, such as the car. Populating one short scene with the car (and chauffeur), train and ships speaks to both the industrialization as well as the luxury that Vijay has no place in. Is the rest of the nation, in its industrializing frenzy, moving on like these modes of transport without Vijay? Possibly. While the train can be divisive, it becomes a very real danger to the people in the scene in which the beggar is killed. Vijay encounters a beggar near the train tracks who is feeling cold. Vijay gives him his coat – an already striking move for Vijay is always seen in the same coat and pants, presumably because his clothing options are limited as a result of his poverty. As Vijay walks on, he sees the beggar attempt to cross the tracks and have his leg get stuck in the tracks. Vijay returns to help him as the monstrous train charges ahead, without any indication of stopping for the two men in its tracks. Later, we find out that ‘Vijay’ (actually the beggar, who is identified as Vijay because of the coat) has passed away. The train is figured as an impersonal, mechanical entity that stops for nobody. It is also figured as larger than life, for the angle employed is a low angle (we look upon the train as the beggar would have). Silhouetted in the dark night sky, the train takes on the form of a modern monster, ruthless, too fast to keep up with, and all powerful. The scene recalls the very first movie ever made by 8 Ravi S. Vasudevan, “Film Studies, New Cultural History And Experience Of Modernity”. Economic and Political Weekly 30.44 (1995): 2809-2814. Web. P. 2811.
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the Lumiere Brothers, in which a train approaches a station and the viewing public is terrified that the train will jump out of the screen and enter the real world. The confrontation with the train puts us in the place of the beggar or Vijay, clearly asking us to think critically of the train and its role in society today. The upper class is also instrumental in preserving and forwarding Gulabo’s marginalization. The only instance in which a car is shown on screen (apart from those scenes involving Meena or Mr. Ghosh) is when we see a car stop on the street in the middle of the night. The person in the car pushes Gulabo onto the street; she gets up, and returns to the car, demanding the money that is due to her. The man in the car calls out for a policeman, whose arrival is occasion for him to drive away. His face is never shown, making the claim that anyone from the moneyed class could be responsible for Gulabo’s sexual and economic exploitation. Gulabo’s hesitance to provide services to members of this class are again seen when the pimp approaches her later, saying that a wealthy client is waiting for her. In a sense, an alliance is created between the male pimp, the male client and the male policeman, who insists on chasing after Gulabo. That Gulabo is denied a past history or narrative is crucial here – while watching the scene, the viewer cannot help but feel that the policeman would not do anything to the man who solicited the service of the prostitute, or the pimp who sold her services to that man Instead, the blame for prostitution would fall on the woman. Furthermore, the audience themselves cannot argue for Gulabo, for they are not given the information needed to protect her from the policeman. The male pimp can sell the sexual favors of the female prostitute as if he owns her, the male client can exploit these services without paying the prostitute anything and then pass her on to the male policeman, in whose hands she becomes a criminal. What saves Gulabo from the policeman is her incidental meeting with Vijay, who says that she is his wife. This is enough to allay the concerns of the policeman, which is a clear indication that the issue is not the economics or politics of how she entered the work that she is doing, but the sexual nature of the work. The sexual nature of Gulabo’s work demands exploration of whether her relationship with Vijay has a sexual nature as well or not, and how the movie responds to this. Gulabo’s treatment at the hands of these men is what moves her to develop felings for Vijay, for she says that he is the first man to speak to her in a respectful manner. Nonetheless, in the song “Aaj sajan mohe ang laga lo” (Hold me in your arms today, my lover) her love for him is configured as sensual, as explained by the song title. It is also framed as a parallel to the love Radha has for Krishna. The song begins at the moment when Vijay starts climbing the stairs in a building and Gulabo is about to follow him, but stops and turns to listen to the music. She is immediately moved by the first line of the song, which speaks of Radha’s longing for Krishna. She is so moved that she slides down the wall to sit down; the camera closes in on her face as this happens. The close shot emphasizes her downcast eyes that are revealed to have welled up with tears when she lifts her head. This gives the viewer the impact of the full force of Gulabo’s sentiment for Vijay. The camera then follows her as she climbs the stairs (stumbling under the weight of her emotion). Gulabo peeks around the partition at Vijay climbing up the stairs and the camera looks upon her doing so, allowing the viewer to look at Vijay as she does. Such a shooting style unambiguously establishes the parallel between Radha and Gulabo’s love. It
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also becomes clear that Vijay is the Krishna in whose arms Gulabo’s Radha longs to be held. In the mythology of Krishna, Radha is a gopi, while Krishna himself is a cowherd who plays with all the gopis. Krishna and Radha are never married (like Vijay and Gulabo in the movie) but their love is celebrated and venerated in Hindu mythology. Radha’s love for Krishna is an example of love that is sensual in nature but is not borne out of a bond of marriage. Moreover, it is sexual or sensual love that is sanctioned and codified as pure. Gulabo’s picturization as Radha in this song transfers these qualities to Gulabo’s love for Vijay and sanctions it in the eyes of the viewer. It is a curious translation because traditional bhakti songs use the woman’s love for a man as a metaphor for a devotee’s love for god (both of which are applicable to Radha and Krishna). This song brings that love back to the woman-man dynamic. The song is significant in the larger world of Indian cinema for “even if the notion of sexual desiring (for non-reproductive sexual activity) were to be admitted [in the average Indian film from the 1950s], it is more than likely to be conceived of as masculine, with very little significance given to ideas about female jouisance or sexual pleasure, subjectivity and fulfillment.”9 As an aside, it is noteworthy that the configuration of Vijay as Krishna plays into his mythical (and tragic configuration), for it elevates him from a lowly poet to the status of the irresistible and much-loved Krishna (who was also irresistible to women in mythology). The purity of Gulabo’s love for Vijay can also be traced in their numerous interactions. In the beginning, when she attempts to solicit him, he rejects her because he is only interested in how she has procured his song. He treats her with respect (and in contrast to the other men, as already discussed) and this attracts her to him. She clearly harbors desire for him but never acts on this desire. Instead, she channels her desire towards helping Vijay – providing him shelter and getting his poetry published when he supposedly passes away. There is never a hint that their relationship has been consummated in a sexual manner – she has not fallen in love with one of her clients. Gulabo and Vijay are only united at the end, when she is one of two people who stick by him – the final scene sees the two of them walk away together. There is no indication that they will be married. The only suggestion that Gulabo is still conditioned by society to view marriage as the only legitimate relationship between a man and woman is when she meets Vijay while fleeing from the policeman and asks him to save her. Here also, however, it is his idea to say that they are married. This is in stark contrast to Meena, who chose Mr. Ghosh over Vijay because the former could provide her a life of comfort that the latter could not. In spite of having been educated till the collegiate level, Meena is unable to escape societal expectations of marriage. In actuality, there is no indication that she wishes to escape them – the more critical viewer might lambast her character for not having the courage to choose Vijay (and true love) over wealth, especially when those comforts come through a character that is unambiguously corrupt and jealous. However, her character is also the funnel for a larger commentary about the position of women in society – education is not necessarily meant to lead to employment, and marriage is still the means to a secure and desirable life. Moreover, the only acceptable work for an educated woman is in the same office as her husband. This is also exhibited in the conversation Vijay has with his mother when he 9 Brinda Bose, “Modernity, Globality, Sexuality, And The City”. The Global South 2.1 (2008): 35-58. Print. P. 42.
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returns home for the first time towards the beginning. Vijay’s mother (whose criticism of his brother immediately marks them as immoral) laments that his brother do not allow her to work – an activity that would help provide for his sustenance and livelihood. It seems undeniable that Gulabo is not the only marginalized woman in the world of Pyaasa. While her marginalization is an example of the marginalization faced by the countless prostitutes of the city’s red light district, the movie also presents other scenarios of women being oppressed in modern Indian society. Like Gulabo, Vijay is also marginalized at the hands of modern institutions, including the capitalist business enterprise. Notably, the mental asylum and the train are responsible for the ostracization of a larger section of society. In this manner, it becomes apparent that Gulabo and Vijay’s circumstances as well as the institutions they confront further their marginalization to the point where they turn their backs on society. But there is a difference in the manner in which the movie treats the two characters. Vijay’s character is repeatedly elevated to a mythic-tragic status, partly because the audience is given access to his past. This allows for the audience to process and criticize his marginalization in a manner that is not afforded to Gulabo, whose story is left incomplete. One reading of this leads us to the conclusion that Gulabo, despite the sexual agency and subjectivity afforded to her, is more severely marginalized. The question of whether it is a productive exercise to attempt to construct such a scale or hierarchy of marginalization is worth exploring.
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Filmography: Pyaasa (d. Guru Dutt, 1957) BiBliography: Anderson, Benedict R. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1991. Print. Bose, Brinda. “Modernity, Globality, Sexuality, And The City”. The Global South 2.1 (2008): 35-58. Print. McNay, Lois. Foucault: A Critical Introduction. New York: Continuum, 1994. Print. Vasudevan, Ravi S. “Film Studies, New Cultural History And Experience Of Modernity”. Economic and Political Weekly 30.44 (1995): 2809-2814. Web. Vasudevan, Ravi S. “Shifting Codes, Dissolving Identities: The Hindi Social Film Of The 1950S As Popular Culture”. Making Meaning In Indian Cinema. ed. Ravi S. Vasudevan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 99-121. Print.
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