Subaltern resistance

Despite depicting an overwhelming oppression, Asuran also narrates a history of resistance. Sivasaamy’s transformation from a passive survivor to an active resister mirrors a generational shift, where the younger generation refuses to tolerate oppression. His son's act of rebellion against the caste oppressors is not just a personal vendetta but a collective assertion of dignity. The film’s title, Asuran (meaning "demon"), plays on the inversion of mythology—where the so-called "demons" in Hindu epics are often subaltern figures resisting upper-caste dominance (Ilaiah, 1996). This re-reading of history aligns with the works of Dalit intellectuals like Kancha Ilaiah and Gopal Guru, who argue that the demonization of specific communities in myth and history reflects the deep-seated caste logic of Hindu society (Guru, 2009).

Through its brutal yet realistic portrayal of caste violence, police brutality, and state oppression, Asuran positions itself within the tradition of anti-caste cinema in Tamil Nadu. Vetrimaaran crafts a narrative that laments caste violence and highlights the necessity of resistance. In this way, Asuran becomes a powerful statement on the continuing struggles of Dalit communities in India, where land, dignity, and justice remain sites of conflict. Vetrimaaran’s Asuran (2019) is constructed around moments of intense caste-based violence, resistance, and state complicity. Two key scenes illustrate these themes in stark detail: the police station interrogation and torture scene and the massacre of Mariamma’s (Sivasaamy’s first wife’s) family. These scenes highlight how caste oppression is institutionalized, how police brutality serves the interests of dominant caste power structures, and how resistance—however fragile—emerges in response to such oppression.

One of the most harrowing sequences in Asuran takes place in the police station, where Velmurugan (Teejay Arunasalam), Sivasamy's elder son, is arrested and brutally tortured. The officers mercilessly beat Velmurugan, treating him as a criminal rather than a victim of caste violence: Velmurugan had thrashed Vadakooran's son, who had attacked his mother, Pachaiyamma (Manju Warrier). The police beatings are not just punishment but a ritual of humiliation, where the police reinforce the family's position in the caste hierarchy. The landlord's influence over the police is evident: the officers are not impartial enforcers of justice but servants of upper-caste interests. The use of lighting, sound design, and handheld camerawork amplifies the chaos and helplessness of the family, making the audience experience a claustrophobic brutality.

The violence here is not an exception but part of a more extensive system that ensures Dalits remain in a subordinate position. Unlike the dominant caste landlord, Vadakooran, who enjoys legal impunity, Sivasaamy and his family have no access to justice, reflecting real-world patterns where Dalits face harsher punishments for crimes when perceived as challenging upper-caste power. Knowing that they have the support of the police force empowers the landlord and his sons and leads to the gruesome beheading of Velmurugan after stripping him. Such a sequence of events aligns with the historical realities of custodial torture and fake encounters against Dalits, as seen in real-life cases and films like Visaranai (2015), which similarly critiques the police-state nexus. Scholars like Anand Teltumbde (2018) and Gopal Guru (2009) have documented how custodial violence is a deliberate tool of oppression, ensuring that marginalized communities remain politically and economically dependent on dominant caste groups.

The humiliation and massacre of Sivasamy's (first wife) Mariamma (Ammu Abhirami) is the film's most visceral depiction of caste violence, illustrating how economic aspirations and land struggles escalate into outright genocide. When Sivasaamy grants Mariamma sandals as a gift, it backfires. Then, the higher caste accountant of his boss violently beats her and forces her to carry the footwear on her head in front of fellow villagers. Sivasamy retaliates by hitting back and tying the accountant and his goons to the tree at the village square, but the violence that follows is one-sided and merciless. The landlords' men, equipped with weapons, massacre Dalit villagers by burning their thatched roof-huts at night when the families are sleeping inside. The imagery here is horrific. Sivasaamy's desperate fight for survival mirrors the historical struggles of Dalit communities against upper-caste massacres, such as the Kilvenmani massacre (1968) and the Bathani Tola massacre (1996), where dominant caste groups carried out mass killings to suppress Dalit assertion and land rights movements.

Such a film sequence exemplifies how caste violence is often collective rather than individual. Sivasaamy's family is attacked for personal vengeance because they dared to claim dignity and land ownership. Even though landlords orchestrate the massacre, the absence of police intervention reflects the state's tacit approval of caste atrocities. Historically, many Dalit killings in India have been ignored by the police, or worse, the police have colluded with upper-caste groups. These two scenes demonstrate that caste-based violence in Asuran is not incidental but systemic, with the state, police, and landlords acting as enforcers of the caste order. Vetrimaaran's filmmaking—through realistic violence, raw performances, and politically charged imagery—asks audiences to confront the uncomfortable truth that these atrocities are ongoing realities. Both scenes also highlight that resistance, while necessary, comes at a heavy price. Sivasaamy's journey is a reminder of the generational trauma of caste oppression and how survival itself is an act of defiance.

One striking aspect of Viduthalai 1 and 2 is Vetrimaaran's decision to shift the focus of police violence from urban areas, such as police stations and courtrooms, to the vast, open landscapes of rural Tamil Nadu. Unlike Visaranai, which depicts the confined and oppressive environment of a police station as a site of institutional brutality, Viduthalai presents a different spatial dynamic. In this film, the expansiveness of the forests and remote villages does not provide protection; instead, it serves as an extension of state control. In Viduthalai, the police utilize rural terrain as their battleground, transforming forests and villages into militarized zones where surveillance, brutality, and counterinsurgency tactics mirror real-life operations against leftist revolutionary movements in India, such as the anti-Naxalite campaigns in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. The expansive, wide shots of forests and rural areas starkly contrast with the claustrophobic, dimly lit interiors of police concentration camps, highlighting the oppression faced by marginalized communities. These framings challenge the conventional understanding of police violence as solely an urban phenomenon, indicating the ways that state power infiltrates rural life.

Recalling Foucault's concept of biopolitics, Viduthalai demonstrates how the state regulates bodies through direct physical violence and also through spatial domination. The forced displacement of villagers, the establishment of police camps, and the relentless surveillance of suspected insurgents illustrate how state control manifests itself in open landscapes as much as in enclosed interrogation rooms. Vetrimaaran uses wide shots to depict the overwhelming presence of police forces in rural areas, showing an omnipresent state reach.

Visaranai presents the police station as a chamber of horror, where torture is normalized as part of the institutional procedure. The enclosed setting intensifies the feeling of inescapability, as Tamil migrant workers in the film are brutalized in a small, windowless cell, emphasizing their powerlessness within the system. Viduthalai 1 and 2, by contrast, stretch this sense of entrapment across an entire landscape, where hilly mud roads, rocky terrain, forests, and rivers become sites of state violence. The difference in spatial representation between these two films highlights that police violence is not restricted to urban power centers but is deeply embedded in the control of marginalized spaces.

Viduthalai 1 and 2 and a surveillance state

Michel Foucault's concept of the panopticon, derived from Jeremy Bentham's prison design, provides a crucial framework for understanding modern policing and surveillance. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault describes how power operates through overt repression and also through the internalization of surveillance, making individuals compliant even without direct coercion. The panopticon ensures control through constant visibility, where the possibility of being watched induces a self-awareness that reenforces discipline. Vetrimaaran's Viduthalai exemplifies the logic of the panopticon. Its extensive use of checkpoints, wiretapping, and informants reflects a structure where communities under suspicion are perpetually monitored. For example, a striking sequence in Viduthalai 2 features surveillance used to track the People's Army in the forest. This technological extension of policing reinforces the state's omnipresence and control, so that such a cinematic depiction aligns with the contemporary expansion of digital surveillance in counterinsurgency operations in India and globally.

In the United States, predictive policing algorithms, facial recognition technology, and mass surveillance disproportionately target Black communities, ensuring they remain under constant scrutiny. Films like The Lives of Others (2006) and Enemy of the State (1998) explore the psychological effects of pervasive surveillance, mirroring the experiences of marginalized communities subjected to continuous policing. As Michel Foucault theorized, the mere awareness of being watched shapes behavior, limits dissent and reinforces state authority.

Rebellion, Naxalism, and the
People's Army in Viduthalai

Tamil Nadu has a history of leftist and radical movements, particularly the presence of Naxalite factions during the 1970s and 1980s in areas like Dharmapuri and Salem. Agrarian distress and caste-based oppression fueled armed struggles during this period. Although the Naxalite movement in Tamil Nadu did not reach the scale of insurgencies in states like Madhya Pradesh/Chhattisgarh or Andhra Pradesh, the state's response mirrored broader counterinsurgency efforts, characterized by increased police action, arrests, and targeted killings of suspected revolutionaries. Vetrimaaran's films Viduthalai 1 and 2 reconfigure this historical context within a fictionalized setting, shifting the conflict from the small towns and quasi-urban spaces of organized resistance to the rural, forested hinterlands. By doing so, the film underscores how the state extends its reach into these areas, deploying a militarized police force to suppress insurgent movements and exert control over marginalized communities. The People's Army in Viduthalai reflects elements of both Naxalite ideology and local Tamil resistance movements, emphasizing the intersections of anti-caste, anti-capitalist, and anti-statist struggles. By relocating the site of conflict, Vetrimaaran deepens the film's engagement with state oppression and aligns it with global traditions of revolutionary cinema, such as Glauber Rocha's Antonio das Mortes (1969), which portrays rural resistance against authoritarian rule. Viduthalai critiques how the state frames insurgency as criminality, thereby justifying extreme police violence under the guise of national security. Currently this kind of framing is central to real-world counterinsurgency operations in established Naxalite strongholds.

Periyarist ideology and Tamil Desiyam in Viduthalai

One of the principal elements of Viduthalai is its depiction of rebellion against state oppression, drawing from historical and contemporary Naxalite movements. In the film, the People's Army, led by Perumal Vaathiyaar, represents an armed resistance force challenging systemic violence against marginalized communities. Although the group is not explicitly labeled as a Naxalite faction, it embodies many ideological elements associated with left-wing insurrectionary movements in India, particularly their commitment to anti-caste, anti-capitalist, and anti-statist struggles. The film's portrayal of insurgency aligns with Maoist guerrilla tactics, emphasizing decentralized resistance, strategic ambushes, and a firm ideological commitment to liberating the oppressed. In response, the film depicts official strategies similar to real-life counterinsurgency tactics used in Operation Green Hunt, during which security forces launched extensive operations against Naxalite rebels. Historically, these operations often resulted in widespread human rights violations, custodial deaths, and the mass displacement of Adivasi communities.

A pivotal scene in Viduthalai 2 highlights the asymmetry of this conflict. The police force, equipped with modern weaponry and surveillance technology, conduct a brutal operation to suppress the People's Army. The film juxtaposes the state's overwhelming firepower against the rebels' guerrilla tactics, illustrating a stark power imbalance. This scenario mirrors real-world encounters, where the media frames state violence as a necessary evil for maintaining law and order even as it disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable populations. Vetrimaaran's portrayal of rebellion resonates with Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, which posits anti-colonial violence as an inevitable response to colonialism. The People's Army in Viduthalai similarly embodies this idea, portraying armed struggle as both a political choice and an existential necessity. This interpretation situates the film within a broader historical lineage of revolutionary cinema, drawing parallels to global struggles against imperialist and caste oppression.

A key ideological framework underlying Viduthalai is Periyarist thought and Tamil Desiyam (Tamil nationalism), which shape the film's critique of related state violence and caste oppression. Periyar E.V. Ramasamy's philosophy of self-respect, anti-Brahminism, and opposition to oppressive institutions is expressed in the film through Perumal Vaathiyaar, the leader of the People's Army. His character embodies the ideals of resistance against the Brahminical state and its repressive apparatus, particularly the police, which functions as an enforcer of caste hierarchy. Perumal Vaathiyaar's rhetoric and actions reflect the Periyarist call for social revolution. His speeches challenge the legitimacy of the police and the state's claim to moral authority, echoing Periyar's assertion that institutions built on caste oppression cannot be reformed but must be dismantled. The People's Army in Viduthalai serves as a revolutionary force that aligns with the history of Tamil resistance, extending from the Dravidian movement to contemporary anti-caste struggles.

Tamil Desiyam also plays a crucial role in the film's political landscape. Tamil nationalism, particularly in its radical form, has historically positioned itself against the centralizing tendencies of the Indian state, perceived as enforcing Brahminical and North Indian hegemony. In Viduthalai, this ideological thread is woven into the narrative, where the police, agents of the state, suppress Tamil subaltern resistance. The film critiques the historical use of police and military forces to silence Tamil voices, whether during anti-Hindi agitations, the suppression of Dalit uprisings, or the targeting of Tamil activists under draconian laws. For instance, in the film the Chief Secretary of Tamilnadu, the Brahmanical Subramaniyan (Rajiv Menon), is invested in the Hindi language. By situating Viduthalai within this ideological framework, Vetrimaaran extends the film's critique beyond individual acts of police brutality to the structural and historical forces that sustain caste and state violence. The struggle depicted in the film is not merely against the police excesses but against an entire system designed to subjugate marginalized communities and their culture.

Karuppan’s narrative

In Viduthalai Part 1 (2023), directed by Vetrimaaran, Karuppan's narrative emerges as one of the film's most haunting and politically charged arcs. His story is a devastating account of how caste hierarchy, patriarchal violence, and systemic injustice intersect in the lives of the rural poor. Unlike other cases of state brutality in the film, Karuppan's trauma is rooted in feudal oppression—the rape of his wife by a dominant-caste landlord who justifies the act by invoking "tradition." The landlord does not present his violence as a crime but as a continuation of caste-based custom. In a chilling moment, he tells Karuppan that this is how things have always been: that lower-caste women have historically been stripped of their virginity and used by landlords, their bodies made extensions of caste domination. This assertion turns sexual violence into a form of political control. It's not just an act of personal violation—it is a public reaffirmation of caste power, carried out through the body of Karuppan's wife. The violence is not exceptional but systemic, not aberrant but normalized by generations of impunity.

Karuppan, devastated, seeks justice but is met with silence and complicity. The police, meant to protect the vulnerable, offer no support. Instead, they justify the landlord's atrocity. For Karuppan, this institutional betrayal reveals the deep rot in the system. The very apparatus of justice is designed to protect the powerful and suppress the voices of the oppressed. His wife's pain is invisible to the law; by extension, so is his humanity.

Karuppan. More than a victim, Karuppan is the moral center of the narrative—his suffering fuels the ethical awakening of others and intensifies the resistance.	Perumal invokes Karuppan. Karuppan's memory is ritually invoked to galvanize collective rage and reaffirm the purpose of the struggle—his pain is politicized and sacralized.

Stripped of all avenues for justice, Karuppan turns to revenge, but also an act of resistance since it is the only way he can reclaim a sense of agency, not just for himself but for his wife—for dignity as a human being. In the eyes of the law, Karuppan becomes a criminal. But in the moral framework Vetrimaaran constructs, his act becomes a form of justice, a desperate attempt to assert the value of a life deemed disposable. His story becomes a prism through which we understand the political radicalization of ordinary people, including the teacher Perumal. The young constable Kumaresan, who begins with faith in the system, is gradually confronted with narratives like Karuppan's that lead him to question the legitimacy of the very institution he serves. Karuppan's narrative is a profoundly human story of love, loss, rage, and denial of justice that asks us to reckon with the lived realities of caste and gender violence in rural India. Rebellion, in such contexts, is not a choice—it is the only path left open.