Have you heard that in any masala flick of Bollywood leading caste named Rahul Chamar or Prem Bhangi or Vijay Deenanath Kanjar. Yuck! I know standard response, these name doesn't sound macho. My question is which part of these name look odd for leading character First name Vijay or Last nameKanjar. Amitabh played Vijay many times in his 5 decade old carrier but never played a character having last name as Kanjar, Chamar, Bhangi or for point sake any dalit caste.
Can't be love and praise character having lower caste last name?
It is said that Bollywood shows mirror image of Indian society. But I was shocked to realize how narrowly the characters are portrayed. We have seen diversity in terms of class but never in terms of caste which I think is much deeper. The main character of movie irrespective of class (economic status) always belong to upper caste.
The caste identity is so deep that even in fiction we can't imagine Chulbul Kori beating goons and playing half Robin Hood. Why is this only reserved for likes of Pandeyji. I'm not debating that character having lower caste last name are not shown in good light. There are movies where lower caste character played significant role like Kachara was only spinner playing for Bhuvan. But we hardly see movies where lower caste protagonist plays the central role.
What restricts our imagination to name our leading character a dalit last name?
In this sample survey I have not included movies which are based on real life or inspired by real life incident. Movies like Andaz Apna Apna hasimaginery last names like Bhopali and Manohar while in movie Udaan last name was not mentioned.