Court

 

1.

Court is sometimes proclaimed to be the best, and most realistic, film ever made about judicial proceedings.  The picture was directed by a young man, Chaityanya Tamhane; he was 24 when the film was shot across a period of 45 days in Mumbai.  (Tamhane had been working on the film for four years, mostly involved in writing the screenplay and casting – over 1800 nonprofessional actors were auditioned for the picture.  Some of the people play parts very similar to their roles in real life.  The woman who portrays Mrs. Pawer, the widow of the deceased sewer worker, is, in fact, the widow of a municipal sewer worker who was killed in an accident in Mumbai’s sewer.) 

Tamhane was born in 1987 in a “chawl” – that is a large tenement building typical of urban housing in West India.  Chawl’s are typically regarded as low-quality housing, not exactly slum, but crowded and insanitary – typically, each floor of the structure has a single lavatory.   In an interview with the Hindustani Times, Tamhane described his Marathi-speaking family as close but poor.  However, his uncle, Shekhar Tamhane, was a well-known Marathi playwright.  Tamhane’s mother was interested in the arts and regularly took him to the theater.  In an interview that he gave to a Mumbai theater magazine (apparently Tamhane’s first interview with the press), he notes that as a Maharashstrian (Marathi-speaking person living in Indian province of Maharashtra), he is theatrical by nature.  He recounts appearing in many children’s plays and putting on amateur theatrical productions when he was small.   As a little boy, he watched Maine Pyar Kiye on VHS 75 times.  (Maine Pyar Kiye was the highest grossing Indian movie in 1989 – it’s a 3 ½ hour romantic comedy with elaborate musical numbers.)  At 18, Tamhane attended college as an English major, but never went to class – he spent his time working in theater arts.   

Regarded as an enfant terrible, Tamhane worked first in theater as a playwright.  His drama Grey Elephants in Denmark was produced at his college and the show, said to be about “magic and mentalism” (mind-reading), starred Vivek Gombek, a fellow student.  Tamhane’s relationship with Gombek is important and instrumental: Gombek produced Court and plays the part of the lawyer, Vijay Vora.  (Gombek is one of the producers of The Disciple, Tamhane’s breakthrough picture now showing on Netflix.)  While still enrolled in college, Tamhane began working on short films, including Six Strands, a 16 minute picture about a woman who owns a firm that produces the most expensive tea in the world.  Six Strands was successful and toured the international film festival circuit.  At this time, Tamhane was writing for television, employed scripting a popular Marathi-language TV soap opera.  At that time, he worked sporadically on his own script for Court, inspired, Tamhane says, by his experience attending a concert by the Dalit activist Gadar at a chawl in Mahins – this concert made a deep impression on Tamhane and was the basis from which he developed the screenplay, working on the text for a period of three years.  Vivek Gombek was impressed by the script, and regarded Tamhane as a theatrical genius –he said that he would commit his own money to Court so as to be remembered in film history as the man who “financed Tamhane’s first feature film.”

Court was highly regarded by Indian critics.  But, as a largely Marathi-language film, the picture had to be subtitled into English for most Indian audiences.  Furthermore, Indian lower middle classes (and the poor) are not proficient in English.  Therefore, the picture wasn’t a commercial success in Tamhane’s home country.  (Tamhane himself notes that he wasn’t influenced by Hollywood movies because he was unable to “understand the accent” spoken by the actors in those films.)  An Indian commenting on Court at the IMDB website says: “if you understand Marathi, lo, you are in for few hearty chuckles.”  (You can read Indian vernacular comments on films all day long and enjoy their enthusiasm and curious diction.)  

The Indian film industry is highly fragmented.  Movies are produced in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Teguda, and Kannada dialects.  Most Indian movies are subtitled in either Hindi or English on the basis that most Indians have some capacity to understand those languages.  But rural and urban poor populations are unable to read English and may be only marginally proficient in Hindi and, so, those people prefer pictures produced in their home dialect.  Furthermore, Indian movies are conceptually divided into Bollywood features, popular movies shot in garish color with beautiful performers and lavish song and dance numbers, and pictures that are more serious in conception (and more challenging in their execution).  Indians refer to Bollywood-type movies as masala pictures, referring to the generic spice that is used almost universally in Indian cooking.  Masala sounds like “mass” – and “massy” pictures is another term used popularly in India for Bollywood-style films.  Tamhane describes Six Strands, his student film, as his “heartbreak moment...my divorce from Bollywood” – that is, his decision to make films that consciously oppose the paradigms of a cinema that he loved as a boy.    

Internationally, Court won prizes at the Venice and Mumbai International Film Festivals and was awarded the Best Picture honor by the National Film Reviewers Board in India.  

On the strength of the film, Rolex, the watch company, granted a Protegee award to Tamhane.  The Rolex Protegee program connects up-and-coming film directors with established industry figures and provides funds to support these mentorship activities.  Tamhane was paired with Alphonso Cuaron, the acclaimed Mexican director of Children of Men and Gravity.  Tamhane traveled to Mexico City to work as an assistant director on Cuaron’s Roma, a highly regarded film financed by Netflix.  In interviews, Tamhane credits Cuaron with having a powerful influence on his next film, The Disciple, a picture also produced for Netflix.  The Disciple (2021) is an extraordinary picture about Indian classical music, with fascinating philosophical and, even, quasi-mystical elements.  Because of its rather esoteric subject-matter, the film has not received the attention that it deserves but it is an excellent picture, surely one of the best to be released in 2021.  

Tamhane describes his cinematic influences as City of God, Fernando Meirelles’ Brazilian picture about a favela in the hills above Rio, as well as Lars von Trier, the Danish director, Wong Kar Wai, the Taiwanese film maker, and Michael Haneke, the Austrian director of Cache, The White Ribbon, and Amour.  In other interviews, he credits as influences the Polish director, Krystof Kieslowski (The Decalogue and the Red, White, and Blue trilogy) and the Chinese filmmaker, Jia Zhangke (The World, Mountains may Depart and Ash is Purest White to name a few of his pictures.)

2.

Court draws inspiration from the six-year incarceration (on questionable grounds) of a Dalit activist, Jiten Marand.  India’s political situation is incomprehensibly complex, particularly with respect to the role of the Dalit people – the so-called “untouchables”.  However, it may be helpful to understand a few aspects of West Bengal politics and history to better appreciate the context of this film.

Eighty years ago, the Dalit people lived in impoverished farming villages on unproductive land in the north and east part of India.  Viewed with disdain by other Indians, Dalits were persecuted and, often, murdered (or their women raped) without any significant repercussions.  However, from time to time, the Dalits rebelled and exercised some political influence – for instance, during the sharecropper movement in the 1940's.

(Writing about the Dalits is complicated as well.  The euphemism for Dalit in Indian “member of a Scheduled Caste.”  In fact, the Dalit’s don’t comprise an Indian caste; in the Hindu system, they are regarded as without caste at all or “out-caste.”  It is for this reason that they were persecuted as not really even Hindu, but rather people without a religion.  There are 1107 “scheduled castes” in India – that is, 1107 different ways to be outcaste or caste-less; some of the scheduled castes contain millions of members; others are limited to small areas and have populations less than 200,000.  In West Bengal, a the time of the Partition in 1947, there were about 17 million Dalits or “scheduled castes” living in this part of India.  Dalits are identified as “scheduled castes” because they are entitled to specific constitutional protections intended to advance their social condition – something like quota-based affirmative action programs in the United States.)

When India was partitioned, many Dalits remained, albeit briefly in Muslim East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.  However, the Muslims were no more hospitable to them than the Hindus.  Accordingly, the oppressed Dalits of East Pakistan crossed the border, creating a refugee problem in West Bengal, particularly around what is now Mumbai and Kolkata (Calcutta).  The Indian government resettled the Dalits in Dandkaranya, a vast and inhospitable forest terrain – in effect, moving these farmers into the middle of a jungle.  (It’s a famous jungle – Dandkaranya is where Lord Rama was exiled as described in the Ramayana.)  The Dalits in Dandkaranya found it was impossible to survive in the rain forest.  The Leftist government ruling India in 1967 moved the Dalits to Marichjhapi, now the reserve forest of Sundarban – Marichjhapi is an area of lowlying mangrove islands.  However, this relocation turned out to be untenable and so the government sent troops to the forest areas to forcibly relocate the Dalits there.  The troops and their commanders decided to avoid the difficulty of moving the Dalit population and, so, simply massacred them – probably about 5000 to 10,000 Dalits were killed, although estimates vary.  The scandal was that this massacre took place at a time when a Leftist, even Communist-influenced, government was running India  – the government should have seen the Dalits as a natural constituency and so it is puzzling that the Leftist regime sponsored this slaughter.

But an explanation for this brutal anomaly can be found in the rise of the Naxalites.  (Strictly speaking “Naxalite” is a misnomer for a “Naxa rebel” – but the Indian media refers to these people in general as “Naxalites.”) The Naxalites are Maoist splinter group that broke away from the CPI (M) – that Communist Party of India (Marxist).  This fissure in the CPI (M) happened in 1967.  

The Naxalites are named for a West Bengal village, Naxa, where this extremist faction of the CPI (M) arose.  Mao advocated that impoverished villages and farmers form a revolutionary cadre to overthrow  urban elites.  (Marx believed that the Communist Revolution would be made by the urban, industrial proletariat.  Mao, operating in China, theorized that the true revolutionary class was impoverished, oppressed, and landless farmers.)  Obviously, Mao’s version of Communism had considerable resonance in India, particularly with the Dalits who were largely tenant sharecroppers.  Therefore, Dalit politicians and agitators became connected, at least, in the popular press, with the Naxalites.  But this affiliation quickly became problematic when the Naxalites proved to be extremely violent with distinctly terrorist tactics.  Affiliating the Dalits with the fearsome and brutal Naxalites led to the indiscriminate slaughter of Dalit activists.  The idea was to kill them all and let God sort the innocent from the guilty.

There are very few Maoists if any operating in China today.  However, the Maoist ethic of peasant revolution has taken hold in India.  If Maoism has a future as a political movement, it will be in the Indian sub-continent where terrorist guerillas espousing Maoist ideology are firmly entrenched.  In West Bengal, Maoist insurgencies are active even as I write.  Furthermore, these guerilla fighters have had significant success, attacking and defeating Indian Security Forces.  Beginning in 1971, the Indian government initiated Operation Searchlight, a brutal crackdown on the Naxalites that involved many murders, torture, and human rights abuses.  The Naxalites were driven into hiding, but, at intervals, they manage to kill and wound very significant numbers of police and security forces.  For instance, throughout the nineties, the Naxalites managed to ambush and slaughter several hundred Indian Security Forces every year, sometimes in spectacular massacres involving the death of as many as 250 soldiers at time.  This pattern continues until this day.  During the last decade, Naxalite terrorists have killed an average of 75 to a hundred police annually.  Therefore, the Indian government’s anxiety about Naxalite insurgents operating, particularly, within the Dalit or “scheduled castes” has been both rational and substantial.  According to Mao’s theory, the “scheduled castes” in India should be ripe for participation in violent revolution – they are the “wretched of the earth” if that term has any meaning at all.  

The aggressive and, indeed, rather hysterical persecution of Mr. Kamble by the judicial system in Court must be considered in this context.  The film’s director, indeed, cites a documentary about the Naxalite rebels and their Dalit allies as one of the direct inspirations for Court.  This documentary is Jhai Bim Comrade!

     

Jhai Bim Comrade! a 2011 documentary highly regarded in India and around the world.  (It appears on several lists of the ten best documentaries ever produced.)  Jhai Bim Comrade! explores the so-called Ramabai colony killings that occurred in 1997.  An important Dalit activist, an figure equivalent to Martin Luther King, Jr. in India, is the B. (Bim) R. Ambedkar.  At Ramabai, someone put shoes atop a statue dedicated to the memory of Ambedkar.  The Dalits living in the Ramabai township (colony) peacefully protested, marching to express their indignation.  The Security Forces attacked the protesters and killed several of them.   Several high-profile Dalit social activists were rounded-up and charged with terrorism, an accusation based on the theory that these men were crypto-Naxalites.  A prominent Dalit poet, singer, and activist, Vilas Ghogre, committed suicide, hanging himself while in custody.  After investigating the Ramabai murders (and Ghogre’s suicide), Jhai Bim Comrade! documents another protest march for social justice undertaken in 2006.  Filmed over 14 years, Jhai Bim Comrade! (directed by Anant Patwardhen) is an inspiration for Court.  (Jhai Bim means “Victory to Bim!” referring to Bim R. Ambedkar.  Ambedkar was born Hindu but abandoned the religion in disgust over the caste system and died a Dalit Buddhist, a sect that is important today in the Dalit community and among “the scheduled castes”.)  Ambedkar’s bronze bust appears in a shot of the slum where the lawyer, Vinay Vora, goes to investigate the death of the sewer worker (and is told that the man’s wife and children have returned to their village.)

Vinay Vora is an upper caste Gujarati-speaking Hindu.  (From the way Vora’s mother speaks and her legal diction, I suspect that she is a retired lawyer himself.)  Gujarati speaking people are prevalent in Mumbai where the movie take place and, for hundreds of years, represent a well-heeled bourgeois class of traders and entrepreneurs; it was Gujarati-speaking merchants who founded the original trade guilds in India and who established import-export networks.  As a result, Gujarati speakers have always had a cosmopolitan and internationalist outlook.  The Indian diaspora to East Africa, South Africa, Australia and the United States and Canada is largely comprised of Gujarati-speaking people.  (In the United States, Jersey City is a center of Gujarati culture; the majority of East Coast Subway and Dunkin’ Donut franchises are operated by Gujarati-speaking mercantile families.  Mahatma Gandhi and Narenda Modi, India’s current Prime Minister, were both raised in Gujarati-speaking households, although, of course, they also spoke Hindi, the country’s lingua franca and English.)

In the film, the Judge, Mr. Sudavarte, speaks Marathi in his courtroom.  The prosecutor, Mrs. Nutan, also speaks Marathi.  This explains the moment when the defense lawyer, Vinay Vora, becomes irritated and demands that the officers of the Court (Judge and prosecutor) speak in either Hindi or English.  Vora feels that he is being “home-teamed” by the Judge and prosecutor who have an affinity on the basis of language.  (This aspect of the film reflects a disconcerting reality in criminal court: Judges and prosecutors are housed in the same building and see each other, at least, daily or, even, several times a day.  Therefore, a natural alliance exists between Judges and the prosecutors who appear before them.  By contrast, defense attorneys, at least those retained by the accused – as opposed to the public defenders who are part of the same collegial network – often appear in court as outsiders. From the film’s context, it appears that Vora is a well-known activist attorney, specializing in civil rights – we see him addressing a seminar or conference on that subject.  In the eyes of Mrs. Nutan, the public prosecutor, and Judge Sudavarte, Mr. Vora is an outsider, someone who appears in their court to make trouble for them.  He’s not part of the network or club.  Mrs. Nutan doesn’t see any need to make a big fuss over the Dalit activist, Mr. Kamble.  At lunch, she tells a colleague that the State should just lock up Kamble for twenty years and not trouble itself over the situation – “move on to something else,” she says.  As we see in this scene, Mrs. Nutan is well-respected by her colleagues at the Bar and has her eye on a judicial appointment.  It doesn’t sound like a very good job: Judges are supposed to manage their cases at an industrial assembly-line pace – the average judge handles 3 ½ cases a day with a fast, and, possibly, callous, jurist like Judge Sudavarte sometimes hearing 5 ½ cases in one day.  

The film draws careful class distinctions between the Marathi-speaking and middle-class prosecutor, Mrs. Nutan, and the Gujarati-speaking Vora.  Notice that Mrs. Nutan, like Kamble, rides public transportation to and from work.  Vora tools around in an expensive car listening to “smooth” jazz.  Mrs. Nutan observes that she can’t really afford olive oil.  At home, she has to do domestic chores and cook for her family (and prepare special meals for her diabetic husband).  Court shows Vora in an upscale delicatessen picking up various expensive-looking cheeses and wines without even glancing at the prices on their labels.

3.

Court chronicles legal proceedings against the educator, poet, and activist Narajan Kamble, a character invented for the film.  Tamhane details the criminal proceedings with scrupulous precision.  We see Mr. Vora meeting with a police magistrate to scrutinize the arrest warrant by which Mr. Kamble has been detained.  In this scene, Mr. Vora is accompanied by a member of Mr. Kamble’s troupe, Subodh Kushte, the man who has apparently retained Vora on Kamble’s behalf.  (There is a cringe-inducing scene in which Subodh Kushte, who is apparently a Dalit, is invited to lunch by Mr. Vora’s upper caste parents.)   Next, there is an in-custody hearing before Judge Sudavarte in which bail is denied.  This is followed by Kamble’s arraignment in which Mrs. Nutan reads the elements of the charge (“abetment of suicide”); Judge Sudavarte rules that there is probable cause to believe Kamble could be guilty of the offense and so the case is bound over for a trial, beginning in November 2012.  Unlike a criminal trial in the United States, the matter is tried to the Bench (that is, the Judge).  Because there is no jury empaneled, Judge Sudavarte can try the case piece-meal – we see the case lasting several months and divided into relatively short hearings in which only one or two witnesses are called to testify and, then, be cross-examined.  Judge Sudavarte keeps track of the proceedings by asking his Court Reporter to make various notes that he dictates in open court.  These notes describe his assessment of salient points in the evidence and serve as an aid to his memory.  (The notes that he dictates, also, guide counsel and give them a sense for how the Judge views the evidence.)  Presumably before each hearing, Judge Sudavarte quickly surveys the notes that he has previously made so that he can bring to mind the status of the hearing and its progress.   As the tide of case changes in favor of Kamble’s defense, there is another bail hearing – apparently, bail is based partially on the probability of a conviction and bail requirements may be revised in the midst of the trial.  

4.

Court is one of three great films devoted to the operations of the law.  (The other films are Otto Preminger’s 1959 Anatomy of a Murder and Hans-Jurgen Syberberg’s 1974 Karl May.)  Innumerable movies deploy a courtroom scene as a climax – for instance, Inherit the Wind or A Few Good Men to name two examples.  However, in these films, the movie’s thematic concern is not the mechanics of the law or legal procedures but other issues.  By contrast, Court isn’t about social justice in India or the oppression of the scheduled castes or, really, the personal lives of its protagonists – rather, the film’s interest lies in its exacting and realistic portrayal of legal procedure in the context of a trial arising from an incident that we are never shown and that must be reconstructed from the testimony offered in the courtroom proceedings.  (Most films involving a climactic trial first show us a dramatic event, for instance, a crime, and, then, provide courtroom scenes to explicate or rationalize that event.)  In Court, the viewer is put in the position of the trial judge – we have to evaluate something that has occurred off-screen and assess how we would interpret the facts given in evidence.  In effect, Court requires the viewer to assess the evidence in parallel with the Judge’s interpretation of the facts – we don’t know anything more about the events alleged by the prosecutor in the film than the Judge.  Court, however, gives us all the evidence necessary to evaluate the charge and, in fact, the lengthy recitations of the law (and legal arguments) provide the viewer with the framework of statute relevant to drawing legal conclusions about the facts offered to the Court.  

Court asks us to draw conclusions not only about Mr. Kamble’s alleged crime, but, also, about the precisely observed legal “ecosystem” shown in the film.  To this end, Tamhane provides us with some information about the three officers of the Court involved in the proceedings.  (Notably, we are not shown anything about Mr. Kamble’s personal life – he is a cipher to us as he is to the Court; we don’t judge him as a man but as a legal case.)  Tamhane seems committed to the notion that the ministers of justice are fallible and flawed, but I don’t think he denigrates them: Mr. Vora is arrogant with an air of entitlement – he believes himself virtuous, but is remote from the people that he represents: we see him in an upscale tavern listening to a pretty girl singer performing a Portuguese Fado (this is not as exotic as it first seems – Mumbai was a Portuguese colony at one time.  The name “Bombay” derives from the Portuguese Bom Bae – that is, “good harbor.”  Mumbai by contrast is Gujarati and means something like “Mother City.”)  Notwithstanding Mr. Vora’s flaws, he doggedly advocates his client’s case and (unethically perhaps) puts his own money into the cause.  It appears that he “throws” Kamble’s bail – only to have his client, who is obstinate and also arrogant (he sees himself as an agent of God) taunt the authorities and end up back in Jail.  Mrs. Nutan is similarly indefatigable in pursuing the case.  She’s ambitious and wants to be a Judge herself (we see a female in Judge in one of the last scenes in the film).  Like other middle-class Marathi-speakers, she’s casually bigoted – this is dramatized in the scene in which the family attends the anti-immigrant play.  However, Mrs. Nutan is also a loyal wife and good mother and we see her diligently working at home after cooking supper for her “Mister” who has diabetes.  A paradigm of middle-class virtues, she will probably be appointed to the Bench and, likely, will be a good Judge.  Similarly, Judge Sudavarte is diligent and reasonably fair-minded – of course, he despises Mr. Kamble and, probably, is predisposed to convict him, but, nonetheless, he presides competently over the case and seems to assess the evidence and credibility of the witnesses in a professional manner.  In his personal life, Judge Sudavarte is revealed to be childishly superstitious, but a good family man.  He also seems to be diligent and hardworking.  Justice sometimes slumbers, as the film shows in the last shot, and we are all prone to lash out at others when startled but there’s nothing to suggest that Judge Sudavarte isn’t a capable and fair judge.  Of course, the legal system has bizarre aspects – for instance, the woman denied access to the Court because she’s wearing a sleeveless blouse – but this is characteristic of an ancient institution that has as many foibles as the people that it serves and dis-serves.  Courtroom proceedings are tedious, frequently interrupted, and subject to all sorts of delays – it isn’t an ideal system, by any means, but it’s all that we have.  Any practicing lawyer will attest to the ultra-realistic quality of Court.  

Legal professionals must be detached.  They must realize that the case isn’t about them personally.  They appear as “officers of the Court” with specific functions that must be professionally discharged for the system to function.  This is illustrated in Court in two respects.  First, we see the lawyers and judge putting aside the case when they are off-duty.  Furthermore, there is a remote and detached quality about legal arguments that are advanced – both lawyers zealously argue their respective client’s positions but don’t seem dogmatically convinced as to the rectitude of their points.  There are no courtroom outbursts and the attorney’s behave in a civil manner.  When the bickering gets a little too intense, Judge Sudavarte puts a stop to it.  Although both Mrs. Nutan and Mr. Vora seem convinced of the justice of their position, they remain professionally remote from the controversy.  The detachment shown by the legal professionals is mirrored in film’s style and technique.  Tamhane eschews close-ups and shoots the film documentary-style in long takes.  Often, as in the last courtroom scene, he puts his camera in the back of the room so that it has the vantage of a spectator.  Court is stylistically detached, objective, and, even, cooly remote from the subject that it presents.  As the film’s title suggests, the movie isn’t focused on a dramatic outcome that resolves points in contention in the plot (or purports to solve social issues).  To the contrary, the film is about legal procedure, about how the court operates on day-to-day basis – this represents a fine instinct with respect to law and jurisprudence: law is mostly procedure – outcomes are the result of the application of rational legal procedures to  human problems.  If the procedures are properly followed, lawyers have a kind of “institutional faith” – that is, procedural rules guarantee, in some respect, the justice of the outcome.  It doesn’t really matter if Mr. Kamble is found guilty or acquitted; what matters is that he is accorded a fair hearing and a reasonable opportunity to defend himself.  Critics argue that Court is a scathing critique of Indian justice.  I don’t think this is even remotely correct.  Any practicing lawyer will recognize courts familiar to her or him in the movie.  Lawyers tell clients that courts don’t deliver justice, whatever that might be – all they can offer is the law, a set of principles that has always been recognized to be a different thing from justice.  

Furthermore, the outcome of any specific case is merely a transient ripple on the great river of statutes, rules, and decisions that comprise the law.  Although litigants are concerned with outcomes, lawyers and judges recognize that a verdict is simply a passing phenomena, a surface feature that is intrinsically ephemeral and unimportant in the context of the procedures and institutions that have engendered it.  Indeed, all verdicts are intrinsically ambiguous and uncertain.  In Anatomy of a Murder, the trial doesn’t convince anyone that the metaphysical truth about the homicide has been established – probably, we will never know with any certainty what actually happened.  Karl May claimed to have traveled to the farthest reaches of the world to research his best-selling novels.  But, in fact, he never left his native Silesia in Germany.  May sues a man who has accused the author of fraud and spends the last decades of his life entangled in intricate and destructive litigation about something that doesn’t matter in the slightest.  Vindicated at last, the dying May is confronted by an admirer who praises him as Germany’s greatest writer – the fan is Adolf Hitler.  In Court, we will never know Mr. Kamble’s fate.  And, perhaps, it doesn’t matter.  If acquitted, Mr. Kamble will simply offend again and be charged with more crimes.  The names change and actors replace one another, but the roles that they play remain the same.  

Annotations

Head wobble or waggle or nod – Indians bob their heads to signify “yes”, “no” or “maybe”.  Curiously, they do this without being aware of the gesture.  (There are funny videos of Indians being asked about the head wobble and not seeming to know that they are responding with that motion even when denying that they do this.)  The farther south one travels in India, the more head waggling occurs.  (North Indians are less likely to gesture in this way.)  In Court, Mrs. Pawer, the sewer worker’s widow, answers half the questions put to her under oath with a head waggle – this waggle has to be interpreted for the Court Reporter.  In some instances in this scene, it seems to me that the waggle, described as making an “infinity sign” with your head, is interpreted incorrectly.  (The finest head waggle in the film is Judge Sudavarte’s contemptuous gesture when he suggests that Mr. Voray has the right to file an appeal with the High Court as to his ruling that Kamble must remain in jail without right to bail over the summer hiatus: “the High Court is always in session,” Judge Sudavarte says.)

Wadgaon Massacre – Mr. Kamble appears at a rally to protest the Wadgaon Massacre.  It’s not clear if this is real event or invented for the film.  Vadgaon Sheri is a suburb of Puna, a large Marathi-speaking city that is southeast of Mumbai (and connected to that place by a six-lane highway).  Puna was the site of a 2010 bombing in a bakery that killed 18 people and was attributed to a little-known Islamic terrorist group.  (The U.S. killed the leader of the group in Afghanistan in a drone-strike.)  

Jogeschwari – this is a precinct (or ward) of Mumbai, located in the northwest part of the peninsula. 

Abetment of Suicide – the statute under which Mr. Kamble is prosecuted is not unique to India.  Minnesota, Oklahoma, California, and South Dakota have similar laws.  Minn. Stat. 609.215 makes it a crime punishable by 15 years in prison (and up to $30,000 fine) to aid, encourage, or abet suicide.  (If the suicide is merely attempted, the charge is punishable by 7 years in prison and a fine up to $14,000.)  The Minnesota Supreme Court held this statute unconstitutional as a violation of free speech in the decision State v. Melchert-Dinkel 844 NW 2d 13 (2014).  The case arose from the successful prosecution of a young man who posed on the internet as a suicidal female nurse.  The young man fished for people who were suicidal and, then, encouraged them to hang themselves.  He asked if he could watch the hangings, again in the guise of the suicidal nurse.  The Supreme Court ultimately overturned the conviction on the basis that the statute was unconstitutionally broad and infringed on free speech – it should not be a crime to advocate suicide in general terms, the Court reasoned, and, therefore, Minn. Stat. 609.215 was invalid.

Five-hundred ruppees – Judge Sudavarte fines a group of people 500 ruppees each – in 2014, this was the equivalent of about $80 US dollars. Later in the film, the Judge sets Mr. Kamble’s bail at 100,000 ruppees (due in part to the fact that he has earlier “jumped” bail).  This is a sum equivalent to $1600 – that is, the average sum that a worker in Mumbai makes in one year.

Kalyan Bomb Case – in 1991, a bomb was planted at a Metro station in Punjab.  The bomb exploded killing 12 people and injuring 65.  The bomb was detonated by Sikh militant terrorists.

Andheri East – a neighborhood in Mumbai that is home to the entertainment and corporate businesses.

Dramatic Performances Act – an 1876 law promoted by the British colonial governor of India, Lord Northbrook.  A Bengali-language play, Nil Darpan, was the incentive for the law.  This play, produced in a private home owned by affluent Indians in Calcutta, attacked oppressive practices by British indigo planters.  The play is said to have “demonized” the white skinned plantation owners, calling them “pigs.”  When the play went on the road, traveling to Lucknow, Northbrook agitated for the passage of this law, authorizing fines and imprisonment up to three months for producing or performing in plays that were deemed “obscene or offensive.” It is interesting that the “National Theater Company” involved in the prosecution of the Bengali play was influential on the Irish republican movement.  Dublin’s National Theater (Abbey Theater) was devised on the patriotic model of the Indian theater group.  When Indian gained its independence in August 1947, the Act was deemed too useful to be repealed and, so, it was adopted by most Indian States (and remains the law of Pakistan), notwithstanding wide-spread free-speech criticism of the statute.

Sessions Court – under Article 9 of the Indian Criminal Code, a District Court is called a “Session Court” when considering criminal cases.  In Mumbai, Sessions Courts are exclusively criminal and try only criminal complaints.  (They also have jurisdiction over “Magistrate Court decisions”, apparently police courts convened to try to misdemeanor charges.)  The film’s exteriors are shot at Court no. 17, a Session Court in Mumbai that was the scene of a violent crime itself a few years ago when a criminal defendant attacked court personnel.  The Sessions Court has original jurisdiction over criminal charges up to and including murder cases.  Trial by jury was abolished in Indian in a series of discrete and sub rosa enactments between 1960 and 1973 when the last vestiges of the procedure were eliminated from the Criminal Code.  The English implanted jury trial in India but quickly found that this method of adjudication was unsuited to the subcontinent.  First, caste-leaders control opinion in India and these influential men advised jurors as to how they should rule.  Second, India is fantastically diverse and multi-cultural with various castes, language groups, and religious sects intensely suspicious of one another.  Indian jury trials often led to ethnic and religious rioting and, so, gradually the institution was abolished in favor of Bench (or Judge) trials as shown in the film. 

M. Com – “M. Com.” is a Master of Commerce degree offered by Indian colleges and universities.  M. Com focuses on micro- and macro-economics, accounting, business administration and allied fields.  Mr. Subodh Kushte, Vinay Vora’s paralegal (who is possible a member of a “scheduled caste”) is studying for his M. Com. Degree.

Tilak– a mark on a Hindu’s forehead applied by stamp and usually a paste compound of turmeric, ash, soot, in some cases cow dung, or mud.  The mark signifies piety and is said to be “cooling” so as to enhance concentration and meditation.  On a woman’s head, the mark is called a bindi, the holy dot that signifies a Hindu married woman.

National Youth Party and Dalit Progressive Movement – these are parties to which Mr. Kamble admits belonging.  The National Youth Party is a liberal party with the slogan “Young Indian, Indian Youth”.  It opposes “caste-ism” and regionalism.  Most of its objectives seem mainstream.  The Dalit Progressive Movement seems to refer to Dalit Sangharsh Samidi (DSS), a political movement founded in 1974 that addresses civil rights issues and “caste-ism”.  There are several images of the poet Siddaligaiah, a Dalit activist who died of Covid this year in the film – he was a prominent figure in the Dalit Civil Rights Movement.

Swaraj Mill Workers Ass’n – Swaraj means “self-rule” or “self-governance” and it was Gandhi’s slogan.  This group seems to be a trade-union association, possibly involving workers in the steel industry.  

MFS – Mr. Kamble is said to have been VP of the MFS in 1977 – it’s not clear that this party still exists.  The “M” stands for Maharashtra or the State/Province where Mumbai is located.  The “F” probably stands for “Front” or “Forward” signifying a leftist bent.  “S” probably means “Sena” or “Samiti” – that is, “Party.”

Kite Festival – when Mrs. Nutan picks up her son at day-care, he says he has been assigned an essay in English on the Kite Festival.  This is an annual festival, primarily in Gujarat-speaking areas, in which the triumph of the goddess Sankranti over evil and the demon Rahaska is celebrated by flying kites – the festival occurs when the sun enters the sign of the Goat or on January 14.

New Year Festival – Mrs. Nutan’s son is also supposed to write an account of the “New Year Festival” in Marathi.  The New Year festival is a Spring celebration in Mahasrashtrian cities and towns (that is, in the province of Maharashtra where Mumbai is located.  The festival is called Gudhi Padava and involves decorating houses with floral garlands and spring-cleaning.  Since it is largely celebrated in Marathi-speaking households, it makes sense that the essay would be written in that language.

Hanuman Temple – Hanuman is the wisest, strongest, and swiftest of all apes, a follower of the God Rama, and an important figure in the Ramayana.  Hanuman is immortal, heals diseases, and defeats demons, a highly auspicious figure.  He is worshiped in temples throughout India – indeed, there are many temples devoted to Hanuman in Indian expatriate communities in the United States.  One of Mrs. Nutan’s barrister friends mentions a donation to the local Hanuman temple while the lawyers are eating lunch.

Discrimination and violence against Northern Indians – Mrs. Nutan and her family attend a farce in which northern Indians are mocked and attacked.  Northern Indians (Uttar Bhartiyas) are economic immigrants from the impoverished provinces of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.  These areas have rampant unemployment – the average wage for workers in Bihar is $525 a year as opposed to $1425 yearly in Maharashta (the province where Mumbai is located).  In the wake of catastrophic Ganges flooding in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, hundreds of thousands of immigrants moved to Mumbai to seek better wages.  This led to tensions between the local Marathi- and Gujarati speaking people and the northern immigrants.  The economic refugees were derided for not speaking local languages competently as shown in the play.  Right-wing Nationalist politicians exploited the situation and, even, founded a political party based on animus against Uttar Bharitiyas, the Maharashtra Navnema Sena (MNS).  The MNS mobilized for street fighting and attacked slums where the immigrants were housed, killing a number of people by battering them to death with iron rods. (A young man was killed for not pronouncing words in Kannada, another language spoken in Mumbai, correctly.)  As a result of this MNS sponsored violence, many immigrants fled back to their homes in provinces north of Maharashtra.  In the farce, which looks a bit like a British popular comedy (for instance, plays by Ray Cooney), the hero says: “This Marathi man will show who is boss in this city.”  Most of this fighting took place between October 2008 and January 2009 – the film is set in 2012.

Banned Books – Kamble has two banned books in his possession, The Lotus and the Root and Goymari Maris.  The first is an account of travels in India and Japan by the Hungarian expatriate Arthur Koestler (1905 - 1979) published in 1961.  The book discusses Hinduism and Zen Buddhism, asserting that neither have anything to teach the West.  The Lotus and the Root is banned in India because of its negative portrayal of Gandhi.  The other book is something identified as Goymari Maris.  (Spelling in the subtitles is idiosyncratic and has made this research very difficult.)  The Goymari are, in fact, the Gomari (or, sometimes, “Gowari”) people, a tribal group living in Maharastra and adjacent provinces.  These people speak Marathi and regarded as a “Scheduled Backward Caste” (SBC) with a “2% reservation” – that is, entitled to 2% representation in India’s fantastically complex system equivalent to Affirmative action.  The Gomari have grievances against the Indian government dating back decades but, most prominently, arising from the Nagpur stampede in 1991.  At that time, Gomari were protesting government discrimination at Nagpur when the police initiated a “baton charge” against the demonstrators.  A stampede ensued in which 114 people were killed.  A government inquiry didn’t ascribe any fault to the police or authorities for the stampede.  The Gomari are folk-Hindu who worship deified ancestors; they make their living herding cattle but believe it is sacrilege to drink milk.  They are landless and herd cattle for higher caste landowners.  There are probably about 350,000 of them today.  They are sometimes called Gond-Gowaris – although the Indian Supreme Court rejected this as a legitimate category.  (Study of lists of books banned in India include a challenge to The Moor’s Last Sigh, rejected as unconstitutional by the Indian Supreme Court, but nothing about the Gomari or Gowari tribe.)

Chetana – this is the restaurant where Mr. Vora eats with his family (and there is bickering about Mrs. Vora having cell-phone confiscated by customs) before the Gomari thugs “blacken his face.”  Chetana is a well-known and highly regarded restaurant serving vegetarian fare.  It is called a Thali place.  Thali is Hindi for “plates” – that is, the cuisine is served in small helpings as at a Tapas bar.  If you want to eat there, Chetana is at 34 K Dabash Marq in Mumbai in the upscale Lion’s Gate neighborhood.  The place has a coffee shop favored by artists and intellectuals complete with chessboards and the firm also publishes books.  “Chetana” is a Hindi word meaning “high intelligence” or “perceptive gifts.”  

Face-blackening – Mr. Vora has his “face blackened” by Gomari activists.  This means that a mixture of ink mixed with oil was poured over his head and shoulders.  “Face blackening” has a long history in India with examples recorded as long ago as 1844.  The act is a bit akin to tarring and feathering.  In 1991, a lawyer in Mumbai who made derogatory and misogynistic remarks about a rape victim had his face blackened by feminist activists.  Shiv Sena, the right wing party formerly lead by Bal Thackeray, was responsible for a series of “face blackenings” in Mumbai as recently as February 2021.  Characteristically, the film show Mr. Vora sobbing after being humiliated in this way, but, then, enjoying an afternoon in an expensive spa treating his face with perfumed mist.  

Mumbai slums – the wife of dead sewer worker, Mrs. Pawer, returns to the City to the slum where other family members reside.  This is located in Sitladev Nagar (or sometimes spelled Shitladev Nagar) – “nagar” is Hindi for “town” or “neighborhood”.  It is estimated that 52% of Mumbai residents live in slums.  (Indians find the term “slum” offensive – to most Indians a “slum” denotes laziness and high unemployment.  In fact, Indian “slums” are hives of productive economic activity – everyone works although poverty is endemic.)  Slums in Mumbai fall into two categories: “noticed” and “non-noticed.”  A “noticed” neighborhood has sewers and some water taps provided by the municipality.  A “non-noticed” slum has no amenities of this kind.  The largest slum in Asia is Dharavi, an impoverished area housing more than one million people located around the Mihem River (which is really just a toxic open sewer).  In parts of Dharavi, there is only one working toilet per 1500 people.  Population density is 453 people per acre.  In the film, notice that Mrs. Pawer is unwilling to accept money when Mr. Vora offers to pay her – something that seems questionable by the way although, probably, Vora is suggesting that he will obtain some kind of witness hardship subsidy for her through the court system.  She wants to be given work of some kind.

Hydrogen sulfide – Sewer worker, Vasudev Pawer, was killed by hydrogen sulfide.  Hydrogen sulfide is a toxic, corrosive, and flammable gas created by anaerobic decomposition of organic material.  It smells like rotten eggs and is very deadly.  At 100 to 150 parts per million, the gas paralyzes the olfactory nerve so that the toxin can’t be smelled.  Continued exposure at 50 to 100 ppm is ruinous to the eyes.  (It is probable that the sewer worker lost his eye due to hydrogen sulfide exposure).  At 500 ppm, the gas causes irreversible coma as a nerve agent and inevitable death.  

Shiknapur – this is Mrs. Pawer’s home village.  It is located in rural Maharashtra province.  The town is a so-called panchayet (or “self-governing” village), located near Puna.  About 20,000 people live in the town.

Chhatrapeti RR Terminal – in the scene in which Judge Sudavarte and his extended family embark for the Arnala Beach Resort, this famous Victorian monument is visible in the background.  It has been said that Mumbai contains some of the most spectacular monuments of Victorian architecture, buildings left by the British.

Lord Ganesha – the elephant-headed Hindu deity (son of Shiva and Parvati) is one of the most beloved and auspicious gods. He is invoked when beginning a new enterprise – for instance, starting a business or embarking on a trip.  It is in the latter role that he is named in Court – the holiday-goers exuberantly invoke his protection as they embark on the trip to the resort.

Arnala Beach Resort – this is real place located on the sea about 40 miles north of Mumbai at Virar Taluka.  You can book a weekend stay there.  The resort has a three-star hotel operated by Martins Inns (said to be a US company), a modest water-park with the bright yellow slide visible in the movie.  There is also a waterfall and a “Rain Dance” – this is a pathway under a sort of serpentine shower apparatus in which you can walk under falling water.  The place occupies two acres and has a restaurant (not too highly regarded by reviews on Trip Advisor) and a snack bar that serves Mumbai street food, south Indian snacks, and Chinese food.  Reviewers complain that the rooms need better mosquito nets and that, when you check in, you are likely to find a lizard in your room.  The interesting fact is that this is not an upscale or luxury resort – Judge Sudavarte’s vacation is more like a trip to the Wisconsin Dells than a stay at the Four Seasons.  (This is evident from the rather ramshackle bus that the family rides to the resort.)  In other words, we shouldn’t read Judge Sudavarte’s trip to the Arnala Beach Resort as a vacation at a luxury or elite property.  To the contrary, the place is distinctly middle-class.

IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore – these are prestigious business schools in India.  IIM stands for Indian Institute of Management – both schools offer two year MBA programs.  IIM Ahmedabad, the first school instituted of this kind (1972) is generally ranked as the best business school in India.

Hessonite – Judge Sudavarte suggests that his autistic grandson wear a ring with a Hessonite gem stone.  Hessonite is a grossular gemstone, primarily composed of calcite crystal and called “cinnamon stone” because of its rich reddish color.  It is often mistaken for the more rare and costly zircon.  These stones are found in placer deposits in Sri Lanka and south India as well as in Brazil and sites in California.  Consistent with the Judge’s middle class status, Hessonite is a pretty, but inexpensive gemstone.

Numerology in India – Judge Sudavarte suggests that his son consult a numerologist and, possibly, change the name of his grandson who seems to be autistic.  Indian numerology is very ancient, with its earliest texts dating to the Vedic epoch (1500 to 500 BC).  The concept is that numbers create vibrations that affect human beings.  Each person has a numerological identity based on his or her birthday.  For instance, someone born on June 4 might have a number identity of 10 (sixth month + 4th day).  Each letter of the alphabet has a numerical correlate.  A numerologist compares a person’s birth number with the numbers comprising his or her name.  An auspicious name harmonizes a person’s birth number with name number.