NIL BATTEY SANNATA: A PARADIGMATIC SHIFT FROM PATRIARCHY TO PARITY

Abstract

Cinema is like a mirror image of the society and it does imbibe traditions and culture of the society. Since it is an important medium to look into the nerves of the society and concurrently it is a strong apparatus of our society to cast and recast people in their gender-based roles. Indian Cinema is basically male-oriented industry, in terms of direction, production and casting. The condition of women, in real life and in reel life, is equally marginalized and this disparity encourages their segregation as subaltern being. They are on the fringe of the Indian society and cinema, which is visible at the casting and costing of their roles. On the one hand, cinema has created a dominant place in our cultural studies and on the other hand, it is considered by scholar a significant artefact of cultural hegemony. This is the reason, any study about a particular culture and tradition would be considered as an incomplete study without the reference of contemporary film industry. In the most of Indian movies, the story line revolves around the hero and the heroines are assigned secondary roles to the heroes. But some of the movies have broken this legacy and try to establish women as the centre of the action. These movies have provided a plethora of opportunities to women artists and assigned them divergent and challenging roles to reconstruct their images, both in our society and cinema. This drift has got circulation in Indian cinematic parlance with the passage of time. Henceforth, there are few epoch-maker movies which have carved a niche in the heart of the audience and Nil Battey Sannata is one of that genre. This movie is presented before us in a light tone and banter but it is strong enough to voice some of intense and fierce topics related to our contemporary society. This movie leads the audience as well as critics to ponder on the prevailing norms and traditions of our society. It is vociferously claiming equality at the level of gender and class.