links for 2010-12-18

"The brutal realities of caste, its violence and sustaining context of superstition, ignorance and social neurosis have rarely been addressed head-on. The 2006 Bollywood movie Omkara, again borrowing from Shakespeare, remade Othello in the frontier regions of northern India, with a lower-caste political gangster substituted for the Moorish general. The theme remains that of a powerful outsider, paranoid about his status and manipulated because of it, rather than the banal cruelties and thoughtless traditions that blight everyday life across India."