Yashica Dutt, author of Coming out as Dalit, has accused Neeraj Ghaywan of erasing her contribution in the popular show Made in Heaven, Season 2, streaming on Amazon Prime Video. In Episode 5 - ‘The heart skipped a beat’, directed by Neeraj Ghaywan, also a Dalit, Radhika Apte plays the role of Pallavi Menke, an accomplished Dalit who gets into an inter-caste wedding and struggles to have a Buddhist wedding ceremony, by unabashedly embracing her Dalit identity. This particular episode is generating a lot of discussion on social media about how Dalits are finally getting a good representation in Television without any dehumanizing atrocities against them.
Pallavi’s character is evidently based on Yashica Dutt, at least partly. Like Yashica, Pallavi too writes a book called ‘Denied’, and the dialogues mention the phrase ‘coming out’ which was Yashica’s book’s title and a phrase she popularised. However, Yashica’s name does not feature in the credit roll.
The author, a Dalit from Bhangi community, has shared a long statement on her social media accounts on Monday, August 14, about the show’s makers unauthorisedly using her life story in Episode 5, and demanded that due credits were given to her. “Let's acknowledge the Dalit labor and set a precedent for giving credit where it's due instead of the now common practice in the streaming world of ‘taking it without permission first, apologizing later’. THIS is what coming out as Dalit really looks like,” Yashica wrote.
Sharing about how the show used her story without giving any recognition, she said, “The scene where the Dalit author who is from Columbia, has written a book about 'Coming Out', and talks about how her grandmother 'manually cleaned toilets' (while wearing all blue as an homage to Ambedkar), asserts her selfhood with her life partner to-be, gave me chills. It was surreal to see a version of my life on screen that wasn't but yet was still me. But soon the heartbreak set in. They were my words but my name was nowhere. What could have been a celebration of our collective ideas was now tinged with sadness. The ideas I cultivated, that are my life's work, that I continue to receive immense hate still for just speaking, were taken without permission or credit.”
The ideas we create need to be traced back to us. Anything less contributes to a historical pattern of taking Dalit labor without asking.@ZoyaAkhtarOff @reemakagti @MadeInHeavenTv @PrimeVideo @PrimeVideoIN pic.twitter.com/ZtBoRKRWOq
— Yashica Dutt (@YashicaDutt) August 14, 2023
“Dalits have a long history of being taken from, erased, ignored, obliterated from our own stories. Dalit women in particular are the easiest to take from, what's the worth in the labor they've created anyway. It's for everybody to claim. Except this time. I'm reclaiming my work, my worth and my contribution to the discourse and history, defying the order of what's expected of me as a woman who is always supposed to fine tune the 'register of her rage'. The Made in Heaven episode is stunning in its portrayal of a Dalit woman and her Buddhist inter-caste wedding. It also unfortunately erases my contribution to my own ideas.”
“As a young Dalit child, my Mum and I had an inside joke ‘Our lives are so crazy, they should make a movie about it’. We knew that would never happen. There were no Dalit characters on screen who were humanized beyond their suffering. Before I came out as Dalit in 2016, there was no vocabulary to identify the process of revealing your Dalitness after hiding it for years and owning it with pride either,” Yashica wrote.
She added, “Today, in 2023, there is both. Dalit directors like Neeraj Ghaywan have revolutionized our cinematic language by showcasing unapologetic Dalits in Bollywood, a tradition that has an even longer history in Southern cinema. The Heart Skipped a Beat, the fifth episode of Amazon Prime's Made in Heaven is no less than a cinematic triumph when it comes to showcasing what it truly looks like for a Dalit woman to take her power back in this casteist society.”
Yashica acknowledged Neeraj Ghaywan’s Instagram post about the episode where he rightfully credits her for being the inspiration behind the episode.
Neeraj Ghaywan had written on Instagram on Sunday, August 13, three days after the series was out, “Thanks to @yashicadutt and her book (Coming Out as a Dalit) which made the term "coming out" become part of the popular culture lexicon for owning one's Dalit identity. This inspired Pallavi's interview section in the episode. All of their work has set a precedent for me to carry forward. The love this episode has received is a validation for all of us mentioned in this post who have been battling prejudice. And I hope, someday, people will really see through the disparity when they look at the matrimonial section of a newspaper. Or offer their unconditional empathy to a friend, a colleague, a partner, or even someone around who is struggling with their identity.”
Responding to this, Yashica pointed out that he credited her only after the viewers questioned about the missing credentials. She appealed Neeraj Ghaywan, and the show creators Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti to formally acknowledge her life's work and ideas that contributed to the episode. “So that the millions of its viewers know one its central ideas was not created out of ether, but out of the blood, sweat and a lifetime of tears of a Dalit woman that the world had decided to cast aside.”