Reflections from Asuran - the Normalization of Targeted Massacre

Asuran (அசுரன்) released in 2019, originally in Tamizh. Directed by Vetri Maaran, starring an ensemble cast including Dhanush, Manju Warrier, and Pasupathy, to name a few. In the cinema world, it was a commercial hit and thus nothing new - the typical bloody, gory, village revenge drama. Filled with action and thrilling to the core, dripping with tension-building scenes that evoke heavy emotions like dread and anxiety.

Asuran is a period film, with flashbacks from the ~1950s and the main storyline progressing through the ~1970s. It is set in a rural town nestled in Tamizh heartland - Chozha Nadu, the central regions around Thanjavur district. A typical socio-political commentary, the film does not break the mold of the Dravidian culturally influenced storylines which are typical output of the Tamizh cinema industry today.

Nevertheless, Asuran’s screenplay is nuanced and realistically raw. The script, dialogues, and cinematography brilliantly capture the bleak hardships of an underprivileged family in society, whomsoever the contemporary media and consequent masses may interpret that ‘underprivileged group’ to be.

Though there are endless narrative wars today, on who the oppressed group truly is, Asuran eerily depicts the horrific burden which oppressed demographics bear

The film follows Sivasaamy, a man in his mid-40s. It turns back in time to detail the catastrophe he experienced in his youth, while continuing onward to depict the trials, tribulations, and trauma he sustains at length in mid-age to protect his family. Even the names chosen in this film’s script strike a chord, at least for the purpose of this reflection. Sivasaamy’s wife is Pachaiammaa, her brother Murugesan. Sivasaamy’s elder son is Velmurugan, younger son Chidhambaram, and daughter named Lakshmi. Asuran depicts Sivasaamy’s onerous experiences as he carries his family through the trajectory of time, fighting for their life in several different situations.

It is telling that this film came out in 2019; it is now four years old, and the storyline itself was set in the bygone era of the previous century. In fact, whatever research went into the film’s plot probably referenced some historic massacres that took place in Tamizh Nadu during the later half of the 1900s. It is said that Asuran is based off of the Keezhvenmani massacres from 1968. Though Asuran is a film of the past, some of the film’s content can be juxtaposed against contemporary times and would not look out of place at all. There are two graphically violent yet surreally familiar scenes in the film. The naked truths revealed in these scenes evoke vivid emotions for the Hindu individual today, whether he/she be amongst the larger global diaspora or within the borders of Bhārata Herself. It’s quite ironic that the confrontations brought to light in these two scenes strike so close to home, given the Nuh/Mewat attacks even as of August 2023. What happens when we strip the film of the Dravidian, even Marxist subliminal messages projected throughout the screen time?

What is it that we see?

Exhibit A: Beheading of Velmurugan

This subplot starts with a seemingly simple ‘land dispute’. Gradually, the situation heats up, with each side giving the other tit for tat; and calamity finally strikes with the brutal beheading of Velmurugan, Sivasaamy’s elder son. What is disgusting about this act is that Velmurugan’s body is stripped and desecrated, left to rot in Sivasaamy’s own field, without a trace of the head in the nearby vicinity: the head, with which loved-ones would at least confirm the identity of the corpse. Sivasaamy and his family are left traumatized, with Pachaiamma actually going into a state of shock upon seeing her son’s headless, defiled body. She suffers mental disturbance for months afterward.

Exhibit B: Torching of An Entire Hamlet

This subplot begins in the flashback. Sivasaamy is just beginning his adult life, he gains a foothold within his sister’s village and earns the admiration of the innocent Maariamma. Fast-forward through some more land-snatching plot schemes, public insult to injuries, and rough drama. Suddenly an on-screen machete massacre, plus torching of an entire thatch-roofed community, knocks the air out of one’s stomach. In this scene, the gutting moment comes when the burnt, dying body of Maariamma is shown in full. It is surely a rarity in real life to witness a burn victim, the blackened and boiled up flesh exuding steam while the person is still alive. The charred eyes and singed hair, the physical and mental pain the victim would be going through - all are depicted on screen just as one might witness in person.

Maariamma speaks her dying words to Sivasaamy: she explains that her elderly grandfather broke a window to throw her child brother outside the burning establishment, so that the boy could at least escape with his life. Only for her to witness the attackers throw the child back inside the blazing room through the same window, wishing only gruesome death upon the old and young alike

For those who could have never imagined such barbarity, much less witnessed it - these scenes are, needless to say, chilling to the bone. However, there is a sizable population demographic that is aware of the historic echoes of such picturizations. The Razakar massacre of Bhagyanagaram, the Moplah riots of the Malabar coast. Kashmir genocide, the invasion of the NorthEast. Yes, there are people alive today who have lived through some of these historic events, not far from the echelons of our own past. There are individuals even today who have heard of these things happening, if not from their own parents and grandparents - they may have witnessed these themselves, as a child.

And there have been many more incidents with similar scenes, unspoken of, perhaps “smaller” in scale and more recent. The templates and toolkits are being recycled time and again, utilizing a precise and intentional, clean and sterile rinse-and-repeat. News narratives project the scenes much differently, inside-out and upside-down. Covered up, and sometimes not even that, these scenes of targeted oppression are becoming normalized, too. Slitting of throats, crushing of faces by stones, merciless rapes and assaults. Drag, abduct, hold hostage, murder, and dump. Rain bullets, pelt stones, empty hundreds of rounds. Throw petrol bombs and acid cocktails.

It is only when we watch such films like Asuran in the light of the first-hand experiences of the victims, and after listening to their affirmations of their despair, that we start to question. How far are these scenes from our real life experience today? Beheading of our brothers, fathers? Torching and execution en masse of our elderly, women, and children? This only happens in films and on-screen right?

It depends on what you see. To some, “It feels like the same pattern is being repeated over and over again”. One person’s imagination feels like another’s memory.