“Demons. Low-castes. Untouchables.” These words flashed on an illuminated projection of the short film and music video, “We Are Not Your Monkeys,” as an anthem of anti-caste resistance.
On Thursday, Sept. 11, Anand Patwardhan spoke at Pomona College’s Benton Museum of Art as part of a series of events hosted by Pomona’s English department last week. Sunlight streamed through the windows, glinting off the screen as attendees trickled in and took their seats.
The screening of “We Are Not Your Monkeys” delivers a powerful lyric address by the Dalits — a term that represents the lowest stratum of castes in India, including religious minorities and the working class — as a fight for humanity and resistance against caste and gender oppression. For centuries, Dalits have faced discrimination, stigma and violence in Indian society.
This short film was a collaboration between the director Patwardhan and Dalit singer Daya Pawar, who wrote the lyrics and performed. “We Are Not Your Monkeys” critiques caste-based oppression while also attempting to reverse the Brahmin appropriation of mythology in India, which has marginalized Dalits and illegitimized their stories as Indigenous people.
“That film is actually addressing 5000 years of caste oppression, but in five minutes,” Patwardhan said. “It’s a kind of resistance to the dominant idea [of the high-caste Hindus]. The film is trying to reverse the idea because the Hindus always claim that they were there first, but in this film, the Dalits are talking about how it was the Indigenous people who lived, who got invaded by the outsiders who then became the rulers and subjugated [them].”
Pomona English Professor Prageeta Sharma helped organize the event and displayed Patwardhan’s short film in her class, Feminist Avant-Garde Writing, prior to the event. One of her students, Lena Bagley SC ’26, expressed her appreciation for the poetics of the film.
“I think the musicality of the poetry that is in his films is so, so engaging,” Bagley said. “The sonic musical aspect of the poetry that he highlights is definitely really cool.”
Patwardhan’s work has gained him lifetime recognition for his radical activism and investigative journalism in India. When asked about his journey to becoming a filmmaker, Patwardhan expressed that he had not initially planned on making films. Despite his extensive experience, time dedicated to filmmaking and his accumulated awards over decades, he has never formally studied film in school.
“I wasn’t drawn to filmmaking because of cinema,” Patwardhan said. “It happened kind of accidentally [because of] the work I was doing politically — human rights issues that I got involved in — and film became a vehicle for carrying that story to other people.”
Shortly after the screening, a discussion panel opened up that engaged both panelists and attendees. Patwardhan was joined by the poets Pramila Venkateswaran, Vivek Narayanan and Professor Sharma for an interactive conversation. They discussed the powerful influence of “We Are Not Your Monkeys,” while also sharing some of their own work and experiences as poets rooted in their Indian heritage.
“I really struggled as a young poet to connect with other South Asian poets,” Sharma said. “And so I found [Anand Patwardhan’s] films, and [“We Are Not Your Monkeys”] taught me how to think about reinscription and structure and poetics and how to examine the function of what I was learning.”
The panel was followed by a two-hour-long catered buffet at Loeb Pavilion, where students, faculty and other attendees engaged in informal discussion. Attendees then watched the screening of the documentary film, “The World Is Family.” This film interweaves Patwardhan’s personal narrative about his family history and political narratives concerning India’s national history and culture.
Patwardhan noted that he had not initially planned on publicizing this particular film, as it contains personal and intimate moments of his life, including the death of his mother.
“I realized while looking at the footage that there was something in it that was maybe useful to the rest of the country,” Patwardhan said. “I thought it was important to show the film to the public so that they realized what that freedom struggle actually looked like — these are the first-person accounts of people who witnessed [that struggle.] So it is a family story, but it’s also in a way the story of India.”
In addition to celebrating the diversity of voices in the Indian diaspora, this event was also an opportunity for students to learn about the history and culture intimately intertwined with India’s current political issues and the ongoing caste divide.
“[I wasn’t] really very familiar with Indian history and culture, so I feel like I just learned so much from that with just, like, this short discussion panel,” Ely Tan PO ’28, an attendee of the event, said.
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