Cinema News Tamil Nadu

Actor Suriya’s Jai Bhim spreads canards against Vanniyars and Brahmins

November 3, 2021
The Commune

Actor Suriya’s latest film Jai Bhim which has been receiving both bouquets and brickbats has several problematic scenes creating rift between different communities.

The film which seems to have been taken to coax the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu has elements of the party’s politics – peddling hatred against Brahmins and Hindi.

In one scene, Prakash Raj who plays the role of a police officer slaps a north-Indian (who has been stereotyped as a ‘Marwari’ Saet) for speaking in Hindi and asks him to speak in Tamil.

Many on social media not just pointed out this problematic scene for instigating violence but also lashed out as Suriya for being a hypocrite as he has released Jai Bhim in Hindi too in order attract Hindi audience.

In another scene, Suriya can be seen subtly spreading canards about Brahmins. Actor MS Bhaskar who is shown as a Brahmin lawyer (Sankaran) uttering ‘Sivaya Namaha’ quite often, approaches Suriya (Chandru) in the corridors of the court to apparently appreciate Suriya.

Here is how the interaction goes:

Sankaran: Chandru.. Very good ya. This haebus corpus case would’ve been dismissed in 2 minutes. You quoted the Rajan case! Sivaya Namaha! That was a wise move! The case has now come in your favour.

Chandru: No sir. I feel I’m handling this case wrong. 

Sankaran: No no no. I’m telling you. You’re on the right path. 

Chandru: No sir. If you’re being so positive, then there must be something wrong that I am doing. 

In the above interaction, the character Chandru implies that Brahmins are nefarious and not to be trusted.

In another scene, the villains are shown belonging to the Vanniyar community with their sacred motif ‘Agni’ being situated in the frame. The sub-inspector who is one of the villain in the film Jaybeem, is portrayed as a Vanniyar man and being an enemy of the Irular community.

But in reality, the sub-inspector’s name who implicated the Irular men and thrashed them was Anthony Sami and is not a Vanniyar.

In light of this, the Vanniyar community has been lashing out at Suriya and the makers of the movie for the unwarranted provocation.

This is not the first time actor-turned-virtue signaller Suriya has been caught peddling propaganda. His earlier film Soorarai Pottru is a mischievous distortion of the story of Air Deccan’s G.R. Gopinath who is a Brahmin and a capitalist. However, he is shown as a follower of anti-Hindu bigot ‘Periyar’ E.V. Ramasamy Naicker and a ‘socialist’ capitalist.

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