Underdogs in uniform: downplaying power hierarchy in a police state—a realistic take on "Visaranai" and "Nayattu" by Rakshit Kweera and Tushara Melepattu, p. 1

Underdogs in uniform:
downplaying power hierarchy
in a police state — a realistic
take on Visaranai and Nayattu


Commissioner (1994), starring Suresh Gopi, was a commercial hit following which he ventured into a lot of police movies in his career.	Gangaajal (2003), directed by Prakash Jha, starring Ajay Devgn as SP Amit Kumar.

Police-centric dramas are one of the most popular genres in Indian cinema. However, realistic depictions of lower-ranked police officers are hard to find. Looking to find such films, we found the contemporary Nayattu and Visaranai. Nayattu portrays three low-ranked police officers on the run whom the police framed for murder (which they didn’t commit) because of political pressure. Visaranai shows problems faced by migrant workers from two states, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, and by low-ranked officers forced to frame the migrants for crimes they didn’t commit. Both movies depict multiple perspectives on how sub-ordinate police officers/staff carry out the oppressive apparatus of the state, including their higher officials. Even though the scripts play out in different circumstances, both movies place emphasis on a callous system that unflinchingly gobbles up the same people who try to sustain it.

We attempt to understand how the cinematic representation of police officers legitimizes the role of the police as a state apparatus in the governance of people. We know that police specifically target those vulnerable sections of the population that the state deems “deviant or marginalized”, including racial, religious, and caste minorities. In the films we examine, we ask, “What happens when these categories come to represent the 'men/women in uniform’”? Textual analysis of the two films will chart out the social context and some coherent themes in each. We are also interested in understanding the semiotics about police at play in Indian cinema, especially in those films with a focus on the lower classes.

Policing in India

The tasks of policing have expanded with the increase in crimes and complexities that arise with the growth of mega-cities. In India, issues of security and governance have been paramount, and the police forces have not only used traditional power moves such as custodial tortures and preventive detentions but have also used new techniques such as surveillance technologies and crime-mapping software to secure their hegemonic power position among the citizens. The police thus legitimize the use of this kind of physical and hidden power for maintaining law and order and also for political and economic purposes, such as a neoliberal branding of the mega-cities as “investible” cities with secured gender spaces. Added to this is local political influence, where in day-to-day policing, we observe the bonding of local politicians and police officers, as they bypass procedures and resort to unjust mechanisms to favor close associates and unjustly frame innocents. For most people, the police state is visible, and police officers at various levels are seen as the primary agents of the state. In India, people’s political, social, and economic lives are affected by this police state.

The structures of the present Indian police can be traced historically to a peculiar combination of an already existing rural police system and a colonial model set up in the mid-nineteenth century, based on the Royal Irish Constabulary (Bayley, 2015). In 1861, the British instituted English-style policing in India with the passage of the Indian Police Act. The major roles of the Indian police then were to keep order, prevent crime, engage in surveillance of citizens, and control citizens (Shah, 1999). The same system survived even after India attained Independence in 1947. Under the Constitution of India, the subject of policing comes under the State List (Entry 2, List II, Schedule 7, Constitution of India, 1950), which allows for variation to exist across provinces. The primary role of police forces has been to uphold and enforce laws, investigate crimes and ensure security for people in the country.

Indian cinema has captured the different layers of this police state. The representation has not only been vivid but also microscopic, where minute details of the day-to-day functioning of the police system are depicted. Police representation can be divided into two large categories. The first is the flamboyant hero cop wearing khaki, with a larger-than-life image, who becomes a saviour and eliminates social evils. In the last few decades in Bollywood (Hindi Regional Film Industry) and other regional-language cinemas, this genre has seen an upsurge. Thus, a study of 4000 Hindi films from 1970 to 2017 found that ‘honest police officer’ is one of the most common roles in Bollywood (Madaan et al., 2018). As a result, the police’s arbitrary exercise of power is glamorized as maintaining safety and security for citizens and city spaces. Also, extrajudicial mechanisms also enter the scripts, in which the cop is the harbinger of justice in a corrupt, political, and delayed judicial system. Some movies popular in this category are Commissioner (1994), Gangaajal (2003), Singham (2010), and Dabaang (2010).


Mouna Guru (The Silent Teacher, 2011) is a story of a young man whose life undergoes a world of change when he has to face a few corrupt police officers.	Jai Bhim (2021) is a film based on a real-life incident of a legal case fought by Justice K. Chandru.

The other category depicted across film industries in India is the brutal and corrupt face of the police state. Indian police carry a colonial burden of violence, unlawful detention, and overall unjust policing of the citizens. Every day in India, a police officer interacts with and sometimes confronts the community, and there is not often an amicable relationship between them. People see the police as serving the interests of the elite. Police suffer from this lack of trust but they also lack accountability to the citizens they serve (Verma & Subramanian, 2013). Discriminatory practices of the police often are in the news, acting against the lower castes, minority religious communities, women and sexual minorities. Subramanian says that the police regularly disrespect those in lower castes, who are largely poor, and at times engage in brutality against lower castes suspects but also against crime victims. Especially in minority communities, in cases of riots and conflicts, many people are falsely implicated (Subramanian, 2007).

Women suffer doubly: they not only have to deal with crime and social abuse but also harassment in police stations when they file complaints. Patriarchal beliefs about and perceptions of women among male police officers stand as a hindrance to justice being served in a timely and apt way. Indian police officers often fail to investigate rape and domestic violence cases and are hostile in their responses to women victims, thereby re-traumatizing survivors of abuse seeking help (Human Rights Watch, 2009). These instances of police corruption, violence, and injustice have been represented in movies such as Piravi (1989), Mouna Guru (2011), and Jai Bhim (2021), among others.

Agents of the police state as film characters

Not only do the common people suffer these injustices, but also low-ranked police officers. Because of power differentials in the hierarchical police system, some agents of the police state also become subject to oppression, mainly the low-ranked police. According to the Bureau of Police Research & Development (BPR&D) reports, 86 per cent of the total police force consists of constabulary positions, 13 per cent includes upper subordinates like inspector, sub-inspector and assistant sub-inspector positions, and only 1 per cent includes officer rank positions that range from assistant/ deputy superintendent to director general of police.

Constables, who form the majority of Indian police officers, have a non-unionized, entry-level rank with low pay, often long hours, and difficult work (Lambert et al. 2015). The constabulary of the Indian police is understaffed and overburdened, which not only reduces the effectiveness and efficiency of the personnel but also leads to their psychological distress, which may contribute to various crimes the police commit (Chaturvedi, 2017; Verma, 2010). A career in the police is one of the most stressful professions in India. Officers are likely to encounter violent and disturbing situations, and they have to deal with confrontational citizens and unwilling suspects. Burnout among police officers happens often (Dowler, 2005). A study by Lambert et al. (2018) indicates that the factors that contribute to this burnout include job stress, lack of satisfaction or commitment. Long working hours, police station culture, politically shaped decision-making, and unexpected schedules adversely affect work-life balance and lead to work-family conflict and its positive correlation with job stress (Lambert et al., 2017).

Films and, more recently, web series often depict the ordeals of low-ranked police officers. Some of the Hindi films that do so are Ardh Satya (1983), Shool (1999), and also web series such as Paatal Lok (2020) and Kohraa (2023) on OTT platforms. Ones that examine a constable or sub-inspector's ordeals and day-to-day interactions with the political system are smaller in Hindi cinema but a larger category in Mollywood (Malayalam Film Industry) and Kollywood (Tamil Film Industry). These regional productions present a realistic take on low-ranked police officers. Sometimes, the scripts develop a Constable/Inspector as the protagonist; then, the movie revolves around him, and as a minor theme, his real-life ordeals involve him with others. These regional productions represent a less-represented side of the police state, which remains hidden in the commercialized depiction of hyper-masculine, larger-than-life cops in Bollywood.

These regional productions take up many systemic themes:

police torture and violence,
caste-based discrimination within the police system,
a corrupt criminal justice system,
political influences in crime investigations,
the power hierarchy and unjust supervision within the force,
systemic stress,
embedded local political pressure and influence,
institutional corruption and influence in crime investigation,
patriarchal and chauvinistic policing system,
ordeals of women policemen,
discriminatory work culture in stations, etc.

Our focus in this article will be specifically on the power hierarchy within the police system; caste, class, and gender-based discrimination; and unjust supervision. These issues are explicit and openly portrayed in two movies in particular: Visaranai (2015) and Nayattu (2021). Although based in different industries, both movies are our primary investigative texts. Media texts give us a possible insight into reality precisely because there is no simple, clear, and correct understanding of that reality. Here, we offer a textual analysis to put the text about the police into a context where we can make guesses about some likely interpretations of the elements within it.

Scapegoats in the hands of power: Visaranai
in the context of contemporary Tamil cinema

The rise of Dravidian politics in Tamil Nadu during the 1960s and 1970s had a uniquely close connection to the cinematic space as well. In fact, the rise of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party was built on a symbiotic relationship between political leaders and film as a medium and industry. Dravidian parties took cinema seriously and used it as a tool of political mobilisation (Hardgrave, 1979). Sivathamby (1981) argues that in DMK-oriented films, actor and politician M. G. Ramachandran (MGR) was the chief star and film scripts were woven around his story. The film’s world of conflict exists as a world centred around the hero, and his personal emancipation symbolizes emancipation from the social evil depicted. MGR’s screen image as a saviour and origin in the subaltern classes then aided his political success.

In these decades, Dravidian cinema, with regional sentiments, ran high on intermediate and low-caste characters pitted against the upper-caste elites. Adding to this, the Dravidian cinema also focused on themes of social justice, highlighting various social issues such as caste dominance, class inequalities, and gender oppression. Tamil cinema, in general, has regularly focused on stories of the underprivileged and marginalized; nevertheless, Dalit-centric films have found relevance only in the last two decades or so.[1][open endnotes in new window]

“Dalits have historically been absent in Tamil cinema. In recent years, up-and-coming directors have been breaking new ground through their Dalit-centric films. These boundary-pushing directors have been making powerful political statements about marginality, atrocities and injuries endured by Dalits and Dalit liberation through film” (Velayutham & Devadas, 2022: 107).

In all the Tamil police-centered films, the character of a policeman is represented as a protector of ordinary citizens and a force against evil. Velayutham & Devadas (2022) argue that in Tamil CinemaScope (an anamorphic lens used for shooting widescreen films in the 1960s and 1970s), police-driven scripts re-establish the symbolic power of the police as a social institution to vent out corruption and restore trust in the system. The moral crusader hero is often a police officer using strong violence to restore social order. In the late 1970s in Tamil Nadu, such police-centric dramas attempted to depict and restore the honour of the policing profession, which was tainted by widespread corruption. In the process, several films reinstated the image of a superhero cop, glorifying his lawless actions for rendering social justice.

This kind of depiction was followed by a contrasting type of script, called an “authentic social.” (David, 1983); in such a film, dysfunctional, despotic, and corrupt policemen are shown in plots based on real-life events. This has continued in Kollywood, with directors bringing in stories that portray the ordeals of low-ranked police officers and also state-citizen conflict. Director V. Chitravel Vetrimaaran has dealt with this subject in a lot of his films, where narrative realism prevails; these include Aadukalam (2011), Visaranai (2015), Asuran (2019), and Viduthalai (2023).

Visaranai (2015) emerges as a crucial movie of this type; the script dwells on caste and class discrimination among migrant labourers, and, at the same time, it presents honest, lower-ranking police officers as pawns. They climb the social order motivated by political goals. Visaranai (2015) is adapted from a biographical true-life account—Lock-Up: Jottings of an Ordinary Man—by a daily wage Dalit auto-rickshaw driver, M. Chandrakumar (2017). Visaranai’s plot mirrors Chandrakumar’s chronicle of his arrest on false charges. He was confined and tortured in a prison cell in Guntur for 15 days, after which he was jailed for five and a half months. The film also charts the precarious existence of four migrant Tamil workers—Pandi (Dinesh Ravi), Murugan (Aadukalam Murugadoss), Kumar (Pradeesh Raj) and Afsal(Silambarasan Rathnasamy). Apart from getting ad hoc menial day jobs, the men are largely homeless; they usually seek sleeping space in the local Gandhi Park in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur town. There, the men fall easy prey to prowling police, who round up the migrants and lock them up in a local station jail cell. Easy targets, the beleaguered migrants are accused falsely of perpetrating burglary in a wealthy and high-profile individual’s home. They undergo a protracted ordeal of brutal torture at the station as the police go to great lengths to extricate forced confessions from them. However, when taken to court, they describe the actual occurrences to the judge.

Muthuvel (Samuthirakani), a Tamil Nadu police inspector, helps them go free by translating for them in court and vouching for them. Before the men can leave, Muthuvel enlists their help to kidnap a high-profile attendee named KK, appearing in the same court. In fact, Muthuvel's police team had come there unofficially to nab KK before he surrendered.

The kidnapping was masterminded by the Deputy Police Commissioner (DCP), under directions from the top brass of the ruling political party of the state, to use KK in court and take down the President of the opposition party since general elections are merely 5 months away. However, KK's lawyers inside the court closely watch Muthuvel's team. So, Muthuvel gives the four migrant workers the task of bringing KK out of the courthouse. Muthuvel's seniors use their influence to make the court police aid them, and KK is kidnapped by the four youths.