[After a career of activism on
behalf of the lower castes, Mr. Sathidar was cast in a movie that reflected his
life. He died of complications of Covid-19.]
By Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar
Acting, he said, was just another
tool in the toolbox of protest — along with organizing, pamphleteering,
editing, writing poetry and singing.
“Song and dance was a weapon of our
fight,” he once said. “It still is.”
Mr. Sathidar died of complications
of Covid-19 on April 13 at a hospital in Nagpur, in the state of Maharashtra,
his son, Ravan, said. He was 62.
Mr. Sathidar agitated against the
deeply rooted caste system in India, under which those at the bottom — his
fellow Dalits, or untouchables — are systematically abused. A high school
dropout, he wrote books and articles, edited magazines and organized street
performances. For a brief time, he ran a bookstall. He was the head of the
Maharashtra chapter of the Confederation of Human Rights Organizations.
“He was a living library,” his
friend Nihal Singh Rathod said, “on political science, on social science.”
Vira Sathidar was born on June 7,
1958, in the village of Parsodi, near Nagpur, to Rauf and Gangubai Sathidar.
His father, a farmer, was a staunch supporter of B.R. Ambedkar, one of India’s most influential thinkers and
political figures. Mr. Ambedkar, himself a Dalit, was part of the Indian
independence movement and played a central role in drafting the constitution
for the future republic. He was also a tireless opponent of the caste system,
and Mr. Sathidar often cited his influence in setting him on the road to
activism.
Mr. Sathidar said his father wanted
him to be a scholar. But he was a distracted student, and he left school after
10th grade to work at a cotton thread mill.
Mr. Sathidar’s activism began when
he was a union organizer at the mill. He found himself working with the radical
Maoist movement called the Naxalites in the 1990s.
He went underground for a time but
became disillusioned, his friend Pradeep Maitra, the Nagpur correspondent for
The Hindustan Times, said in an interview: “He got disappointed with the Naxal
movement because of their emphasis on classless society and ignoring the
Ambedkar notion of casteless society.”
Along with his son, Mr. Sathidar,
who lived in Nagpur, is survived by his wife, Pushpa Viplav Sathidar, as well
as three brothers and a sister.
Mr. Sathidar came to broader
attention after “Court,” an examination of the injustices India’s labyrinthine
legal system perpetuates against the marginalized. The director, Chaitanya
Tamhane, was looking for a cast of largely unprofessional actors.
For months, his team held casting
calls across several states, trying to recruit from theater groups and street
performers. He was having trouble casting the lead role, Narayan Kamble, a
Dalit protest singer and poet who is accused of performing songs that induce a
Mumbai sewer worker to commit suicide.
Then Mr. Tamhane discovered Mr.
Sathidar through an activist group. He cast him just before shooting started.
“I thought they were taking me in
the film because they couldn’t find a good actor, or they didn’t have enough
budget,” Mr. Sathidar said in a video
interview. He said he was struck by how much his character, Narayan,
resembled him.
“He has worked at a factory, I have
worked at a factory,” Mr. Sathidar said. “He writes articles, I also write
articles. He is an editor, I am also an editor. He works at a union, I also
work at a union. He sings songs, I also sing songs. He goes to jail; I have
also been to jail many times. His house is raided, my house is also raided.”
“What he is showing is my life,”
Mr. Sathidar said. “What surprised me was that he wrote all this without having
met me.”
Mujib Mashal is The New York Times
correspondent for South Asia. Born in Kabul, he wrote for magazines such
as The Atlantic, Harper’s, Time and others before joining The Times. @MujMash
Hari Kumar is a reporter in the New
Delhi bureau. He joined The Times in 1997. @HariNYT