Axone: A Laudable portrayal of Indian racial minorities' plight

The film, however, does not go as far as to question the undue burden on racial minorities to completely assimilate into the majoritarian culture

While India’s Constitution envisions principled accommodation based on equality and fraternity for safeguarding racial, ethnic and religious minorities, the lived experiences of these minorities has been a story of discontent.

The transgressions of individual and communitarian dignity of minorities ranges from blatant physical violence in the public and private sphere to casual chauvinism/ stereotyping in popular culture and everyday life. This discrimination translates into pervasive housing discrimination, cultural chauvinism and intolerance towards divergent ways of living, access to public goods education and healthcare.

This pervasive intolerance extends to racist onslaughts on dignity of African students residing in India. This racial bias was laid bare recently when coronavirus cases were beginning to take flight in India. A girl from Manipur was spat on by a middle-aged man who called her ‘Corona’.

Taking a step ahead to highlight the struggles of these minorities in a mundane, non-Covid context is the film Axone. The film is set in the landscape of a middle-class locality in Delhi where a group of women from North-Eastern states, live in rented accommodation while battling conservative restrictions and onerous conditions by their prejudiced and prudish co-tenants and house owner.

The film is a welcome effort in addressing the prevalent discrimination against citizens from North-Eastern states. The film weighs in on food politics as an attempt to prick the majoritarian conscience for its inhumane insensitivity towards minorities.

The film revolves around the challenges faced by the tenants for trying to cook a traditional dish ‘Axone’ to celebrate the wedding of their friend. Axone (pronounced as Akhuni) is a condiment made from fermented soyabeans and has a sharply bitter taste and flavour to it. Associated with the Sema Tribe of Nagaland, it is usually used to make pickles or served with meat, preferably pork. Through this singular problem, the film shows the various layers of subordination that racial minorities have to face in an intolerant society that finds certain types of meat and its consumers ‘impure’.

Also read: Does 'Axone' fail to deliver the goods?

The film is also remarkable for its casting as 80 percent of the star cast consists of people who themselves come from North-East and have lived the realities that they are depicting through the narrative.

While sensitively exposing such iniquitous treatment of racial minorities from North-Eastern states, the director has also projected the internal cleavages and faultlines within the minority community. In the film, Upasana (a Nepali character played by Sayani Gupta) is ‘othered’ as she does not have Mongoloid features and then there is the collective disdain against a ‘Bengali Aunty’.

There is also an attempt to manifest the patriarchal mindset which dictates that women who are too ‘fashionable’ or are under western influence deserve to be punished and suppressed, leading to their physical, verbal and sexual harassment.

One discontent from the film’s narrative is that while it explains the struggles of cultural assimilation in a metropolis, portrays Naga culture in a sensitive manner and shows the emotional costs of migration from a racial minority-migrant standpoint, its overall narrative indulges in an undesirable balancing act.

Bendang, a character played by Lanuakum Ao, expresses his internalised anguish and trauma as he had suffered physical violence. When he gets back at Shiv (the house owner’s grandson) for violating his personal space by saying ‘Fucking Indian’, he is seen as being ‘sensitised’ by his girlfriend for not choosing to be friends with mainland Indians while living in the bustling city of Delhi and not being ‘open’ enough to assimilation.

Hence, the film doesn’t go as far to question the very idea of assimilation as Bendang’s anguish is portrayed as a form of parochialism rather than an anguish about the undue burden to completely assimilate into the majoritarian culture even when the latter betrays abject intolerance and ignorance.

The filmmakers needed to have thought harder about the political implications of their well-meaning cinematic messaging.

(Prannv Dhawan studies at NLSIU, Bengaluru and Bhavya Arora is a student of Hansraj College, Delhi University)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.