There is much to laud in the Amazon Prime series Made in Heaven, currently amongst the most widely watched programs on the platform in India. The show follows the journey of two wedding planners, Tara and Karan, as they guide their young business through the various prejudices and challenges of Indian society, including colorism, homophobia, and domestic violence. However, New York-based Dalit author and activist Yashica Dutt spoke out online about a recent episode that she says bears striking resemblances to her own life. She alleges that her work was incorporated without credit or permission, claims the filmmakers deny.
In the opening scene of the episode "The Heart Skipped a Beat," fictional author and activist Pallavi Menke, played by actor Radhika Apte, commands an austere stage at Columbia University, the school Dutt also attended. In the scene, Menke is there to discuss her memoir, which chronicles her experience as a Dalit woman and her use of the phrase "coming out." "Dalit" is a term that refers to people belonging to formerly so-called "untouchable" groups ranking socially outside of the Hindu caste system. The episode was acclaimed for centering a Dalit woman and depicting an inter-caste Buddhist wedding.
For Dutt, however, her feelings of celebration quickly turned to feelings of invisibility as she watched the scene unfold on screen, which also included an anecdote about the character's grandmother cleaning toilets.
"The scene where the Dalit author who is from Columbia, has written a book about 'Coming Out', and talks about how her grandmother 'manually cleaned toilets' (while wearing all blue as a homage to Ambedkar), asserts her selfhood with her life partner-to-be, gave me chills," Dutt wrote in an August 14 Instagram post after watching the episode.
"It was surreal to see a version of my life on screen that wasn't but yet was still me," Dutt continued. "But soon the heartbreak set in. They were my words but my name was nowhere. What could have been a celebration of our collective ideas was now tinged with sadness."
Dutt and many viewers of the show assert that Menke's character was based, at least in part, on her own life and book Coming Out as Dalit (2019), which popularized the phrase "coming out" in relation to caste identity. One of the directors of the show, Alankrita Shrivastava, had even scheduled a casual meeting with Dutt in New York on July 15, 2022. No mention was made of Shrivastava's intentions or her role in the creation of Made in Heaven during this meeting, Dutt said in an interview with Hyperallergic.
In the caption of an August 12 Instagram post, Neeraj Ghaywan, who co-directed the episode, cited Dutt's book as inspiration for the scene in question. "Thanks to @yashicadutt and her book (Coming Out as a Dalit) which made the term 'coming out' become part of the popular culture lexicon for owning one's Dalit identity," he wrote. "This inspired Pallavi's interview section in the episode."
Ghaywan is one of the few Dalit directors in Hindi-language film and, according to Dutt, has "revolutionized our cinematic language by showcasing unapologetic Dalits in Bollywood." He and Dutt have admired one another's work for years, she said.
After the episode was aired, several people left messages of support on Dutt's social media posts, with some asking if she had given the producers consent to use aspects of her life story.
Dutt's self-advocacy has also drawn criticism and threats online. Indian filmmaker Anurag Kashyap allegedly described Dutt as "toxic" and "an opportunist." Scholar Sumit Baudh said in X posts that he used the term "coming out" in relation to being Dalit in a 2007 essay -- which the show's creators cited as one of the inspirations for the scene in their Instagram statement responding to Dutt's request for formal acknowledgment.
Source: Hyperallergic
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