Caste, Violence, and Resistance in Rural Tamil Nadu: A Research Study Vetrimaaran's Asuran (2019)

Abstract: Asuran, directed by Vetrimaaran and released in 2019, is a Tamil-language action drama adapted from Poomani's Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel Vekkai (1982). The film narrates the story of Sivasamy, an ageing Dalit farmer, and his family's confrontation with an oppressive upper-caste landlord in rural Tamil Nadu, moving between a violent past and a fugitive present. This paper examines Asuran as a work of social-realist cinema that dramatizes caste-based land conflict, the ethics of retributive violence, and education as a pathway to structural liberation. Drawing on the film's critical reception, its literary source, and its place within a wider wave of anti-caste Tamil cinema, the paper argues that Asuran reframes the conventional revenge narrative as a political allegory of Dalit assertion rather than a simple story of personal vengeance.