The angry young man wasn't an outcaste

a revised version of an old post was published at the round table india:

'I am not a believer in the caste system' says Amitabh Bachchan. This is not the first time that he has repudiated caste. He had spoken out against the caste census earlier when he said his caste was 'Indian'. It is another matter that the Kayasthas aren't willing to let go of him.

Has the 'angry young man' mellowed down? Wasn't he the rebel who consistently fought against injustice and exploitation from his earliest films? One could be accused of conflating the two, his screen persona and his real life personality, and trying to make the latter, reality, to stand up for the former, fiction. But this article tries to argue that there isn't much difference between the angry young man of a few decades ago and the seemingly mellow old man, the real Bachchan of now. Both stand for a conservative social order, for caste.

The mistake that we make when we speak of the 'angry young man' as an underdog, is the same as the one the planning commission makes when it seeks to find marginalization only below the ever inaccurate poverty line. In most senses except one, poverty, the angry young man wasn't an underdog.

please read the rest here.