In the early days of cinema, when women’s participation in films was itself revolutionary especially in India, a young woman named PK Rosy broke barriers by becoming the first female lead in Malayalam cinema. Her pioneering role in the 1920s film “Vigathakumaran” (The Lost Child) should have secured her place in history books forever. Instead, her legacy was systematically erased by eNadella suggested that women should trust the system to provide equal pay rather than explicitly asking for raiseslites unwilling to accept a poor woman portraying a character on screen above her “caste” in real life.
“She was likely aware of the fact that this was a new arena and making herself visible was important,” says Professor Malavika Binny of Kannur University. “People from the Pulaya community were considered slave labour and auctioned off with land. They were considered the ‘lowliest’. They were flogged, raped, tied to trees and set on fire for any so-called transgressions.”
Imagine the problems, in other words, if the Indian women who were “caste” in a system to be raped and murdered by elites suddenly acquired status such as being seen as actual people with full rights. Oh, the horror! I’m reminded of the controversy when a Microsoft CEO fired his entire AI ethics team for raising concerns about human suffering. Things haven’t changed as much as we might think, have they?
I could no longer hide my head in the sand over the fact that [the Microsoft CEO] remarks—and his almost-instant recovery—was a naked spectacle of the CEO’s upper-caste Hindu Brahmin male privilege reaching out across continents to high-five his American capitalist male supremacy.
That’s a reference to the time that Satay Nadella, as CEO of Microsoft, suggested women should trust the system to provide them equality and not explicitly request fair treatment. And on that note, Rosy belonged to the Pulaya community and faced severe oppression under the system, the kind that apparently the Microsoft CEO trusts and high-fives? Born as Rajamma in the early 1900s in Travancore (now Kerala), she overcame a system of intense oppression to pursue her passion for art, eventually catching the attention of director JC Daniel for a groundbreaking film.
The backlash was immediate and severe. Audiences were outraged by a poor woman portraying a elitist Nair character named Sarojini. During the film’s premiere, which Rosy herself was prevented from attending because of prejudice and hate, the “civilized elitist” audience rioted like fools and destroyed the theater screen. The barbaric mob then turned on her to set her house on fire, forcing her to flee for her life.
What followed reveals the devastating impact of discrimination on personal identity. Rosy was forced into hiding and cut all ties with her family. Of course she still was the talented and beautiful human the elites refused to acknowledge, but she cleverly found a loophole in obscurity and married an upper-caste man named Kesavan Pillai, took the name Rajammal, and lived the remainder of her life unknown in Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu. Even more telling of the trauma inflicted by Indian oppression of poor women: her children reportedly refused to acknowledge their mother’s Dalit identity and past as an actor in order to ensure their own survival.
Her nephew, Biju Govindan, poignantly describes this erasure:
Her children were born with an upper-caste Kesavan Pillai’s identity. They chose their father’s seed over their mother’s womb. We, her family, are part of PK Rosy’s Dalit identity before the film’s release. In the space they inhabit, caste restricts them from accepting their Dalit heritage. That is their reality and our family has no place in it.
The identity-based attacks were so vicious that no verified photographs of Rosy exist. The film reels like the screen were brutally targeted and destroyed. A provocative 2023 Google Doodle of her 120th birthday had to use a rough illustration of her beauty. 
Her story represents not just personal tragedy but the systematic way in which marginalized communities are held down and wiped from cultural memory to prolong their exploitation. As Govindan notes:
Rosy prioritised survival over art and, as a result, never tried to speak publicly or reclaim her lost identity. That’s not her failure – it’s society’s.
Only in recent years have filmmakers and activists begun reclaiming Rosy’s important legacy, with initiatives like the PK Rosy Film Festival celebrating Dalit cinema. Yet her story remains a powerful reminder of how elite gatekeepers control historical narratives, and how the intersection of caste and gender can lead to complete identity erasure even for those who make groundbreaking contributions. You might ask who preserved any memory of Rosy and why? The Big Indian Picture offers historians this story:
… journalist, Kunnukuzhi Mani, has been credited with being the first person to try and dig out the truth about Rosy’s life, including, but not restricted to, her involvement in Vigathakumaran. “It was at N. N. Pillai’s theatre seminar in 1968 or 69, I think. Kambisseri Karunakaran (journalist, actor and politician belonging to the Communist Party of India) told me about Rosy, a poor woman, a grass-cutter, who acted in the first film. I started investigating from then. Kambisseri gave me the information. He asked if I would do an investigation on this. I was a reporter then, an editor for the paper Kalapremi.” Kunnukuzhi met Rosy’s relatives and talked to them. He also spoke to J. C. Daniel’s relatives: “I went to Nagercoil. His siblings were there. I asked them about it. That’s how I found his house in Agastheeswaram (Tamil Nadu).” After his conversation with Daniel, Kunnukuzhi came back and wrote his first article on Rosy in Kalapremi in 1971. Since then he has written about her in several Malayalam magazines….
