Telugu Cinema’s Legacy Issues

The Telugu film industry’s biggest productions in recent times -- including the Baahubali franchise and RRR -- reinforce the perception that popular cinema today, and Telugu cinema in particular, feeds on and nurtures conservative social values and politics. Furthermore, film star fandom in the Telugu country is saturated with hypermasculine, feudal vocabulary and symbols. A-list Telugu stars include a “Young Tiger”, a “Prince” and a “Royal Rebel”. On social media, there are frequent references to star vamsams (dynasties) and their achievements. We are evidently witnessing the feudalization of an industry and cinema around the very figures that once represented a break from an older elite.

To put it provocatively, what makes a film Telugu is its unembarrassed celebration of bloodlines and inheritance. The changeling in Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo (Trivikram Srinivas, 2020), which is now being remade in Hindi as Shehzada, fights a very different kind of class war from the typical hero of popular Indian films, he reclaims his rightful place in his wealthy father’s paternal home. Unlike his counterparts in earlier changeling films, he neither represents the class interests of his foster parents nor fights for the rights of the poor. In Godfather (Mohan Raja, 2022), an official remake of the Malayalam Lucifer, the relationship between the murdered patriarch and the hero -- only hinted at in the original -- is clearly established, and the story unfolds as a straightforward revenge drama with the protagonist avenging his father’s death and sisters’ ill-treatment.

The larger transformation of Telugu cinema, whose consequences shaped its current form, was triggered in the 1980s by the political ascendance of what activist-intellectual K. Balagopal has termed the “provincial propertied class”. Its members belonged to powerful non-Brahmin upper castes (Kamma, Reddy and Kapu, to name the more prominent ones). [1] The story does not quite begin with N.T. Rama Rao (NTR) but cannot be told without acknowledging his contribution to Telugu cinema and politics. Balagopal argues that the election of NTR as Andhra Pradesh’s Chief Minister in 1983 was a watershed event. As a matter of fact, this was preceded by a churning in Telugu cinema.

In the mid-1970s, the ageing NTR started losing out to a younger generation of stars such as Krishna, Sobhan Babu and Krishnam Raju. For the first time in his long career, he found himself “sitting around at home” for nine months, to quote Dasari Narayana Rao, the director who credited himself with reviving the star’s career through the film Manushulanta Okkate (1976). [2] This was no doubt an exaggerated claim, but Manushulanta Okkate did include elements that were traceable to NTR’s earlier work and would be amplified from this point. The most striking of these was the thematic focus on legacy.

The film, in the tradition of classic melodrama, presents an economic conflict between a colonial zamindar and his subjects in the guise of a father-son relationship. The impoverished subjects revolt under the leadership of the zamindar’s son who is killed by his father’s henchmen. A generation later, the grandson of the zamindar leads another rebellion of the masses, which is successful this time. In the film, both the pro-poor descendants of the zamindar are played by NTR. In the latter part of the film, we see the younger NTR character inheriting his father’s constituency and continuing the anti-feudal struggle to avenge the murder. The struggle for justice and desire for revenge are thus linked. This became an important model for populist Telugu films on rural and industrial uprisings. Manushulanta Okkate does away with the earlier trope of reconciliation between the oppressor and the oppressed. Contrary to audience expectation, the grandfather and grandson never embrace at the end.

Naa Desam (K. Bapayya, 1982), NTR’s last pre-election film, released when he was in the thick of his campaign. Reiterating the rejection of peaceful reconciliation between classes and generations, this film was intended to aid his ongoing campaign. The film is based on the Amitabh-Bachchan starrer Laawaris, but unlike the original, it offers no resolution and reunion between the abandoned son of the industrialist and the rebellious son (played by Bachchan and NTR, respectively). Instead, the rebel ties up his father, stepbrother and lover’s father, and parades them on a busy thoroughfare atop a truck. The film ends with the son inviting the gathered public to lynch the trio.

This act of parricide in a film by the actor who challenged the political establishment dominated by the Indian National Congress (INC) -- the epitome of legacy in Indian politics -- appears ironic but makes perfect sense in context. The challenge to the INC was mounted by a party established by a wealthy upper-caste man (NTR was a Kamma). The rebel was, in fact, not a commoner but a chip of the old block. As Balagopal points out, NTR would go on to represent the interests of the landed castes. In Telugu films of the 1980s, the struggle against exploitation was quite literally a family affair of the elite. The only exceptions were films made by Communist sympathizers and those featuring a new generation of stars.

Generational change did not, in the long run, result in a break with the past, either on screen or off screen. Consider, for instance, the most prominent stars of the post-NTR period: Chiranjeevi and Balakrishna, among others. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Chiranjeevi acted in some landmark anti-landlord films, playing landless labourer, uneducated youth, and so on. But within a few years of his screen debut, he married Surekha (the veteran actor Allu Ramalingaiah’s daughter) and started acting in films produced by Surekha’s brother, Arvind. Nevertheless, he was largely seen as a self-made man without powerful backers in the industry. He was also among the few non-Kamma stars in an industry dominated from the 1950s by superstars from that caste. On the other hand, Balakrishna was one of NTR’s two actor sons. Both he and his older brother Harikrishna were launched as child actors in their father’s films from the 1970s. It was only in 1983 -- the year NTR became Chief Minister -- that Balakrishna moved towards playing the lead. In 1986, Nagarjuna and Venkatesh entered the scene. Akkineni Nageswara Rao (ANR), Nagarjuna’s father, was already a star when NTR joined the industry in the late 1940s. Responding to the state government’s call to establish a film industry in Hyderabad, ANR built the Annapurna Studio in the 1970s. Venkatesh’s father, D. Ramanaidu, was a successful film producer who worked with both NTR and ANR and expanded his business to films made in Hindi and other languages. He also built a studio in Hyderabad.

Notably, emerging players of the 1980s, whether on screen or in production, distribution and exhibition, had socio-economic backgrounds which were similar to the pre-1980s industry elites. An overwhelming majority of them belonged to powerful non-Brahmin upper castes. The rise of Chiranjeevi, his younger brother Pawan Kalyan (from the Kapu caste), and Prabhas (from the Raju caste), emphasized narratives of caste pride which became a feature of fan organizations from that period. Thereby, the links between film, caste and political mobilizations grew stronger even as new stars were introduced. [3] Secondly, descendants and relatives of older stars and producers increased with every passing decade. The steady trickle of articles on nepotism, upper-caste domination and family dynasties of the Telugu film industry [4] are therefore a rather late acknowledgement of a history that has been in the making for the last four decades.

Meanwhile, the villainous zamindar of the Manushulanta Okkate vintage and the legacy issues thrown up in the struggle against his oppression came to be complemented by the arrival of noble patriarchs (village chieftains, wealthy landlords) on screen. These figures were not unique to Telugu cinema and should not be seen as the obvious corollary to the arrival of second- and third-generation savarna stars. Tamil and Kannada film industries had a relatively broader social base. However, all three industries anchored their noble patriarchs in rural settings where non-Brahmin castes wielded power and authority. Rajinikanth’s Muthu, whose narrative centred on the legacy of an absent zamindar, was hugely successful in Tamil as well as in the Telugu dubbed version. Several other films from the 1980s and 1990s were dubbed and/or remade in multiple languages, including Hindi. These include Bobbili Brahmanna (Telugu, K. Raghavendra Rao, 1984; remade in Hindi as Dharam Adhikari), Thevar Magan (Tamil, Bharathan, 1992; dubbed into Telugu as Kshatriya Putrudu and remade as Virasat in Hindi), Surya Vamsam (Tamil, Vikraman, 1997; remade in Telugu and Hindi), and Nattamai (Tamil, K.S. Ravikumar, 1994; remade as Pedarayudu in Telugu and Bulandi in Hindi).

Thus, by the early 2000s, feudal figures were not only prominent in Telugu cinema’s narratives but travelled across film industries. An offshoot of feudal nostalgia films was the highly successful subgenre of the mass film, known as the “faction film” in the Telugu industry. Hits of this kind included Samarasimha Reddy (B. Gopal, 1999) and Narasimha Naidu (B. Gopal, 2001), starring Balakrishna, Aadi (V.V. Vinayak, 2002) with NTR Junior (Harikrishna’s son), Chiranjeevi’s Indra (B. Gopal, 2002), and Okkadu (Gunasekhar, 2003) led by Krishna’s son Mahesh Babu. Many of these were also remade in Tamil and Kannada, or had Hindi dubbed versions.

Most of these films have in common an awe-inspiring and benevolent pre-modern figure of authority who comes into conflict with his double (the selfish, malevolent landlord/chieftain/faction leader with ties to powerful ministers at the state and central levels). What sets apart these two variants of rural strongmen is not caste, wealth or lineage, but noble qualities. Even as heroes and villains share similar backgrounds, the true leader stands out due to his honesty and generosity, and his commitment to justice and pastoral care of the community. The drama often revolves around the demonstrable ownership of an ageing or dead patriarch’s qualities by the generation that succeeds him.

Telugu cinema’s investment in feudal patriarchs can certainly be read as a textual manifestation of the domination of film families in the industry. However, it is not enough for a star to be born into a dominant caste or be the son of an earlier generation’s favourite actor. In film after film, he must earn the approval of the viewer by performing a series of highly stylized set pieces, ranging from spectacular entries, confrontations with villains, item numbers, and so on. Scions of yesteryear industry patriarchs must also convincingly display their commitment to the demos (on screen) by fighting people’s battles and acting out their deepest desires. Feudalization is therefore intimately linked to populism, and dependent on Telugu cinema’s continuing ability to address the masses in an idiom they approve. That Telugu cinema travels well beyond the Telugu country today needs to be read as a sign that this model of populism assembled by the industry has wider acceptance now. The question to ask is not whether or not this is a good thing but what it might tell us about the practice of democracy in our part of the world.

S.V. Srinivas teaches at the School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru.

Endnotes

[1] K. Balagopal, “The Karamchedu Killings: The Essence of the NTR Phenomenon,” Economic and Political Weekly, 20, no. 31 (August 3, 1985), 1298-1300; K. Balagopal, “An Ideology for the Provincial Propertied Class,” Economic and Political Weekly, 22, no. 50 (December 12, 1987), 2177-2178.

[2] A.A.V. Prasad, “Bahudoorapu Batasari Bahumukha Vyaktitvam,” India Today Varshika Cinema Sanchika (Telugu, Annual Special Issue on Film) (1986), 60-68.

[3] I discuss these changes at length in my book Megastar: Chiranjeevi and Telugu Cinema After N.T. Rama Rao (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009).

[4] See Nitin B., “Tollywood’s First Families: The Kings and Queens Who Rule the Telugu Film Industry,” The News Minute, September 3, 2017, ; Sailaja, “Nepotism -- A Plague in the Telugu Industry,” , My Movies Spotlight Blog, September 28, 2015; and Sowjanya Tamalapakula, “How Telugu Political Biopics Cherish Memories of Feudalism,” The Wire, April 29, 2019 . For an overview of film families in the Telugu and Tamil industries, see Suresh Dharur and Janani Sampath, “The Filmy Family Trees of the South: A Tale of Clan, Caste and Star Worship,” The Federal, June 21, 2020, .

All online links were accessed on October 11, 2022.