The overt right-wing slide of Telugu cinema became a topic of political debate when Telangana Minister KT Rama Rao said that Prabhas’s Adipurush, a retelling of Ramayana, was one of many films being made to peddle the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s propaganda. “The BJP has come up with a strategy to combine nationalism and communalism … They won't directly fund those movies. Many times we don't even understand those movies. Uri, The Kashmir Files, Adipurush, etc. How come their timing is so convenient? It’s because BJP is working in a multi-faceted way to make this happen,” KTR had said in April, in an interview to a TV channel.
Speculation about their funding aside, there has indeed been a clear shift towards hyper-nationalistic and jingoistic narratives in the films churned out by the Telugu industry lately. One reason for this is pure economics. The huge profits earned by films such as The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story despite being made on a shoe-string budget indicate that there is a market for such films, which Telugu filmmakers are also looking to exploit. Telugu filmmakers whom TNM spoke to said that a few producers have been specifically asking them to make films with elements that would work well in north Indian states too, where the BJP’s Hindu nationalist politics resonates deeply with the public.
Along with actors like Prabhas, Allu Arjun, Ram Charan, and Jr NTR who have earned the tag of ‘pan-Indian’ stars, there has been the curious case of another actor in Telugu cinema – Nikhil Siddhartha – who has managed to build an impressive fan base in the Hindi belt. Nikhil is way less popular than stars like Prabhas, with barely five or six hit films in his career (all mid-budget ones). Yet, he has managed to bag the title of a ‘pan-Indian’ star, mainly by capitalising on Hindutva sentiments.
Following the success of Karthikeya 2 (2022), Nikhil and film’s producers have doubled down on making more films that could strike a chord with the core Hindutva constituency of the BJP, such as Spy (2023) and the upcoming The India House. Karthikeya 2, which was dubbed in Hindi too, had a bullish run at the box office and was listed among the more profitable films along with the brazenly propagandist The Kashmir Files in 2022. The Kashmir Files was accused by many of perpetuating a skewed narrative around Kashmir, by dwelling on the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits alone while delegitimising the pain of Kashmiri Muslims and vilifying them.
Karthikeya 2 released the same week as Bollywood star Aamir Khan’s Laal Singh Chaddha. But Aamir’s star power was no match for Nikhil’s film, which had all the elements to lure the Hindutva crowd. Meanwhile, Laal Singh Chaddha faced threats of boycotts from right-wing groups for allegedly ‘hurting Hindu sentiments’ and 'disrespecting the Indian Army'.
Directed by Chandoo Mondeti, Karthikeya 2 portrays the birth of the Hindu god Krishna as actual history and not mythology. The film was made at a time when the controversy around the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi gained fresh life in 2021, after a Varanasi court allowed a video survey of the mosque based on a plea by Hindu devotees seeking permission to offer prayers inside the mosque complex, claiming that it housed Hindu deities. Incidentally, Minister KTR had said that he expected the release of Adipurush to coincide with the opening of the Ram temple at Ayodhya. While this did not happen, the teaser of the film was launched in Ayodhya.
Through its narrative, Karthikeya 2 portrays the Hindu deity Krishna as a doctor, climatologist, kinetic engineer, psychologist, and musician among other things, aping the views expressed by people like Garikapati Narasimha Rao. Garikapati Narasimha Rao is a popular figure among the Telugu privileged castes who offers Hindu discourses, and in his quest to appeal to young people, he often presents Hinduism as ‘science.’
Nikhil, who has since become the face of Telugu right-wing films, recently released another film titled Spy, directed by Garry BH. The film was marketed by promising to reveal ‘hidden secrets’ around Indian nationalist Subhash Chandra Bose’s mysterious death, a conspiracy theory expected to pique the curiosity of the right wing. Nikhil is now making a film called The India House, named after the base of Veer Savarkar's activities in London. The film is co-produced by Abhishek Agarwal Arts, the production house behind The Kashmir Files and Karthikeya 2, and Ram Charan’s newly launched production house V Mega Pictures. Ram Charan’s RRR, which achieved global success, was also criticised by many for endorsing Hindutva majoritarian politics through symbolism from Hindu mythology and other narrative aspects.
“It is the market and capital which determines what kind of films should be made. At present, across the country there is a nationalistic, jingoistic and communal fervour, which the Telugu filmmakers want to exploit,” says senior Telugu film critic and journalist Bharadwaja Rangavajhala.
While Nikhil has become the overt face of right-wing films with ‘pan-Indian’ success, there have been other films such as Jawaan (2017), RRR (2022), Major (2022), Acharya (2022) and others which have also milked the prevailing popular sentiment.
“Rajamouli’s RRR was an outright Hindutva film. The freedom fighters Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem were turned into Hindu gods Rama and Hanuman so that the film would work well across India. Rajamouli realised that there was a market for such films and encashed it,” says Bharadwaja. In RRR’s ‘Etthara Jenda’ song, a tribute to Indian freedom fighters, the absence of Gandhi and Nehru was conspicuous. Rajamouli’s father Vijayendra Prasad, who was the writer of the film, said that it was a deliberate decision. Speaking about Gandhi advocating for Nehru over Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to be made India’s first Prime Minister, Vijayendra Prasad said, “If Patel was [made PM], Kashmir would not have been burning like a ‘Ravana kashtam’ (Ravana’s funeral pyre).”
This narrative aligns with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s views on the issue as expressed in the Parliament back in 2018. However, recorded history indicates that Patel’s views on Kashmir were not as straightforward, and there is no definitive record of how he planned to handle the issue.
The BJP meeting Telugu film stars as part of their political outreach efforts is also a testimony to the proximity and the interests shared between the two. Vijayendra Prasad, who is now also a Rajya Sabha MP nominated by the President, has announced that he will be writing a film and web series glorifying the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the BJP. Showering praise on the RSS while speaking at a book launch event of RSS National Executive Member Ram Madhav, Vijayendra Prasad said that he was roped in to write a film about three to four years earlier (after the Baahubali films had become hugely successful).
“I would like to confess something in front of you all. Until three or four years ago, I didn’t know much about the RSS. Like many others, I believed that they killed Gandhi. But four years ago, they asked me to write a film on RSS. As I was being paid for it, I went to Nagpur and met [RSS chief] Mohan Bhagwat. I stayed there for a day and understood for the first time what RSS is. I felt a lot of remorse, that I wasn’t aware of such a great organisation for so long.” He went on to say, “If RSS wasn’t there, there would be no Kashmir, it would’ve merged with Pakistan. Lakhs of Hindus would have died due to Pakistan.”
Rajamouli praised his father’s script of the RSS film in an interview with The New Yorker, saying it made him cry as it was very emotional. However, he said he was unsure about the political implications of such a film.
Vijayendra Prasad has been called on to write films not just by RSS but even BJP leaders. Since The Kashmir Files was released, former president of BJP’s Telangana unit Bandi Sanjay Kumar has talked about a film titled The Razakar Files in the making, which would depict the atrocities of Razakars — a private militia that committed several atrocities and defended the Nizam rule. Bandi Sanjay has also reportedly approached Vijayendra Prasad to write this film.
Also read: Tejasvi Surya's mention of Razakars in Hyderabad is an attempt to polarise, say historians
In the 1930s, Telugu cinema mirrored the social reform politics that defined Indian nationalism before independence. Gudavalli Ramabrahmam, who is credited as a pioneer in Telugu cinema, made two classic films — Mala Pilla (A Girl from the Mala Scheduled Caste) in 1938, and Raithu Bidda (Farmer of Common Origins) in 1939.
Mala Pilla was a film that addressed caste discrimination, and Raithu Bidda was a critique of zamindars’ exploitation. Both these films were reformist in nature with influences from Gandhian nationalism, writes SV Srinivas, Professor of Film and Cultural Studies at Azim Premji University, in his book Politics as Performance: A Social History of Telugu Cinema. How did a film industry which once produced anti-caste films, and propagated Gandhian and communist ideologies, turn towards the right wing?
“The Telugu film industry has always been capitalistic in nature. It appropriated whatever sentiment was working for it. They even made communist films [particularly in the 1990s] because the masses enjoyed such films and songs. They simply moved away when the Left movement saw a decline. Now the film industry inclining towards the right wing is not unsurprising. They have found a market and are using it,” says Swamy* (name changed), an upcoming filmmaker.
Srinivas Kondra, a PhD scholar at the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad, says that the lack of a large, influential social movement like the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu is also among the reasons for the current crisis in Telugu cinema. “There is some resistance in Tamil Nadu, where many people view Hindu propaganda films critically. Because of caste consciousness, they are able to look at the Hindu religion critically, and question [such propaganda]. In Andhra Pradesh, there were movements around class, but not effective ones against caste,” he notes.
A Telugu director speaking on the condition of anonymity said, “There are producers who are specifically asking directors to come up with stories or elements which would click with audiences in other parts of the country too. They want films which would capture the prevailing right-wing sentiment.”
Prabhas’s Adipurush, based on the Hindu epic Ramayana, was one such project which tried to exploit this market. The film, which was released in five languages (Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada) failed at impressing the audience because of poor storytelling, appalling visual effects and terrible dialogues.
Despite leaning towards the Hindu right wing, so far, the Telugu film industry has not produced any film which has vilified Muslims the way that The Kashmir Files or The Kerala Story does (at least not yet). This is not to say that Muslims were not projected negatively in Telugu films before the BJP was elected to power in 2014.
Krishna Vamsi’s Khadgam (2002) was possibly one of the first Telugu films made in the aftermath of the terror attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, which employed the good Muslim-bad Muslim binary. In the film, Prakash Raj plays Amjad, an auto driver who is a nationalist. In contrast, his brother Azhar joins a terror outfit and plans a terror attack in Hyderabad. Srikanth plays a police officer who views Muslims with suspicion. Other films released in subsequent years such as Vedam (2010) and Naa Peru Surya, Naa Illu India (2018), which portray radicalised Muslim characters, also had similar narrative elements of including a ‘good Muslim’ and ‘bad Muslim’ in the same family.
“There is not much scope for vilifying Muslims in Telugu cinema through such propaganda films, as the Muslim population in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh is much lower compared to places like Kashmir or Kerala. So, that agenda is unlikely to work,” observes Swamy.