It is a well-known fact that the long-suffering people of Telangana have experienced the disastrous effects of colonial Andhra rule in the economic and political spheres for over fifty years. A lesser known, but equally disturbing aspect of this colonization is the long-standing and continuing onslaught on Telangana’s culture, and the naked linguistic chauvinism exhibited by coastal Andhra’s filmmakers. The glitz and glamour of the Andhra film industry seem to have concealed the unsavory aspects of cultural discrimination, distorted portrayals and outright denigration of Telangana’s people and her culture in the commercial films being churned out in huge numbers year after year.
This phenomenon has a long tradition, with roots in the mid-1950s when Coastal Andhra usurped the land and resources of Telangana, as well as her capital city, Hyderabad. The first Telangana characters in early Andhra films were little more than two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs like horse-carriage drivers or poor street vendors who spoke in a sing-song fashion, and mouthed a strange pidgin sprinkled liberally with words borrowed from the Urdu- and Hindi languages. The Andhra film director of the time was probably on relatively unfamiliar terrain and unable to decide what he wanted to do Telangana characters, Muslim or otherwise, in the film. He would then adopt the simple expedient of inventing a character, who in the Andhra mind, was from the alien state of Telangana and spoke in this strange fashion to communicate with “civilized” Andhra folks.
The first phase of denigration of Telangana speakers and their culture, then, began based on the vague Andhra hypothesis that the vocabulary of the Telangana language contained a small proportion of “foreign” Urdu and Hindi words, and was therefore an inferior form of the Telugu language. Furthermore, the majority of the people of Telangana, having experienced centuries of feudal exploitation by the ruling Nizams, were in a state of grave economic deprivation, completely unaware of- and unable to counter the emergence of damaging cultural stereotypes in any meaningful way. These two factors, namely the Telangana language’s distinctive character, and the inability of its speakers to counter Andhra chauvinism, seem to have coalesced in an extremely negative fashion, leading the Andhra mind to the conclusion that the people of Telangana, their language and their culture were somehow less than worthy of respect. Aside from the fact that this misrepresentation in these early Andhra films was patently offensive, the reality here is that the “language” spoken by the characters in these films simply did not exist in the real world, only in the make-believe world of cinema! This sort of portrayal was sufficient, however, to plant the seed in the Andhra psyche for an enduring tradition of broad-based vilification of Telangana, its people, language and culture.
The biased, negative portrayal and continued tarring of a whole culture with a broad brush is not accidental. With the evolution of the Andhra film industry over the next few decades, the level of such misrepresentation reached new heights of sophistication. As Andhra’s grip on the core area of the Hyderabad region tightened progressively, the native people of Telangana were gradually pushed to the fringes of control in their own land. To further the colonial expansion of Andhra, there was a growing need to actively portray the people of Telangana as being crude and uncivilized, incapable of coherent communication or normal interaction in everyday settings, and completely unable to conduct their own affairs. The Andhra film became the perfect vehicle to further this discriminatory agenda.
Let us examine for a moment, the bizarre world of the modern Andhra movie. The main characters in the typical Andhra film live in a surreal world where the “hero” and “heroine” of the movie are always from the “civilized” districts of coastal Andhra, but their sphere of activity somehow always seems to be the “uncivilized” Telangana city of Hyderabad. (As a side note, the use of the terms “hero” and “heroine” as applied to third-rate Andhra actors and actresses causes me to cringe, and I use these terms only because this is what the lay reader may be familiar with. In my opinion, there is nothing even remotely heroic about cavorting around trees with buxom women, or about using body-doubles to shoot explicit scenes designed to titillate a leering audience).
All of the characters in the movie that these two heroic beings interact with are from coastal Andhra, but the entire fabric of their on-screen lives is embedded in Hyderabad. Throughout the excruciatingly long three-hour duration of the movie, there is no everyday, normal interaction with anyone from Telangana, or anyone speaking the “uncivilized” Telangana language. It is as if the “hero”, the “heroine” and the entire cast of the movie have been magically transplanted into Telangana for the purpose of enacting their histrionics on an alien stage. A stage, however, where Telangana, its people and its language simply do not exist. The only purpose that the city serves is that of a mute backdrop to the actors’ antics, as they dance away among the city’s buildings, gardens and malls with casual disregard for their surroundings.
But wait, all is not lost on the Telangana front. Enter now, the proverbial “villain of the piece”. Among his many talents: chewing copious amounts of betel-leaf, threatening innocent women with violence, fearsome skill with a knife, effectively managing a gang of criminals, and lo and behold: speaking the Telangana language fluently! Ladies and Gentlemen, fasten your seat belts, we are about to see some fiery histrionics from our first Telangana speaker in this wonderful movie. So what if he is evil personified and has little or nothing in common with the vast majority of the law-abiding people of Telangana, he is the perfect archetype of the Telangana man in the Andhra mind: crude, uncivilized, lascivious and incapable of leading a normal, decent existence.
Disappointed at the under-representation of Telangana in this film, and that you have seen just one person here that speaks the Telangana language so far? Fear not, as there is more histrionic and linguistic pleasure in store for you. Enter the mandatory buffoon or so-called “comedian”. Inept and crude, the “comedy” on display with this bumbling clown is little more than disjointed scenes of slapstick randomly inserted into the film, the scenes having little to no relevance to the main theme and heroics of the rest of the film. But, the language and related antics of the comedian provide unlimited titillation for a gullible audience. And, surprise, surprise! The buffoon is almost invariably a Telangana fellow, speaking the Telangana language and behaving in the typically ridiculous Telangana fashion! When the language he speaks is so contemptible, laughable and ridiculous, how could the whole person, his background, his people and his culture be anything but contemptible, laughable and ridiculous?
And the pattern of these films continues on its merry way, movie after movie… I will not subject the reader to the tedium of a list of Andhra films that display all of these wonderful characteristics. These themes and negative stereotypes can be found in virtually every film that captivates gullible, adoring audiences in Andhra and Telangana today.
If there are any doubts as to the insidious influence of these Andhra films on the general population’s world-view, a casual conversation about the average Andhra person’s impressions of Telangana and her people should set them at rest. Three whole generations of people in Andhra have been raised on a steady diet of films like this, films that have consistently misrepresented the language, vocabulary and intonation of Telangana as one of criminals, buffoons and the economic underclass. The fallout from the subtle poison spread by these movies is a complete lack of understanding of Telangana’s people, its culture and its language among the general movie-going population, and that means just about everyone on the Andhra side of the Andhra-Telangana divide, educated or not. Despite its completely escapist character, or perhaps because of it, the Andhra film is the chief vehicle of entertainment for the masses. It is also, unfortunately enough, the vehicle that leaves behind the most powerful impressions in the minds of an audience eager to devour anything the movie maker churns out.
Is the language of Telangana truly deserving of such ridicule, such contempt? The geographical dispersion and the location of speakers of a language are factors that always results in regional variations in vocabulary, intonation and pronunciation. This is a universal feature of virtually every major language in the world today. As with other languages, the Telangana language is a living entity that has developed in its own unique way, its vocabulary and linguistic style evolving over time, perhaps centuries.
In addition to geographical factors, the economic status of speakers also plays a significant role in the way different strata of society speak the language in terms of vocabulary, inflection, intonation and style. An individual from a background of chronic poverty, without access to an education, would speak the language very differently from a person that has had access to sophisticated educational facilities. It is difficult to understand why an Andhra film would not be able to show characters that are educated, cultured individuals out of the 35 million people of Telangana that speak their distinctive language with pride. Denigrating a whole dialect simply because it sounds different, and intentionally portraying every speaker of the language as crude, uneducated and poor is not just unethical. It is unconscionable.
The strategy behind this long-standing pattern of portraying the language, culture and people of Telangana as inferior in every respect is clear. It is well-known that the best way to subjugate a people is to strip them of their self-respect and reduce them to caricatures of themselves. Dehumanizing a whole population and reducing an entire culture to an object of ridicule is the best way to establish cultural and colonial hegemony, and thereby extend control over every aspect of life in the colonized area. Let me take the reader back in time to the words of Thomas Babington Macaulay, the high priest of British education in the enslaved India of the early 19th century: “All the historical information which can be collected from all the books which have been written in the Sanskrit language, is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England.” Macaulay’s statement demonstrates clearly the contempt that the English colonizers had for India, her people and her culture. The Andhra interpretation of Macaulay’s principles with regard to the people of Telangana is clear: If the language and culture that the people of Telangana hold so dear are supposedly so contemptible, the sum total of their worth as human beings could not be very high either, could it?
The crushing irony of this distressing situation with Andhra films is that a substantial chunk of their ticket revenue is generated by fawning audiences in Telangana. The films are shot in Telangana. All of the post-production work is executed in studios located in Telangana. The Andhra filmmaker and his all-Andhra crew laugh all the way to the bank with their profits, even as they display utter contempt for Telangana and her people, the very people supporting their movie-making endeavors in great measure.
It is clear that this pattern of bias and warped characterization of Telangana and its people has served the Andhra agenda well to date, and that it will continue unabated until it is resisted in every possible way. This pattern must stop. And it must stop now.
It may be too much to ask that the Andhra filmmaker voluntarily renounce these long-standing biases overnight, but it is time to alert him that these cinematic distortions will not be tolerated any longer. Let the people of Telangana act now. Let there be a demand for a more equitable, representative portrayal of characters from a Telangana background. Let them have the Film Censor Board review the film’s content for material offensive to Telangana’s sensibilities, and have them remove the offending material and characters. Let the people boycott films from filmmakers that persist in offensive behavior. Let there be peaceful, civilized protests against organizations and studios that continue this injustice. Let there also be a renewed surge of encouragement to filmmakers from Telangana. Filmmakers who will portray Telangana and her people not as objects of ridicule and contempt, but as accomplished, three-dimensional, decent human beings who take pride in their language, culture and way of life as being equal to that of any other state or community in the world. This will go a long way towards restoring a sense of balance, and towards providing a dose of much-needed reality to the ever-surreal world of film and cinema.
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