Making of a Peasant Industry: Telugu Cinema in the 1930s – 1950s
S.V. Srinivas (Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore. Email:
srinivas@cscs.res.in & svsrinivas99@gmail.com)
Abstract: What can the cinema tell us about its time? This essay examines the question by
focusing on the role the Telugu film industry played in the rise to economic and political
prominence of a post-colonial and post-feudal elite in what is now the south Indian state
of Andhra Pradesh. A two decade period in the history of Telugu cinema is examined to
show how the industry came under the control of entrepreneurs of peasant origin by
becoming a destination of surpluses generated by agriculture and related activities.
During this period an industry model that facilitated the absorption of large infusions of
capital, as also relatively small retail investments at the local level, was assembled. The
model, predicated on syndicated investments and distribution of risk, fell in place at a
time when peasants began to migrate out of the village for a variety of reasons and were
expanding their activities from agriculture, commodity speculation and rural money
lending.
Keywords: Telugu cinema, film industry, film history, peasantry, migration, Madras.
In this essay I examine a film industry that is relatively unfamiliar to students of cinema
and ask a set of questions of the cinema that the discipline of cinema studies does not
often engage with. The double detour of sorts is motivated by a sense of unease that I am
sure is rather familiar to our discipline. While we recognize the need to engage in
productive and sustained conversations with other disciplines, we remain, for the most
part, filmic text-centred in our analyses and the film industry continues to be undertheorized. As a result, the usefulness of cinema for writing social and economic history is
limited to the interpretations of signs on the screen.
My starting point therefore is the question, what can the cinema tell us about it time if our
exploration is not confined to individual films? My object is the Telugu film industry
during an important period in its history, the 1930s-1950s—roughly the period between
the arrival of the talkie and the formation of formation o the state of Andhra Pradesh,
created in 1956 from three distinct regions, namely Coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema and
Telangana. These regions were earlier a part of the Madras Presidency and Hyderabad (or
the Nizam’s Dominions) respectively. While the Presidency was directly under the British
2
colonial administration, Telangana was a princely state and was under ‘indirect’ rule.
Rayalaseema too was a part of the Nizam’s Dominions in the 19th century but was ceded
to the British. At present there is a major agitation in Telangana for the formation of a
separate state. Evidently, Presidency and Telangana regions of the state were never fully
integrated into a single political geographical entity. At a time like this it is all the more
necessary to clarify that I confine my study to the developments in the Presidency region
of what later became Andhra Pradesh and how they in turn impacted the Telugu film
industry whose production centre was Madras.
I will argue that the film industry was implicated in and indeed made a notable
contribution to a watershed event, namely, the rise to social, economic and (later) political
prominence of a caste-class constellation. This constellation has been variously
categorised as rural propertied (Balagopal 1988), farmer-capitalist (Upadhya 1988a & b)
and new capitalist (Damodaran 2008).
As such, the category of entrepreneur who took to the cinema in what is now Andhra
Pradesh was part of an all India phenomenon. Gail Omvedt, among the earliest to draw
attention to what was in fact the rise of the post-independence economic and political
elite, observes:
After the coming of independence, rich peasants, landlords and the emerging
capitalist farmers began to invest on a wider scale, rather than simply consuming
surpluses. The establishment of tiny transport companies, tea shops, small flour
mills, oil mills, brick kilns etc, were all part of this process. Some moved into
trade in direct competition with previous merchant classes/castes (1981: 147).
The intimacy between this class and the cinema in Andhra Pradesh has been well
established by commentators. Marking the elite’s moment of arrival on the political scene
was the formation of the Telugu Desam Party (1982) by the film star N.T. Rama Rao
(NTR). In 1983 the party won a landmark election and formed the first non-Congress
government in the state. That is not all there is to the film connection of the class. In a
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typical small town, remarks Balagopal, ‘the pride of place is taken by the twin symbols of
Coastal Andhra: cinema halls that look like rice-mills and rice-mills that look like cinema
halls, give or take a chimney stack’ (1988: 154). He goes on to assert, ‘all the surplus that
is generated by the [Krishna-Godavari] delta agriculture goes in exactly two directions:
agro-based industry and trade, and film production, distribution and exhibition’ (154).
The 1980s discussion of this class was broadly framed by what came to be known as the
‘mode of production’ debate whose primary concern was the nature of transition (or the
lack of it) between pre-capitalist and capitalist modes of production. My interest is not
whether there emerged a properly capitalist class among peasants or if it battled feudal
interests. I begin with what students of Indian cinema know all too well: film industries in
this part of the world have excelled in the production of hundreds of films, year after
year, that do not actually recover their cost of production. How then do we understand the
apparent lack of fit between the cinema, which has been a loss-making industry according
to one set of criteria, and the close association of the emergent social, political and
economic elite with the film industry? What allowed the cinema to play any role in the
Bildungsroman of the emerging elite? I suggest that this is best explained by tracking the
mobility of men and money from agriculture, and the cluster of activities associated with
it, into new geographical areas and spheres of investment.
Locating the Peasant Question
My larger project, of which this essay is a part, attempts to demonstrate that in Andhra
Pradesh the story of the emergence and consolidation of the post-independence economic
and political elite, an elite whose distinctiveness lies in its peasant origin, not only in
caste terms but also in terms of its occupation, cannot in fact be told without reference to
the cinema. Peasant is a term that I use in spite of its vagueness as well as its Maoist
associations. Balagopal points out that the term ‘is frequently used as un-discriminatingly
as the Mughal and British revenue administrators used the terms riyat or ryot [farmer]’
(1988: 8). He adds that peasant castes also referred to as ‘middle’ or ‘intermediate’ castes
in the literature of the 1980s, ‘have been not only cultivators but also kings, feudatories,
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barons, overlords and revenue intermediaries…’ (11). Furthermore, there is evidence of
cultivators among these castes engaging in violent struggles against feudal landlords
belonging to the same caste (12). I prefer to use the term peasant, rather than categories
used by earlier commentators cited above such as rural propertied classes, farmercapitalist and new capitalist, to flag the connection the industry’s investors had with land
and agriculture in the period under consideration. I will show that this connection cannot
be explained away by gesturing vaguely towards the peasant origins of the castes to
which the industry’s stakeholder belonged. On the contrary there was definitive slippage
of control of the film industry away from old money—which for historical reasons was
held by zamindars (landlords with revenue collection privileges)—belonging to peasant
castes—and new money generated by those who had no claims to feudal antecedents
whatsoever.
A disclaimer would be in order at this point because Andhra Pradesh has been the focus
of a very different kind of peasant question due to the Telangana agitation against feudal
oppression and also the Indian state (1948-52). The peasants I have in mind are neither
poor nor insurgent. Furthermore, my focus is on the regions other than Telangana. As of
now there is little material on the history of the film industry in the Telangana region
before the formation of Andhra Pradesh. However, there is another reason for leaving
Telangana out of the discussion. Developments internal to the region had no significant
impact on the Madras based film industry in the period under consideration. It was only
after 1956 that the Telangana became critical for Telugu cinema, both as a market for
films as well as a destination for investment. That point has been made by G. Haragopal
who states:
The capital thrown up by the agrarian surplus in [C]oastal Andhra could not be
ploughed back into the agrarian sector partly on account of the inelastic nature of
the agricultural sector and partly because of the failure to engender quick and
attractive returns. Consequently the capital was in search of new avenues and
green pastures (1985: 69-70).
5
These ‘pastures’ included ‘skyscrapers [sic], hotels and cinema theatres.’ Further, ‘part of
this capital went into film production itself’ (71).
I would like to advance a larger claim about the cinema than its implication in
perpetuating regional disparities. My hypothesis is that historically the cinema, in Andhra
Pradesh, served as the point of entry into the realm of modern day capitalism for a whole
generation of entrepreneurs who traced their origins rather directly to the peasantry—
small and medium landowners who actually worked on their land—and wealthy
landlords with strong ties to land. So much so that the cinema was among the earliest, if
not the very first, industries that this group invested in.
Commentators on Andhra Pradesh have tended to limit the discussion of the economic
significance of the cinema to its function as a destination of investment as also a source
of surplus for members of the Kamma caste from Coastal Andhra. Harish Damodaran’s
(2008) account of the rise of new capitalists belonging to what he calls ‘non-traditional’
backgrounds in post-Independence India is perhaps the first study to extend the
importance of the cinema beyond the Kamma caste to a much larger cross section of
peasant castes in the state. Damodaran makes a useful distinction between castes with a
history of involvement in trade and business—the banias and other trading
castes/communities, or the traditional businessmen—and other castes that took to it in the
more recent past. In Andhra Pradesh it is the Komati caste that fits Damodaran’s
definition of the traditional businessmen. The businessmen and industrialists from nontraditional backgrounds were, as Damodaran points out, drawn from castes with agrarian
origins, namely the Kamma, Reddy, Raju, and to a lesser extent, Velama and Kapu. What
is of direct relevance to my argument is his point that the business pioneers among
Kammas, Reddys and Velamas invested in the film industry, playing a key role in setting
up industry infrastructure (2008: 99, 114, 119).
Damodaran himself does not make more than a passing reference to this development.
Like earlier commentators on the political economy of the state he merely lists cinema as
one among other venues of investments ranging from sugar and tobacco to transport,
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government contracts, newspapers and pickles that members of these castes explored in
their progress to prosperity and political prominence. Furthermore Damodaran sees the
cinema as having to do primarily with the rise of the Kamma caste. In spite of the
obvious Kamma domination of the film industry, I would like to revisit the question by
investigating whether the cinema was anything more than an incidental site for
investments by those who did not belong to the traditional trading castes? The answer, I
suggest, is yes.
Pritham Chakravarthy and Venkatesh Chakravarthy’s (2008) work on the Tamil film
industry in Madras, the city where the ‘Telugu’ industry too was based till the 1990s,
draws attention to its traditional economic base. It was the Nattukottai Chettiars, with
their longstanding and well established business credentials and presence across the
Tamil speaking areas of the Presidency but also in Ceylon and Malaya, who built the
‘Tamil’ studios. Indeed, it is so obvious that non-Brahmin, non-Komati castes in general
and Kammas in particular have dominated the Telugu film industry that the narrow focus
on caste origins of the industry obscures a key shift, and one this paper will track, that
occurred by the end of the period 1930s - 1950s.
During these decades ownership of the Telugu film industry passed from zamindars to
entrepreneurs whose caste backgrounds too were similar to those of the zamindars.
However, post-zamindar owners of the industry had increasing degrees of intimacy with
agriculture and related activities. So much so that by 1956, when Andhra Pradesh state
was formed, the film industry was all set to become an industry of peasants, drawing its
investments rather directly from agriculture and allied activities. I would like to use the
phrase agriculture and some to refer to a constellation of activities that were related to
agriculture in the sense that those who accumulated agricultural surpluses typically
carried them out along side growing crops and rearing cattle. As historians of the region
have pointed out, these included rural money lending and commodity trade/speculation.1
How the cinema became an investment option for entrepreneurs with peasant origins will
1
N.G. Ranga (1926) points out that by the 1920s there were already a number of Kamma agriculturalists
who were engaged in speculation and trade in agricultural commodities as well as money lending (35-37).
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be the primary focus of the following section.
Pioneers of the Silent Era
Even from the limited sources available on the early history of the film industry it is
possible to suggest that during the silent era there was, firstly, a marginal Kamma
presence in the film business and, secondly, the pioneers do not appear to have any direct
link with agricultural and related surpluses.
Raghupathi Venkaiah, widely recognized by Telugu film commentators to be ‘father’ of
the industry, was a Madras-based photographer from the Kapu caste.2 He entered the film
business as a travelling exhibitor of silent films. He then built the first Indian owned
permanent cinema hall in Madras in 1914. Some years later his son R. Prakash, set up a
studio in Madras and became a producer-director of silent films (Baskaran 1996: 3-5).
Pothina Srinivasa Rao is credited with the establishment of the first permanent cinema
hall in the Telugu speaking regions of Madras Presidency in Vijayawada in 1921. He
went on to direct what is believed to be the very first talkie made with ‘Telugu’
investment in Bombay in 1933 (Murari nd: 8). He was a businessman and theatre
enthusiast belonging to the locally prominent Nagara caste (now categorized as OBC).3
The very first locally owned distribution company was established by a Komati rice
trader turned pilgrim tour operator, G.K. Mangaraju in the 1930s. Murari claims that
Mangaraju entered the film industry in the late silent era (circa 1927) as an exhibitor. At
some point between 1933 and 1937 Mangaraju established the distribution company
Quality Pictures. In 1937 Quality Pictures entered film production. In 1940 the
distribution company Poorna Pictures was established (Murari nd: 16-17). In spite of the
continuing significance of Poorna Pictures for the industry, and the fact that Vijayawada
2
I am grateful to M.L. Kantha Rao, who researched the history of the Kapu caste (Kantha Rao, 1999), for
the information on Venkaiah’s caste background. Backgrounds of Srinivasa Rao and Mangaraju, whose
contributions to the industry are discussed below, were confirmed from members of their families in
personal interviews with the author.
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city’s first (Inox) multiplex is housed on a triple theatre complex built by Mangaraju’s
descendents, neither exhibition nor distribution can be said to have been ‘owned’ by
Komati entrepreneurs.
Madras and the Zamindar Era
The story of the new capitalists in the Telugu film industry and the internal churning
within this category is closely linked to the growing prominence of Madras as the centre
of Telugu film production. As film critic K.N.T. Sastry points out, the first Telugu talkie,
Bhakta Prahlada (H.M. Reddy, 1931) was made in Bombay (1993: 15). Murari states
that the inauguration of Telugu film production in Madras was made possible with the
establishment of the studio, Vel Pictures, around 1933 (nd: 9). Till this point Telugu films
were made either in Bombay or Calcutta. They continued to be made outside Madras over
a decade later.
Vel Pictures was established by a group of Madras based exhibitors and funded by a
Kamma zamindar from Krishna district, Yarlagadda Sivaramaprasad, the ‘Raja’ of
Challapalli (Murari nd.: 9). In 1923 this Raja had helped set up Andhra Bank by
providing the financial resources for it. Among the other ventures he invested in were a
sugar factory and a company manufacturing precision tools (Damodaran 2008: 99).
With the establishment of Vel Pictures the zamindar era in the Telugu film industry can be
said to have begun. Zamindar presence in the film industry is evidence of the critical role
this category of investor played in business and industry in the early part of the twentieth
century. With reference to Coastal Andhra, Carol Upadhya observes, ‘Most of the early
local industrialists of the 1930s to 1950s were from this class [zamindars], but because
zamindars belong to the “peasant” castes, they became role models for their enterprising
caste brethren of more humble backgrounds’ (1988a: 1378). The transition that Upadhya
draws attention to is from zamindar and landlord in the early part of the 20th century to
the wealthy cultivator in the years to come. A majority of her informants among
3
See Parthasarathy 1997 for an account of the significance of the Nagara caste for Vijayawada.
9
industrialists in Visakhapatnam were from families with large landholdings (20-49 acres,
1988b: 1434).
In the 1930s and 1940s Coastal Andhra zamindars belonging to different castes
bankrolled the setting up of production infrastructure in Madras. In 1938, Venkataramaiah
Apparao Bahadur, the Raja of Mirzapur (a Krishna district zamindar from the Velama
caste) built the second ‘Telugu’ studio in Madras, Jaya Films. In 1940 the studio was
renamed Sobhanachala Studio. Raja of Mirzapur is arguably the most prominent of the
film industry zamindars. The Raja, his wife Krishnaveni and daughter Anuradha
produced a number of successful films in Telugu, Tamil and Kannada in the decades to
come. He also directed Keelugurram (1949), stated to be the very first bilingual
production in Telugu and Tamil (Murari nd: 23-25).
Image 1: Advertisement
for the Mirzapuram
Raja’s Sobhanachala
Production, Gollabhama
(C. Pullaiah, 1947).
Source: Roopavani,
February 1946.
A less known zamindary enterprise in the Telugu film industry was the Andhra Cinetone
Studio in Visakhapatnam. It was set up in 1938 by R.S.R.K. Ranga Rao, the Velama caste
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Raja of Bobbili and R.J.K. Ranga Rao, the zamindar of Chikkavaram. The studio made a
bilingual production in Telugu and Bengali, Bhakta Jayadeva (Hiren Bose, 1938) and
became defunct soon after (Murari nd. 26).4
During the 1930s three important players from Kamma and Reddy castes who did not
have zamindary backgrounds entered the film industry, laying the foundations for the
second phase of the industry’s development. They are Akkineni Lakshmi Vara Prasad
(L.V. Prasad), Gudavalli Ramabrahmam and Bommireddi Narasimha Reddi (B.N.
Reddi).
L.V. Prasad left his village for Bombay in 1930 when the Depression led his well-to-do
Kamma agricultural family to file for bankruptcy (Sastry 1993: 6). He became H.M.
Reddy’s assistant in the Imperial Film Company and also played bit roles in all the three
talkies produced by the company in 1931. In the 1930s he was an actor and director of
some repute but on the whole a rather minor player in the industry. Over the next three
decades, however, he became a producer and also set up film laboratories in Bombay,
Madras and Hyderabad (information culled from Sastry 1993, Damodaran 2008).
Prasad established a trend that a number of other Kamma men who become key players
in the industry followed in the years to come. This category of industry player, the first
generation migrant who traces his origin directly to rich or poor cultivators (but
cultivators, nevertheless), is a hypervisible presence in the industry. Casual observers get
the impression that these entrepreneurs arrived directly from fields and cattle sheds to
acquire major stakes in the industry. This is partly because both superstars of the 1950s,
Akkineni Nageswara Rao (ANR) and NTR, were born into agricultural families and went
on to set up production companies and studios, in addition to becoming stars. In NTR’s
case, very much like L.V. Prasad’s, the transition is rather dramatic. Distress faced by
even well-off cultivators of the Krishna-Godavari districts during the Depression proved
to be a catalyst in his migration out of the countryside. His adopted father moved to
4
Rajadhyaksha and Willemen (1999: 274) categorize Jayadeva as a Telugu film and make no mention of its
Bengali version. They state that the film was made on a big budget but was unsuccessful.
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Vijayawada town with the teenaged NTR when the family lost its land. The father worked
as a bus conductor while the youth sold milk and attended high school (Lakshmiparvathy
2004, Venkat Narayan 1983, Venkata Rao 2003). It was as a college student in
Vijayawada that NTR was drawn to amateur theatre that led him to the film industry
(Lakshmiparvathy 2004). In comparison the transition made by ANR, who traces his
origins to a humble agricultural family, appears relatively less dramatic because he spent
some years in professional theatre before he was cast in films.
Image 2: Advertisement from
Sarathy’s Grihapravesam (L.V.
Prasad, 1946). Source:
Roopavani, May 1946.
The rise to prominence of direct descendants of peasants in the later decades marks a
shift away from zamindar dominance of the industry in the 1930s. Ironically, this was an
indirect outcome of the collaboration between the Kamma zamindar Yarlagadda
Sivaramaprasad and Gudavalli Ramabrahmam, an intellectual and business manager of
the same caste. Ramabrahmam, the key facilitator of the transition, and best known for
his reformist melodramas Malapilla (1938) and Raitu Bidda (1939), was a reputed editor
and public intellectual before he became a filmmaker.
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The ‘Ramabrahmam moment,’5 when zamindar investments in the film industry created
production infrastructure, was characterized by the formation of networks of first
generation urban immigrants from peasant backgrounds initially around the printing
press, magazines and newspapers and, later, the cinema itself. Education was, no doubt, a
necessary pre-condition for the formation of such networks. Caste, kinship and villagelevel connections can be seen criss-crossing with new friendships and partnerships
transcending familiar modes of networking were formed in Madras and smaller urban
centres of the Presidency.
Image 3: Advertisement for
Ramabrahmam’s not so famous
work, Mayalokam (aka
Kambhojaraju, 1945). Source:
Roopavani, April 1945.
Ramabrahmam moved to Madras in 1931 as an assistant editor of a magazine, which he
went on to edit. He then worked as a production executive for Vel Pictures. In 1937 he
established Sarathy Films Private Limited with Yarlagadda Sivaramaprasad as the
5
The phrase was coined by Ravi Vasudevan in this review of the essay.
13
Chairman (Murari nd: 19-20).6 In just a couple of years the productions of Sarathy Films
lent a high degree of respectability to Telugu cinema. This was in part due to the
Gandhian-nationalist thematic concerns of Malapilla and Raitu Bidda but also the
association of famous literary figures (as scriptwriters and lyricists) with these films. For
reasons of focus I will avoid a discussion of the films7 and flag the other reason why we
should be interested in them.
The Ramabrahmam moment had lasting economic and aesthetic consequences for the
industry. Sarathy’s productions increased the scale of Telugu film production in general.
For example, Malapilla, which used dozens of extras, is reported by Murari to have cost
as much as Rs. 110,000 (nd: 21). With the establishment of Sarathy the era of the filmed
padya natakam, musical plays often revolving around mythological stories and
performed by professional theatre groups, can be said to be fully over. In the early talkie
era most Telugu films were essentially filmed company dramas that were already well
known. Filming stage plays required minimal infrastructure and a relatively small
investment. Zamindar investments in production infrastructure and (by the standards of
that time) efficiently run companies capable of making big budget films had, in effect,
put an end to filmed company dramas. In 1940 the cost of producing a film was estimated
at Rs. 100,000 (Ramabrahmam 1940: 97). Even as the industry demonstrated the capacity
to absorb large infusions of capital, filmmakers began to debate on aesthetic questions
that were specific to the cinema. Later in the essay I discuss the aesthetic and other
challenges faced by filmmakers.
The beginning of the shift away from zamindar domination can be traced to B.N. Reddi, a
chartered accountant by training and theatre enthusiast. Reddi’s wealthy landowning
family had migrated from Kadapa district of Rayalaseema to Madras to run an
agricultural commodities business (Guy 1985: 8). His friendship with Ramabrahmam
brought him into contact with major Telugu writers of the period (Dakshina Murthy 2006:
6
Damodaran (2008: 99) says Sarathy was established in 1938 while Rajadhyaksha and Willemen (1999:
187) trace the company’s origins to 1936. I use Murari because it is the film industry’s official record of
film producers from the beginning of the silent era.
7
For a detailed discussion of these films and their significance, see Srinivas 1999.
14
19). It also led to Reddi’s investment in the BNK press. The press printed
Ramabrahmam’s journal and also film publicity material, which in turn brought Reddi
into contact with film personalities (Guy 1985: 9; Murari nd. 29). Reddi entered the film
industry as a partner in H.M. Reddy’s production company Rohini Pictures (Guy 1985:
10; Murari 28). He fell out with H.M. Reddy and in 1939 established Vauhini Pictures
with Moola Narayana Swamy, a businessman who was one of the partners in Rohini
Pictures, and some others. Reddi directed Vauhini’s first film Vandemataram in the same
year (Guy 1985: 12). In 1945-46 a separate company, Vauhini Productions, was
established to infuse new investments into production while the older Vauhini Pictures
was confined to distribution (Murari nd. 29). In 1948 Vauhini Productions, the studio was
built (Rajadhyaksha and Willemen1999: 231).
Image 4: B.N. Reddi’s
Swargaseema (1945), which set
new aesthetic standards for
Telugu cinema. Source:
Roopavani October 1945.
B.N. Reddi’s contribution to film aesthetics and quality productions is widely known.
Less known is his role in the transition to the post-zamindar phase of the film industry.
He played a key role in upscaling both the aesthetic and economic worth of the cinema in
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this period.8 With the Vauhini affiliates the studio era can be said to have come of age in
Telugu cinema. Over the years Vauhini’s studio was taken over by Vijaya Pictures, the
production company established in 1950 by Reddi’s brother Bommireddi Nagi Reddy (B.
Nagi Reddy) and Aluri Venkata Subbarao (Chakrapani) who had already acquired the
ownership of BNK Press. Nagi Reddy had earlier invested in Vauhini Productions and
also worked as its manager (Rajadhyaksha and Willemen 1999: 234). At some point
between 1951 and 1956, B.N. Reddi exited from the studio (Guy 1985: 16). In 1955
Vauhini Pictures, which was already confined to distribution, was shut down
(Kodavatiganti Kutumbarao, cited in Dakshina Murthy 2006: 155). Under the
management of Nagi Reddy and Chakrapani, Vijaya-Vauhini, as it later came to be
known, was arguably the most sought after studio for Telugu film production through the
1950s and 1960s.
Chakrapani, the other key figure in Vijaya-Vauhini, was Kamma by caste. He was born
into an agricultural family and began his literary career as a translator of Sharatchandra’s
novels from Bengali to Telugu (Lakshminarayana 1997: 24-25). Unlike B.N. Reddi and
Nagi Reddy, it was not his capacity to raise capital that made him a key industry figure.
But like them and Ramabrahmam his arrival in the industry was mediated by a long
engagement with the world of letters and then publishing. His partnership with Nagi
Reddy began in 1945 when the latter made him the editor of a monthly magazine the
latter had just acquired (Lakshminarayana 1997: 27). All four of them had in common a
passion for Bengali literature.
Between Ramabrahmam and Reddi, we notice a shift away from the industry’s reliance
on zamindar investment. Reddi, with his family’s business connections and his own
training as a chartered accountant, was able to mobilize investments from his immediate
family and circle of acquaintances. In doing so he facilitated a definitive move away from
Guy’s comment on Reddi’s contribution is interesting and in fact applies to Ramabrahmam too, although
the latter was better known for infusing nationalist politics into the cinema than setting high aesthetic
standards:
Through his fine films, his artistic celluloid creations, BN [as Reddi was known in industry
circles] brought respectability to Telugu cinema at a time when it had none. He brought in several
men of education, culture and discipline to an industry which needed them, and did not always get
8
16
the old economic elite of the Presidency, which included the zamindar and the financier
from trading castes alike. Late in his life Reddi made the following observation on what
set him apart from the 1970s producers:
The producer often has no money of his own. He borrows it from some Marwari
or Chettiar at a heavy interest. So, his main worry is to make a profit in the
bargain. Under such conditions how can he think of art, quality and all that?
That’s that; I never borrowed for my films from financiers. Of course, I have
raised money from friends. But they were friends, not film financiers. I never
worried about money for my films (cited in Guy 1985: 56, emphasis added).
Quality productions apart, Reddi’s contribution to the industry is best understood when
we note Damodaran’s point that even in the 1970s there were no major Reddy
industrialists. B.N. Reddi is in fact the only industrialist of this period that Damodaran is
able to locate among the caste which was otherwise confined to ‘mining and public works
contracts: businesses built mainly around muscle power rather than enterprise’ (114).
Modest as the scale of the achievement might be in comparison with the most prominent
Kamma industrialists of the period, by the standards of the time Reddi raised substantial
funding from peer groups and kinship networks. In the process he demonstrated the
capacity of relatively new players in business to pool their resources without relying on
zamindars and banias.
The role played by the cinema in determining the career of capitalism in this part of India
becomes evident when we compare the Raja of Challapalli, the most prominent among
early Kamma capitalists, and B.N. Reddi. What is striking in spite of their differences is
their contribution to the mobility of capital from agriculture, moneylending, and
commodity trade to urban centres as also new kinds of investments.
In hindsight it is possible to suggest that there was in fact one major difference between
the Raja and Reddi. The Raja was essentially a financier, looking for venues to invest his
them (1985: 19).
17
considerable surpluses. Like other zamindars and traditional businessmen of the early
20th century, his point of entry into modern industry was money lending (Ananth 2007:
48). The bank and film studio were found objects because the Raja was parking his funds
everywhere. Reddi’s investment, on the other hand, was not merely sourced from a new
category of investor but was also founded on two principles that we can now identify as
the foundations of the Telugu film industry: the distribution of risk and the lowering the
entry load on individual investors. The investors in question were arriving at the
Presidency capital in increasing numbers looking for opportunities to deploy their
surpluses. By the 1950s, as we shall see below, the model of syndicated financing that
Reddi pioneered had tricked down to the Coastal Andhra countryside.
The late 1940s and early 1950s, the period of establishment and rise to prominence of
Vijaya-Vauhini, coincides with the increased availability of capital for investment outside
agriculture and related activities which were no longer adequate to absorb surpluses
generated by these very activities. This was also the period when zamindars lost their
social and economic prominence.
S. Ananth’s (2007) work on the history of finance business in Coastal Andhra allows us to
place in perspective the economic significance of the cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. In
his examination of the post-independence economic boom in the region Ananth rejects
the view held by earlier commentators that this was a direct outcome of colonial
irrigation projects (2007: 85). Identifying the movement of surplus away from agriculture
and rural money lending as the prime facilitator of the economic boom in the region,
Ananth asks when and why rural surpluses from the region began migrating. Drawing
attention to high levels of rural indebtedness in the Presidency—including the relatively
more prosperous Coastal Andhra region—he argues that there was no need for the rich
farmers who doubled as money lenders to look beyond their villages till the 1930s. He
points out, ‘Till the Great Depression, it was common for relatively prosperous peasants
(especially the early examples of ‘commercial farmers’) to reinvest their surplus by
purchasing additional land’ (117). From the 1930s, however, there is a perceptible shift
away from time-tested means of engaging surplus. Damodaran too makes this point when
18
he states, ‘The turning point was the Great Depression, as the collapse of the rural credit
system and falling commodity prices rendered these hitherto safe activities unviable’
(2008: 98). Ananth suggests, ‘The reasons for movement of capital may have more to do
with diversification that was felt necessary in the aftermath of the impact of the Great
Depression. …educational opportunities in the towns such as Bezwada [now Vijayawada]
may have proved [to be] an important reason for this movement of a part of capital’ (54).
Typically, a part of the family moved to towns with high schools and colleges. However,
there is no evidence of major investments by agriculturalists and rural money lenders in
urban areas in the 1930s and 1940s. This point was made earlier by Upadhya (1988a and
1988b).
Ananth’s argument draws on the work of the economic historian V.V. Sayana who points
out that during the Depression and through the early 1940s moneylenders, including
those with agricultural backgrounds, bought land when cultivators sold land to repay
debts (Sayana 1949: 118-121). Recall that the families of LV Prasad and NTR sold land
during the Depression. Through the 1930s and 1940s, Sayana notes, the Presidency
witnessed a concentration of land in the hands of Reddys and Kammas, at the expense of
Brahmins on the one hand and a cross section of peasant castes on the other, including
Kapu sub-castes (1949: 127). He also points out that land was now passing to owners
who were not ‘residential’ but were either from a neighbouring village or the town
(Sayana 1949: 128). This last point too strengthens Ananth’s claim that in the 1930s and
1940s there was no significant movement of capital out of the countryside because it was
usefully deployed right there.
In the 1930s zamindars were among the few investors who had the cash to invest in
industry infrastructure. We have noted the range of investments of the Raja of Challapalli.
Others like the north Andhra Rajas of Bobbili and Pithapuram, laments Sayana, made
unwise investments in politics that ruined them financially (1949: 88). In short they were
in every sphere of activity that required substantial cash infusions. It is thus not surprising
that zamindars were a striking presence in the film industry in the 1930s.
19
By the late nineteenth century a majority of the Madras Presidency was under a ryotwari
settlement (Maclean 1885: 103). This meant that ryots or cultivators paid taxes directly to
the colonial government. Generally they paid less land revenue and other taxes than their
counterparts who worked on zamindary estates. In the late 19th century, there were 2.5
million ryots with an average of 8 acres each in the Presidency (Maclean 1885: 105).
There were also 678 zamindars. Only a fifth of the total area was under these zamindarys.
In comparison with the Nizam’s Dominions, ‘the principal tributary native state of India’
(Maclean 1885: 10), it would therefore appear that the presence of colonial feudal
authorities was limited in the Presidency region. Sayana draws attention to the uneven
distribution of zamindarys within the Presidency and their immense importance for the
Telugu speaking areas: ‘About 40 per cent of the area of the Telugu districts is under the
non-ryotwari system, while it is 26 per cent in the Tamil districts’ (1949: 49). Most of the
non-ryotwari land was under zamindars. Presidency zamindars were a significant
presence in north Coastal Andhra, Chittoor, East Godavari and Nellore districts, where
they controlled between 90% and 50% of the area (it was close to 90% in the then
Vizagapatam district, which is now Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam
districts, Sayana 1949: 92). In Krishna district, which would emerge as a major
contributor of men and money to the film industry in the years to come, there were 143
zamindary estates (Raman Rao 1993: 223). Whereas the North Andhra and Krishna
zamindars were investors in the film industry, powerful Nellore zamindars played a
pivotal role in suppressing Raitu Bidda, a social melodrama that criticized the zamindary
system (Rajadhyaksha and Willemen 1999: 281).9
Zamindars no doubt made an important contribution to the film industry—as also
capitalism in the region—till the late 1940s. Simultaneously, and this becomes clear only
in hindsight, they were also a source of blockage, preventing the generation of surpluses
in the areas they controlled. As Sayana argues, the zamindars, among other things, also
caused a considerable financial loss to the colonial administration. Typically they
collected five times more from cultivators by way or rent than what they in turn paid the
9
Murari states that the supporters of the Venkatagiri zamindar even burnt prints of the film in Nellore (n.d.
21). It may be worth recalling here that the film was produced by Sarathy, the zamindar owned company.
20
government (1949: 90).
Zamindars thus had the effect of deferring a critical moment in the economic history of
the film industry as also that of the state of Andhra Pradesh. In some of the best irrigated
and fertile areas of the Presidency, the zamindars sucked out the surplus, postponing any
notable shift away from subsistence agriculture. This coupled with the land transfers
resulting from the Depression ensured that there was no significant investment outside
‘agriculture and some’.
After the Zamindars
Immediately after independence, in fact coinciding with the establishment of Vauhini’s
studio in1948, the Estates Abolition Act ensured the removal of the source of blockage as
far as the film industry was concerned. The Act abolished all zamindary and other feudal
estates with immediate effect. This, of course, ended zamindar domination of the film
industry. In combination with other factors that came into play around the time,
substantial investible surpluses became available in the village and the small town.
Ananth draws attention to these other factors, such as the reduction of land revenue (it
was anywhere between 30-50% of the produce during the colonial era), the sharp rise in
the prices of agricultural commodities and large scale irrigation projects (whose
consequences could be felt only in the 1960s), contributing to the accumulation of
investible surpluses with the rich and middle ‘capitalist-farmers’ of the Coastal Andhra
region (2007: 107-108).
The consequences of the economic boom in Coastal Andhra region are evident from the
rise in film production but also the growth of cinema halls, post independence.10
10
Production figures rose from 6 in 1947 to 27 in 1956 and 36 in 1957 (Rajadhyaksha and Willemen 1999:
30-31). Rama Rao (1942) lists a total of 42 permanent cinema halls (including 4 ‘English Houses’ in
Secunderabad) in the whole of the Nizam’s dominions. This includes cinema halls in towns which are now
a part of Karnataka and Maharashtra (210-211). On the other hand, the Telugu speaking districts of the
Presidency had 80 halls and there were another 14 in Bellary district (now in Karnataka), which has
traditionally been a major market for Telugu films. By 1964 there were 272 cinema halls in the erstwhile
Presidency districts of the state and another 15 in Bellary. Of this 134 cinema halls were in the coastal
districts alone (Andhra Film Chamber Journal 1964: 56).
21
However, even in the late 1930s and early 1940s early signs of the movement of surplus
away from the village and agriculture were noticeable. Although this is insignificant in
comparison with the post-independence period, its impact was felt by the nascent film
industry. The earliest evidence of the small town rich acquiring stakes in the film industry
comes from an essay written by Gudavalli Ramabrahmam (1940). By this time zamindar
presence had been established with Challapalli Raja’s Sarathy making its mark as the
most reputed ‘Telugu’ establishment in the film industry.
Ramabrahmam’s essay reflects on 1939, which was an important year for the industry:
the landmark film Raitu Bidda was made and Vauhini Pictures (the production company)
was established. Ramabrahmam states that the number of productions in Telugu had
increased to 15 in 1939 (12 according to Rajadhyaksha and Willemen 1999: 30). Further,
production companies were apparently being established across the Telugu speaking
areas of the Madras Presidency, ‘not just in cities but also in villages’ (Ramabrahmam
1940: 95). Many towns had more than one cinema hall (96). The proliferation of
production of companies, which Ramabrahmam claims were being set up by people who
‘had not even seen the Companies’ Act’, and cinema halls were no doubt signs that even
in this period locally generated surpluses were finding their way into the film industry.
The caste origin of this capital—whether it was Kamma, Reddi, Velama and Raju or
Vaishya—is not of immediate importance for my argument. It suffices to note that the
post-zamindary investor was already looking towards the film industry.
Only a few years earlier another commentator, Kodavatiganti Kutumbarao (1937, rpt
2000a: 11), lamented that one of the obstacles for the development of the film industry
(talkie parisrama) was lack of investment: ‘Ee parisramaku ardhabalam chaladu’ (this
industry does not have adequate economic strength), he stated.
It was not as if the problem of insufficient investments was solved in three years. But by
1940 an industry model built on modest retail investment at the periphery and large
investments in infrastructure at the production centre was emerging. With their big
budget productions, the zamindar-owned Sarathy on the one hand and Vauhini on the
22
other were in the process of demonstrating the capacity of the film industry to absorb
substantial infusions of capital at the centre. Two ‘Telugu’ studios, Vel Pictures and Jaya
Films (soon to be renamed Sobhanachala Studio) were already functional. Against this
backdrop, the small production company and cinema hall were emerging as an
investment option for locally generated surpluses. We get a glimpse of the peculiar
economics of the film industry even at this early stage of its evolution from
Ramabrahmam’s warning that most films made in 1939 were unlikely to recover their
costs. He estimates that only a couple among the 15 made a profit while the others may
not have lost too much money but definitely did not earn a profit (1940: 95). Further, he
argues, there were more cinema halls than could be supported by the small film market,
resulting in competition between and losses to exhibitors (99).
One final point about the nature of the investments flowing into the industry.
Kodavatiganti Kutumbarao, a younger contemporary of Ramabrahmam, had much to say
about the issues tabled by the director. Kodavatiganti, known as KoKu in Telugu literary
circles, was a fiction writer, essayist, public intellectual and occasional scriptwriter who
went on to become a founding member of the Naxalite affiliated Revolutionary Writers’
Association (VIRASAM). KoKu’s writings are among the few sources currently
available on the early decades of Telugu cinema. I look at some of his essays to elaborate
on what the 1940s may have meant for the industry.
In 1947 KoKu highlighted the consequences of World War II black marketing and
profiteering on film production.11 He begins by pointing out that the Telugu people had
few industries. Only one studio was owned by a Telugu (the Raja of Mirzapur,
presumably Vel Pictures had shut down). Unlike other industries, the film industry—like
a tent which had no stability—existed without any foundations (2000a: 64). From the
1930s it didn’t have any of the features that characterized other industries. Indeed there
wasn’t a single studio in the country which could keep its workers employed throughout
the year or could undertake continuous production of films. The industry, he argues, is
This would become the subject of the Government of India’s Report of the Film Enquiry Committee
1951.
11
23
characterized by the gambler’s mindset (joodabudhi): the producer/investor did not think
he was investing in the building of an institution and exited whether or not his film made
a profit (2000a: 64). Inexperienced speculators in the industry either produced incomplete
films or films that no one wanted to watch. This had a cascading effect: the number of
cinema halls remained far too low because there were simply not enough films to feed a
theatre through the year (2000a: 65). He traces the root of the problem to ‘third class
producers’ (moodotaragati producerlu) who had arrived on the scene to gamble (2000a:
66). There was thus a need for the establishment of companies that were capable of
producing at least half-a-dozen films a year. The guaranteed supply of good films would
result in the building of new cinema halls even in small towns. He concludes by stating
that only when industrialists, willing to make long term investment that returned as little
as 6% per annum, replaced the gamblers and respectable bandits (gauravaneeyulaina
bandipotlu)—the enemies of the people, governed by interest calculations and
commissions—would the cost of production come down and quality improve. Most
importantly, films would become popular and workers in the industry would find stable
employment (2000a: 66).
KoKu’s anger and frustration are no doubt familiar from other commentaries on Indian
film industries since the 1940s. His description of typical film industry investors is of
immediate interest for our purposes. These were migrants, being fresh arrivals from
elsewhere. Their capital was perpetually on the move, exploring possibilities and shifting
from one speculative investment to another. There is no evidence to suggest that the war
time investors were of peasant origin. According to Ananth (2007) the peasant turned
entrepreneur had not yet emerged. Nevertheless, an industry model was falling into place.
From Ramabrahmam’s assessment that the film business was one in which everyone
stood to lose money and KoKu’s observation that the investor always moved on emerge
the outlines of a model that was not founded on the guarantee of profits but the
facilitation of the mobility of capital. While these features may have been shared by other
emerging film industries across the subcontinent, the manner in which the Telugu film
industry was becoming inextricably linked with local investment networks and practices
24
is noteworthy. The cinema investors’ trajectory would soon extend from village (and
agriculture, etc) to the small town and lead all the way to Madras studios. Losses were
indeed likely to ruin individuals but as a learning experience for a social segment, the
industry’s significance cannot be overstated.
Returning to Ramabrahmam’s essay, his concern is Madras and its unsuitability for
making Telugu films. This was so in spite of the production infrastructure already
available here. He identifies three reasons for the declining profitability of films: 1)
increased competition among cinema halls; 2) lack of films that matched up to audience
taste (prajabhiruchi) and 3) absence of pratyekata (specialty), visishtata (distinctiveness)
and jateeyata (national character, equated to Telugutanam or Teluguness in the essay)
(1940, 99). The second and third reasons he felt were the more important ones. Without
any further comment on audience taste he gets into a discussion of what he thought was
the biggest problem: Madras studios did not support the production of jateeyata on
screen.
He makes a sarcastic reference to the claim of Presidency Telugus over Madras city and
cites an amusing example to show how the city did not in fact support the production of
Teluguness. During the making of Raitu Bidda, which was shot in a studio that he himself
managed, the Madras extras did not know how to tie their dhotis like the Telugu peasants
they were supposed to be playing on screen. Surely, he remarks, he was not spending
hundreds of rupees daily to hire extras and feed them too in order to teach them to tie
their gocheelu/loincloths (1940: 99)! And it was pointless arguing about pratyekata and
visishtata when the day was spent adjusting loincloths.
The Telugus therefore needed their own studio on their land (‘Telugunata swanta
studio’). His advice to the film industry was to fuse aesthetic and business sense to
produce films that had the fragrance of Teluguness (‘kaladrushtini, vyaparadrushtini
melavinchi, Telugudanamto parimalinche Telugu filmulini tayarucheyali’, 1940: 99).
Pooling together resources to construct a studio modelled on Prabhat, instead of setting
up new production companies, was the need of the day. He does not specify whether the
25
syndicate investing in the production of Teluguness should be constituted by nonzamindar members. What is clear is that the industry’s establishment in Madras came
with a problem: for aesthetic, political and economic reasons, this city was unsuitable for
Telugu film production.
It was not merely at the level of commercially successful films that the economic agenda
of the vision lay but also in the radical suggestion that the Telugus abandon Madras and
invest in an entirely new production centre. Quite clearly, neither the zamindars nor the
other entrepreneurs were up to the challenge.
Madras remained the centre of the film industry till the 1990s. Neither the linguistic
reorganization of the states in 1956 nor the introduction of a regime of loans and
subsidies by the state government in 1964 had any immediate consequences for the
industry. This was perhaps not merely because Hyderabad city lacked production
infrastructure, nor because it too belonged to a cultural universe that was quite distinct
from the Telugunadu of cinema. It was also because the formation of Andhra Pradesh
coincided with the arrival—literally and figuratively—of the post-zamindar investors
from Coastal Andhra. In 1956 the Presidency peasants did not immediately see the
potential of Telangana and Hyderabad as investment destinations. As a result, the well
established circuits of migration of men and money terminated in Madras in the 1950s
and 60s. The ‘Movie Mogul’ Daggubati Ramanaidu is a prime example of this category
of investor, whose entry into the industry coincided with post-independence
developments, including the abolition of zamindary estates as well as the reorganization
of the states. To conclude my argument about the industry’s socio-economic origins I
present below a thumbnail sketch of Ramanaidu’s career.
In 1954 Ramanaidu’s rich agricultural family was part of a syndicate that invested Rs.
10,000 in Nammina Bantu (Adurthi Subba Rao) that was partly shot in their village
Karamchedu in Ongole district (now Prakasam district). Evidently B.N. Reddi’s model
had trickled down to the Coastal Andhra countryside by this time. After spending some
years as a typical rich farmer—engaged in agriculture while running a rice mill and a
26
transport business—Ramanaidu shifted to Madras to establish a brick business but settled
for real estate instead (Andhra Jyothi 2009: 8). As his official biographer Prakasam
(2006) would have it, Ramanaidu began his film career by investing in Anuragam (G.
Ramineedu, 1963) and went on to establish Suresh Productions in the same year. His first
film as producer was the NTR starrer Ramudu Bheemudu (Tapi Chanakya, 1964).12
Unlike most migrant investors he stayed on and over the next four and a half decades he
produced over 100 films in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and other Indian languages (Prakasam
2006 figures). This achievement earned him a place in the Guinness Book of World
Records. His family now owns a distribution company that has offices across the state, a
film processing laboratory and also studios in Hyderabad and, perhaps anticipating the
reorganization of Andhra Pradesh, Visakhapatnam.13 Their distribution company
partnered Columbia Pictures (circa 2001-2003) to distribute Hollywood films in the state
(Srinivas 2003). More recently the company acquired long-term lease of dozens of
cinema halls across the state (Times News Network 2008: 3). In the 1980s his son
Venkatesh, was launched as an actor and remains one of the major stars of the industry. In
2009 his grandson Rana (diminutive for Ramanaidu) became an actor.
Post 1956, it is safe to conclude, there was a consolidation of the position of the peasantry
in the film industry. Over the decades both exhibition and distribution became
destinations of local investment which was directly traceable to the activities of the
farmer-capitalists located in urban cities. Distribution became de-centralized in the late
1970s with the breaking up of distribution territories into smaller units that at times were
only as large as a single district and the setting up of distribution offices in smaller cities.
In the 1960s, as a direct consequence of state government incentives in the form of loans
and subsidies, the film industry began the process of relocating to Hyderabad. The
process itself was officially completed only in 1997 (Jyothi Chitra, 18 September 1998:
22). However, even as the first tentative steps began to be taken in 1964, there could have
been no doubt that the industry was now owned, in more senses than one, by
12
The film turned out to be hugely successful and was remade in Tamil as Enga Veetu Pillai in 1965 and
Hindi as Ram aur Shyam in 1967 by Vijaya Productions (Narasaraju 2006: 39-56).
13
Ramanaidu Studio, Hyderabad, was inaugurated in 1988 (Prakasam 2006: 81) while the Visakhapatnam
studio became operational in August 2008 (The Hindu Business Line 2008).
27
entrepreneurs who belonged to peasant castes but were also literally one generation
removed from erstwhile Presidency villages and ‘agriculture and some’. Among those
who didn’t make it to Hyderabad were the zamindars but also the B.N. Reddi family.
***
[Acknowledgements: This paper is a part of a manuscript under preparation for the New
India Foundation Fellowship. It grew out of papers presented at the seminar on “South
Indian Cinemas: Culture, Resistance, Ideology,” organized by the Centre for Comparative
Literature and Department of Communications, University of Hyderabad, 1-2 February,
2008 and the workshop on “Regional Film Industries: The Formative Years,” organized
by the Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University,
Hyderabad. 14-15 November 2008 and an essay on the Telugu film market published in
Lensight (vol.1, issue 1, March-September 2009). This version was presented at the Work
in Progress Series at CSCS, Bangalore. I am grateful to S. Padmavathy of the CSCS
Media Archive for help with digitization of the images used here. I would like to thank
Rosie Thomas, Ravi Vasudevan and the anonymous reviewers of the essay for their
suggestions and comments.]
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