How did a film body poll turn into a blockbuster battle? Just asking

It looked a lot like a movie set. Film stars mouthing tedious dialogues, sometimes cracking up, sometimes teary-eyed, but most of the time involving in-your-face theatrics.
Was it an action thriller or a comedy? Who all were starring?

What unfolded on Telugu TV channels over the past couple of months wasn’t a trailer from remakes of Singham or Dhee but the superstars of Telugu cinema fighting it out to elect the new office-bearers of the Movie Artists Association (MAA).

Unsurprisingly, the elections to the film body took a regionally divisive turn mirroring the politics of polarisation played out before every election in the country.

The two protagonists of this action-packed thriller were actors Prakash Raj and Vishnu Manchu. With Raj deciding to quit the 26-member MAA executive body following the results for being “treated as an outsider”, the bitterness is far from over and so is the divisiveness. Raj’s exit from the MAA was followed by teary resignations of 10 members of his panel from the film body.

The Telugu movie artists association is a group of nearly 900 actors and elections are conducted every two years to elect its governing body which includes a president, an executive vice-president, a general secretary, a treasurer and other executive members.
Shortly after Prakash Raj declared in June his intention to throw his hat into the poll ring, Vishnu Manchu jumped in the fray and pretty much set the tone for the contest by raising the “son of the soil” bogey.

In a statement shared on social media on June 27, Manchu wrote, “It is an honour for me to say that I am filing my nomination for the post of MAA president. I grew up in the Telugu Film industry. Nobody can feel and empathise with the Telugu film fraternity like the true son of the soil. Growing up in a household that was always buzzing with the notes of Telugu cinema, I have first-hand insider’s feel and knowledge of our industry…”

Regional disparities and polarisation

As a versatile character artist, Prakash Raj starred in a number of Telugu films and enjoyed a considerable fan following in the two Telugu-speaking states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. He even won a National Film Award – special mention for the Telugu film, Antahpuram (1998).

Although Raj chose to make Telangana his home and adopted a backward village, Kondareddypalli, in the Mahabubnagar district, he was still projected as an outsider by the rival groups. Deeply hurt with the outsider tag, Raj at the time of quitting the MAA said: “But today, these elections were based on regionalism, nationalism, and my nativity. What should I do? My parents are not Telugu people, and that’s not my mistake, nor theirs. But as an artist, I have self-respect. Because of that, I am resigning my MAA membership.”
The Telugu film industry has banned Raj at least six times in the past, which many read as a sign of the industry’s hostility towards him. The bans against Raj were slapped by the film producers on the ground that Prakash Raj “lacked” a sense of time and his “failure” to stick to the schedules promised to film-makers.

Born in Karnataka’s Bengaluru, Prakash Raj entered the MAA presidential race with not just regionalism playing against him but also at odds with members of the right wing. He has often been referred to as Ram drohi (traitor of god), Dharma drohi (traitor of Hindu dharma), desh drohi (traitor of the nation) and a member of the ‘tukde tukde gang’.

Actor Vijayakrishna Naresh, the outgoing president of the MAA and a BJP leader, took the lead in unleashing an anti-Raj blitzkrieg. He was joined by other actors affiliated to the BJP such as former legislator Kota Srinivasa Rao, comedian Babu Mohan, and character artist CVL Narasimha Rao making the election to the film body a highly polarised contest.

Naresh, a vocal supporter of Manchu Vishnu, compared members who got emotional while announcing their resignations, to widows. The outgoing MAA president said, “Why will men cry? Elders say we should not trust men who cry more.”

Nationalism and caste politics

Prakash Raj has been at odds with the right wing ever since the 2017 killing of journalist-turned-activist Gauri Lankesh. Raj had back then started a hashtag #JustAsking on social media blaming the Narendra Modi government at the Centre and the Sangh Parivar for Lankesh’s murder.

Raj, a native of Mysore, even launched a sustained campaign along with former JNU Students’ Union leader Kanhaiya Kumar and Dalit rights activist Jignesh Mevani demanding the assailants be brought to book. Both Kumar and Mevani are now affiliated with the Congress.

The MAA defeat is, however, not Prakash Raj’s first electoral loss. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, which he contested as an independent from Bengaluru Central, Raj got just 28,906 votes while his BJP rival PC Mohan got close to six lakh votes.

It is no secret that caste also played a major role in the elections. There was a talk in the mainstream media and also on the social media that the battle between Manchu Vishnu and Prakash Raj panels was viewed as a Kamma-Kapu rivalry. Vishnu’s father Mohan Babu was directly involved in the campaign for his son, while Prakash Raj was backed by superstar siblings Chiranjeevi and Pawan Kalyan.

Both the panels, however, share a commonality. Both are dominated by members of the upper castes. None of the candidates elected from either side is from the weaker sections. While the Manchu Vishnu panel fielded Babu Mohan, a Dalit, for the post of executive vice president, he was defeated by over 150 votes to actor Srikanth from Raj’s panel.

Mohan Babu fielded his 39-year old son Vishnu Manchu against Prakash Raj and eventually ensured the former’s victory. Babu’s son is married to Viranika from the extended family of Andhra Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, adding Kamma-Reddy caste dynamics to the MAA elections. Jagan’s frequent visits to Delhi and meetings with PM Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have fuelled speculations of the two sides trying to court each other and that Jagan’s Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party may soon join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

Fading shades of Left

BJP’s Telangana president Bandi Sanjay Kumar equated Prakash Raj’s defeat with victory for nationalism while congratulating the new members on Twitter. “Congratulations to all the winners on both panels, including Manchu Vishnu. Thanks to our voters who have defeated the forces against nationalism. The right lesson has been taught to those who supported the Tukde gang who wanted to break the country,” he said.

During the campaign for the elections too, Prakash Raj faced incessant social media attacks from the right wing. What was missing was support for Raj from the Left. It is especially striking because the Telugu film industry once flourished with directors, actors and producers with Left ideology. Praja Natya Mandali, a theatre group, has supplied a range of artists to the Telugu industry, including legends such as Tatineni Prakash Rao, Mikkilineni Radhakrishna Murthy (founder of Praja Natya Mandali), Tammareddy Krishna Murthy and Gummadi Venkateswara Rao.

Later, the likes of T Krishna, Madala Ranga Rao and Narayana Murthy followed in their footsteps making movies reflecting the Left ideology. Over time, the impact of Left began to wane from Tollywood.

“Where is the Left ideology? It disappeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” said Bharadwaja Thammareddyj, producer and son of Tammareddy Krishna Murthy, a die-hard communist and legendary film-maker.

According to Thammareddyj, a lot has changed in film-making.

“Film production has become capital intensive with the cost of each one crossing Rs 100 crore and remuneration given to the leading stars touching Rs 40-50 crore. The theme has to be chosen to suit the tastes of the category of the audiences the high-cost films aim at,” he told The Federal.

C Gandhi, a Marxist scholar, ascribed the perceived silence of the Left to the “degeneration” of the ideological group. “Take the case of Madala Ravi, son of Madala Ranga Rao, who wedded his film-making to the Communist Party’s principles and Praja Natya Mandali by producing several revolutionary movies. But his son strikingly contested on a panel backed by the BJP and managed to win the election,” said Gandhi.

According to Raka Sudhakar, a right-wing intellectual, the Left began to lose its ideological grip on the Telugu industry in the early 1980s. “It was mostly the Kammas who were at the helm of affairs – both in the Communist parties as well as in films. With the arrival of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) founded by their thespian N Rama Rao, who belonged to the same caste, Kammas in the film industry disassociated themselves from the Left and emerged as a dominant group from the TDP,” Raka added.

Prakash Raj and his panel’s resignation from MAA have, however, brought all latent differences to the fore. “I will continue doing movies. The relationship I have with the directors, writers and producers will continue. But in the upcoming days, if someone asks me to stay as a guest in an association, I should not be a member of that association,” he said.

Well, for now, nobody’s asking.

(Author is a senior journalist based in Vijayawada)