ABSTRACT

This chapter aims at drawing a trajectory of how Telugu cinema has grown in its portrayal of Dalits over a period of decades. Though Telugu films are written, directed and produced by a dominant set of people that celebrate the tastes and values of upper-caste sensitives, there were some efforts in bringing the Dalit subjectivity to the silver screen. In earlier films like Malapilla (1938) the representation of the Dalit persona and his or her ideological and moral characteristic reflect the Gandhian visualisation of the ‘Harijan’, who is dependent, submissive and suitable to the ethics of socio-cultural Brahmanical values.

Telugu cinema dealt mainly with the superficial populist stereotypes of Dalit lives and hardly entered into the core debate of social realities. This chapter analyses the movie Jayam Manadera, in which the Dalits are presented as submissive animate selves, degraded and destitute with almost no hope for a better future. It never occurred to any filmmaker to portray a Dalit protagonist fighting against social evils or as a great artist or leader.