Language and Cinema: Schisms in the Representation of Hyderabad

Abstract

The city of Hyderabad has had a distinct linguistic and political history. It was a multilingual city with Urdu (and Persian) as the court languages under the Asaf Jahi dynasty until 1948, when it was annexed by the Indian union. While Hyderabad continues to be multilingual with Telugu, Urdu, Marathi, Kannada and Tamil being spoken in the city, its identity has undergone many changes. It became the Telugu capital city with the formation of Andhra Pradesh state in 1956. In 2014, it became the capital of the newly-formed Telangana state and Urdu was added to Telugu as the official language of the state in 2017. This article examines the transforming image of the city as constructed by Urdu, Telugu and Deccani language films from the 1950s to the present. Reading these films for the discourse on the city, it argues that each addressed its own imagined audience, claimed a specific identity for the city and invisiblised all others. The schism of representation reflected in the films is rooted in the city’s historical past and its multiple contested identities.

Keywords:

• City and cinema
• Deccani films
• Hyderabad
• linguistic state
• Muslims
• Telangana
• Telugu cinema
• Urdu cinema

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the comments of anonymous South Asia reviewers and the editor, Kama Maclean, for their valuable feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Ranjani Mazumdar has argued that cinema is an archive of the city. She studies the urban types constructed by Bombay (now Mumbai) cinema and situates them in the history of the city. I draw from her argument and read cinema as a repertoire of symbols of the city, although my interest lies in how different groups lay claim to the city through cinema: Ranjani Mazumdar, Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).

2. Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘Reading a Song of the City: Images of the City in Literature and Films’, in Preben Kaarsholm (ed.), City Flicks: Indian Cinema and the Urban Experience (New Delhi: Seagull, 2004), pp. 60–82.

3. S.V. Srinivas has argued that cinema is a site of expression for contesting claims on the city by different interest groups. I draw from this argument in tracing the claims on the city of Hyderabad: S.V. Srinivas, ‘Cardboard Monuments: City, Language and “Nation” in Contemporary Telugu Cinema’, in Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Vol. 29, no. 1 (2008), pp. 87–100.

4. Panchal Parmanand, ‘Traditional Indian Forms of Deccani Poetry’, in Indian Literature, Vol. 53, no. 5 (2009), pp. 211–9. The poet Quli Qutb Shah is known to have composed poems in Deccani.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Nakko means no, hau means yes, amma means mother and is also used as an exclamation, and kaiku means why.

8. V.B. Raju, ‘Andhra Pradesh: Prospect and Retrospect’, in Socialist, Vol. 8 (1974), p. 76.

9. R. Ahmad, ‘Hindi Is Perfect, Urdu Is Messy: The Discourse of Delegitimation of Urdu in India’, in Alexandra Jaffe et al. (eds), Orthography as Social Action: Scripts, Spelling, Identity and Power (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2012), pp. 103–34.

10. Census of Hyderabad State (1941), Telangana State Archives, p. 251.

11. Karen Leonard, ‘The Deccani Synthesis in Old Hyderabad: An Historiographic Essay’, in Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, Vol. 21, no. 4 (1973), pp. 205–18 [205].

12. Osmania University was a one of a kind university in that its medium of instruction was Urdu. Even engineers and doctors studied in Urdu. Kavita Datla writes that the work at Osmania University was intended to develop a vernacular language of science as a challenge to English: Kavita Datla, The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2013).

13. Abdul Gafoor Abdul Majeed Noorani, The Destruction of Hyderabad (London: Hurst, 2014).

14. Ibid.

15. A.R. Venkatachalapathy, Chennai Not Madras: Perspectives on the City (Delhi: Marg Publications, 2006).

16. The non-Hindu subject has mostly been absent from the Telugu language. Very few Muslim voices are acknowledged in Telugu literature. Writers like Sky Baba present the unique Telugu Muslim voice which has been largely absent from literature and popular culture.

17. The Destruction of Hyderabad filmed the floods of 1908 in the city. It was exhibited in the UK. Firoze Rangoonwala’s filmography lists 11 films made in Hyderabad during the 1920s–1930s: Firoze Rangoonwala, Indian Filmography: Silent and Hindi Films (1897–1969) (Bombay: Udeshi, 1970). Newspaper reports state that a film titled A Prince of People was shot against the backdrop of the Charminar in 1930: The Times of India (10 Jan. 1930), p. 12. While the political debate about Hindi vs. Urdu rages from time to time, Bombay cinema has fostered the Urdu language without attempting to categorise it. Tariq Rahman writes of Hindi and Urdu as a continuum and argues that Bollywood uses this continuum to address a larger audience. Drawing from him, I refer to Bombay films as Urdu films in this paper. All the Bombay films discussed in this paper are some variant of Islamicate films: Tariq Rahman, From Hindi to Urdu: A Social and Political History (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011).

18. There may be many films set in Hyderabad in which the city is only incidental to the plot because the narrative is not situated historically in the city; I have not considered these films for my analysis.

19. Films like Ankur (1974) and Nishant (1975) by Shyam Benegal are set in the region but are not specifically concerned with Hyderabad.

20. Aasman Mahal (dir. and prod. K.A. Abbas, Naya Sansar, 1965).

21. Kesavan writes that Muslim social or Islamicate films are not directly related to religion and religious beliefs, but ‘to [a] social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and the Muslims, both among the Muslims themselves and even when found among the non-Muslims’: Mukul Kesavan, ‘Urdu, Awadh and the Tawaif: The Islamicate Roots of Hindi Cinema’, in Zoya Hasan (ed.), Forging Identities: Gender, Communities and the State (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1994), p. 244–257. [246].

22. Eric Beverley defines patrimonialism as authority premised on the relationship between the ruler and the ruled with expectations of voluntary compliance by the ruled and accountability by the rulers. When I use the term patrimonial culture, it is a culture dominated by personal relationships based on family and lineage: Eric Beverley, Hyderabad, British India, and the World: Muslim Networks and Minor Sovereignty, c. 1850–1950 (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

23. Aasman Mahal, all translations are by the author.

24. Geographically, Hyderabad has two new cities, one built across the Musi river which was set up in the twentieth century, the other is HITEC City set up towards the end of the twentieth century. In Aasman Mahal, the reference is to the first new city.

25. Aasman Mahal.

26. Ibid.

27. S.V. Srinivas writes that though the Telugu film industry settled in the city of Hyderabad between the 1960s and 1980s, the city cannot be easily claimed as a Telugu city. He has pointed to the slippages between the linguistic film industry located in the city and the linguistic identity of the city: Srinivas, ‘Cardboard Monuments’, pp. 87–100.

28. Manasu Mangalyam (dir. K. Pratyagatma, prod. Koganti Kutumba Rao, Uttama Chitra, 1971).

29. Mattilo Manikyam (dir. B.V. Satyam, prod. Chalam, Sri Ramana Chitra, 1971).

30. Mattilo Manikyam used a song about Hyderabad titled ‘Rim jhim rim jhim Hyderabad’, while Manasu Mangalyam used a montage of the city.

31. Social has been described as an all-encompassing genre of Indian cinema: M. Madhava Prasad, ‘Genre Mixing as Creative Fabrication’, in BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, Vol. 2, no. 1 (2011), pp. 69–81. Rachel Dwyer writes that there is ‘no genre called Hindu social as Hindu practices and beliefs are the norm in Hindi cinema’: Rachel Dwyer, Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 94.

32. The Telangana movement was an armed peasant rebellion against the landlords and the nizam (the biggest landlord) which took place between 1946 and 1951.

33. Samsthans were smaller kingdoms presided over by Hindu rulers: Benjamin B. Cohen, Kingship and Colonialism in India’s Deccan: 1850–1948 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

34. Shyam Benegal’s Nishant and Ankur are set in rural Telangana against the backdrop of the Telangana rebellion. They present the oppressive relationship between the landlords and the peasants and portray Hindu landlords tormenting Hindu peasants. Gautam Ghosh’s Maa Bhoomi also chronicles the Telangana rebellion both in rural and urban areas.

35. The Razakars were an unofficial private militia headed by Kasim Razvi.

36. Noorani, The Destruction of Hyderabad.

37. Ibid.

38. Omar Khalidi (ed.), Hyderabad: After the Fall (New Delhi: South Asia Books, 1988); and Noorani, The Destruction of Hyderabad.

39. ‘BJP Demands Government Celebrate Telangana Liberation Day on Sept. 17’, The Hindu (29 Aug. 2019) [https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/bjp-demands-government-celebrate-telangana-liberation-day-on-sept-17/article29282616.ece, accessed 3 April 2020].

40. Scholars such as A.G. Noorani, Divi Srinivas and Sangisetty Srinivas contributed to 17 September 1948, Bhinna Drukkonalu (Hyderabad: Telangana History Society, 2008).

41. Madhava Prasad, ‘Realism and Fantasy in Representations of Metropolitan Life in Indian Cinema’, in Preben Kaarsholm (ed.), City Flicks: Indian Cinema and the Urban Experience (New Delhi: Seagull, 2004), pp. 83–99.

42. S.V. Srinivas writes that the Telugu films produced in Hyderabad have often presented the old city as a space for criminals; people who spoke the non-standard dialects of Telugu were represented as examples of ‘subalternity and/or villainy’. The basti (neighbourhood) of Hyderabad was presented as a ‘metonym of everything that was quaint and dangerous about Hyderabad’: Srinivas, ‘Cardboard Monuments’, pp. 87–100.

43. In Azad, the vigilante hero saves the nation from Islamic terrorists.

44. In Khadgam, there is a character who is a good Muslim and an Indian patriot and his brother who is a terrorist. The good Muslim eventually kills the bad Muslim.

45. In Vedam, a good Muslim is falsely accused of terrorist links, but his nephew (a bad Muslim) is the actual terrorist.

46. C. Yamini Krishna, ‘The Neo-Liberal City and Cinema: Deccani Films’, in South Asian Popular Culture, Vol. 17, no. 2 (2019), pp. 185–96.

47. The Angrez (dir. Kuntaa Nikhil, prod. M. Sridhar Rao, SDC, 2005).

48. Here, by new city, I mean HITEC City.

49. When the Andhra Pradesh state was formed in 1956, certain guarantees were given to the Telangana region to ensure that it would not be dominated by the Andhra people. There was a demand for a separate Telangana state in the 1970s which was put down by the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi. The demand for a separate Telangana arose again in the new millennium.

50. ‘KCR Vows to Get Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb Back’, The Hindu (13 July 2015) [https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/telangana/kcr-vows-to-get-ganga-jamuni-tehzeeb-back/article7416305.ece, accessed 3 April 2020].

51. ‘Urdu Is Second Official Language Now’, The Hindu (17 Nov. 2017) [https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/urdu-is-second-official-language-now/article20493655.ece, accessed 3 April 2020].

52. Sathya Prakash Elavarthi and Vamshi Vemireddy, ‘Telangana and Language Politics of Telugu Cinema’, Anveshi (20 Jan. 2015) [http://www.anveshi.org.in/telangana-and-language-politics-of-telugu-cinema/, accessed 3 April 2020].

53. Falaknuma Das (dir. Vishwak Sen, prod. Karate Raju, Vanmaye Productions, 2019).

54. The film is built as a very masculine universe and women do not have significant roles, but in this paper, I limit the discussion to examining how Hyderabad is imagined in the film.

55. There are a few other films such as Eeshwar (2002) set in Dhoolpet.

56. Prasad, ‘Realism and Fantasy in Representations of Metropolitan Life in Indian Cinema’.

57. ‘Bonalu, Bathukamma Declared State Festivals’, The Times of India (17 June 2014) [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Bonalu-Bathukamma-declared-state-festivals/articleshow/36677768.cms, accessed 3 April 2020].