Venu Udugula’s Virata Parvam is a reminder of Telangana’s tumultuous past

*No review, but spoil­ers ahead 

“Feb­ru­ary 1992. A woman was killed by Nax­als in Telan­gana on sus­pi­cion of being a police informer. The painful event made me think and was final­ly etched Vira­ta Par­vam’ we hear the voice of Venu Udugu­la, direc­tor Vira­ta Par­vamwhile the cred­its roll and ded­i­cates the film to Thu­mu Sarala.

For almost a decade and a half — from the 1990s to the mid-2000s — the resur­gence of the Nax­alite-Maoist insur­gency echoed in the form of gun­fire and explo­sions in Telan­gana state. Many lives were lost in the cross­fire between the state and left-wing insurgents.

Few sto­ries are remem­bered and many have been swept away in the chaos. Vira­ta Par­vam is one such sto­ry among the many that are remem­bered. Venu Udugu­la, the film’s direc­tor, guides us through this sto­ry through the grim real­i­ties of that era in his quest to revive a mem­o­ry. In addi­tion to nar­rat­ing and treat­ing the sto­ry’s his­tor­i­cal con­text, per­for­mances by Sai Pallavi and Rana Dag­gu­bati as Ven­nela and Ravan­na have received crit­i­cal acclaim.

Though the film begins with Ven­nela’s birth and grad­u­al­ly draws view­ers into her sto­ry, Venus’s huge screen ambi­tious­ly cap­tures an explo­sive era steeped in lore of blood and gore, glo­ry and darkness.

Many youth in Telan­gana, like Ven­nela, were cap­ti­vat­ed by the “dream of rev­o­lu­tion” in the late 1980s and 1990s. Some wel­comed Nax­al­ism as a solu­tion to feu­dal exploita­tion, while oth­ers saw it as a way to com­bat caste inequalities.

The sto­ry of Thu­mu Sar­ala is still burned into pub­lic mem­o­ry. As a young, mid­dle-edu­cat­ed girl, she left her home in Karu­manchipal­li in the for­mer Kham­mam in the Sir­na­pal­ly forests of Nizam­abad to join the Nax­alite movement.

Curi­ous and eager, Sar­ala was appar­ent­ly moved by a police encounter in which a Nax­alite woman was killed. The tur­bu­lent atmos­phere sur­round­ing Sar­ala forced her to approach the uni­ver­sal fas­ci­na­tion with the cause of the down­trod­den, “Love and Revolution.”

The cir­cum­stances and events that led to Ven­nela, the char­ac­ter inspired by Sar­ala, eeri­ly res­onat­ing with many who aligned them­selves with the var­i­ous fac­tions of out­lawed Nax­alite par­ties. Some joined these groups because they felt it was “nec­es­sary”, many were “inspired”, while oth­ers were recruit­ed due to the pre­vail­ing socio-eco­nom­ic situation.

Before Ven­nela begins her jour­ney, there is a con­ver­sa­tion about how read­ing cer­tain books can cause prob­lems, a known real­i­ty and an expe­ri­ence that many can relate to.

In a scene in the first parts of the film, in which the police mis­treat a Dalit man and also beat Ven­nela’s father, lead­ing them to ques­tion the police author­i­ty, Venu shows how Dal­its and peas­ants belong­ing to low­er castes are the usu­al sus­pects of the state.

This leads me to remem­ber sto­ries I heard as a boy grow­ing up in the neigh­bor­ing vil­lage on the same wood­land where Ven­nela is said to be killed.

I clear­ly recall sev­er­al instances of Dal­its and oth­er low­er castes being “inter­ro­gat­ed” by the police and “pun­ished” by the Nax­alites on sus­pi­cion of being “whis­tle-blow­ers” or “sup­port­ers.” How­ev­er, the lead­er­ship of the Nax­al par­ties used to come from the upper castes.

Iron­i­cal­ly, in many cas­es it was the oppressed who were seen as a threat to both the state and the Naxals.

Some­how the film fails to por­tray the dilem­ma and con­flict of inter­est of an IPS offi­cer who is said to be from a mar­gin­al­ized caste. While the direc­tor has tried to por­tray this in a scene where the police­man, in a con­ver­sa­tion with Ven­nela’s father, expressed his con­cern about the vic­tims of the Bahu­jans even in the Nax­al move­ment, some­how the scene does­n’t do jus­tice to the emo­tion­al con­flict that scores of low­er-caste Dal­its and police offi­cers invari­ably pass through.

Inter­est­ing­ly, in the same scene, the direc­tor cre­ates an emo­tion and the lived expe­ri­ence of these com­mu­ni­ties dur­ing this time through dia­logue nar­rat­ed by Ven­nela’s cousin Ramesh, played by Rahul Ramakrishna.

Asked by the police if the Nax­al move­ment has brought any good, Ramesh angri­ly replies how the Nax­als came to save them from feu­dal­ism and its crimes when the state avert­ed its eyes. This dia­logue is cru­cial to under­stand­ing the film as it reveals the hope that the Nax­al move­ment brought to the lives of the downtrodden.

But of course that does­n’t reflect the broad­er real­i­ty of the Nax­alit move­ment. One such case was the killing of two first-gen­er­a­tion Dalit youth in Nizam­abad dis­trict in 1999.

One of them was killed by a Nax­al armed fac­tion and anoth­er by uniden­ti­fied gun­men, but both killings were appar­ent­ly the result of “nar­row poli­cies” pur­sued by the Peo­ples’ War Group (PWG), Janashak­ti-Nax­al groups and oth­ers par­lia­men­tary left-wing par­ties. There were dozens of such lives shat­tered amid the dread­ed con­flict between the state and the Nax­alites in Telan­gana. Of course, the state had the upper hand in this pow­er game.

Appar­ent­ly, Sar­ala was moved by a police encounter in which a Nax­alite woman was killed. The tur­bu­lent atmos­phere sur­round­ing Sar­ala forced her to approach the uni­ver­sal fas­ci­na­tion of the down­trod­den; “Love and Revolution”.

Human rights activist, lawyer and founder of the Human Rights Forum (HRF) K Bal­agopal had been out­spo­ken when address­ing the pol­i­tics of Nax­al groups and par­lia­men­tary left-wing par­ties. In a his­toric arti­cle enti­tled “One Abra­ham Katha” writ­ten in the week­ly Nigah, he said that nei­ther the state/police nor the Nax­al par­ties nor the par­lia­men­tary left want­ed to see “inde­pen­dent Dal­its” or “con­fi­dent Dalits”.

Any senior police offi­cer or senior jour­nal­ist who has worked in north Telan­gana or seen devel­op­ments in Hyder­abad can sure­ly recall the inter­nal con­flicts of the Nax­al groups and how the state took advan­tage of them, as por­trayed by Venu in the film .

This jour­ney of Ven­nela takes us from her as the curi­ous child of a herd­ing fam­i­ly whose father is an “Oggu Katha”, oral sto­ry­teller, to a Nax­alite who sucks up ide­al­ism, to some­one who, right where she hoped to find, as a trai­tor is accused of love, com­rade­ship and hope for revolution.

This is not the first Tel­ugu film to have spo­ken about the far left move­ment in this region, but the release of Vira­ta Par­vam at a time when the sto­ry of that upris­ing has fad­ed from pub­lic mem­o­ry, has man­aged to rein­stall it for those who wit­nessed the turmoil.

The film has sev­er­al scenes that reflect a sub­al­tern aes­thet­ic. The film begins with a scene of young Ven­nela sit­ting by a corn­field where her moth­er and oth­er women are busy plant­i­ng rice seedlings. They sing “Madana­sun­daari,” a folk song that basi­cal­ly talks about the dai­ly lives of women like them. A scene that, until recent­ly, was an inte­gral part of every vil­lage, and the direc­tor suc­ceeds in fit­ting the inci­dents per­fect­ly into the milieu.

And in the end, Ven­nela becomes the vic­tim of a “con­spir­a­cy” and as Ravan­na car­ries her body, a sad voice echoes through the atmos­phere. The song is a homage by rev­o­lu­tion­ary singer Vimalak­ka to the wrath that brought Ven­nala through this tur­moil, and it reads: “Moon­light (Ven­nela)… has not descend­ed from the sky, or is it seething in the wild bush­es?… How is it that the moth­er for­est who helped you give birth agreed to take your life? (“Mogulu­pai Ven­nela nela rale­nan­na­da mogili­vanam podala cheri gubaalusthun­na­da … niku purudu­posi kan­nadamma Adavi, née upiret­la tiskun­tanan­na­di?”). The song plays along by out­lin­ing an atroc­i­ty com­mit­ted by “their own comrades”.

Although cin­e­ma has art­ful­ly por­trayed Ven­nela’s gris­ly mur­der case, the real­i­ty is that the PWG Nax­als paid a heavy price for Sar­ala’s mur­der. News of her assas­si­na­tion by a senior Nax­al leader was bro­ken by Manchikan­ti Naren­der, a senior jour­nal­ist who was work­ing with her at the time Andhra Jyothi Dai­ly. In his mem­oirs, Naren­der recalls the inci­dent and its after­math, the Nax­alites’ efforts to cov­er up the inci­dent, and the sub­se­quent out­rage against them by pro­gres­sive civ­il rights activists.

Vira­ta Par­vam isn’t a mas­ter­piece, but it def­i­nite­ly endears us by merg­ing frag­ments of lived his­to­ry and emo­tion into a sin­gle narrative.

Direc­tor Venu, who began his career as a jour­nal­ist, has shown us some­thing that fad­ed writ­ing on the walls and memo­ri­als in parts of Telan­gana is try­ing to whis­per, but it remains to be seen if the film will inspire oth­ers to share untold sto­ries from the era tell .

The views expressed are those of the author. Cha­ran Teja cov­ers the two Tel­ugu states and writes most­ly about caste, pol­i­tics and for­est envi­ron­men­tal rights.