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C. Yamini Krishna, "Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
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- [00:01]
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- [00:28]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Experian now our son's new girlfriend is a former student. Don't miss Anniversary.
- [00:35]
Khadija
You know, I used to be afraid of you.
- [00:37]
Sneha Anavarapu
I don't think I am anymore.
- [00:38]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Starring Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler. We need to be careful. She's trying to obliterate us. Anniversary.
- [00:44]
Marshall Poe
Rated R. Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network and if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, their challenges basically have two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:52]
Sneha Anavarapu
Hello everyone and welcome to New Books in South Asia, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I am Sneha Anavarapu, host of this channel and I am delighted to be co hosting this episode with Khadija, who is also a regular host on the channel. Together we are in conversation with Dr. Yamini Krishna, author of the brand new book Film City Urbanism in India Hyderabad From Princely City to Global City, 1890-2000, which was recently published by Cambridge University Press. This book is a novel exploration of the reciprocal relationship between cinema and the city as two institutions which co constitute each other. While fashioning the socio political currents of the region. It interrogates imperial, post colonial, socio cultural and economic imprints as captured, introduced and left behind by the politics of cinema in the site of Hyderabad. Doing so, it traverses through the makings and remakings of Hyderabad as princely city, linguistic capital city and global city studied through capital labor and the organization of the film industry. It brings together diverse and rich historical material to narrate the social history of Hyderabad over 100 years. And it truly is a stupendous achievement. Please do read it. Khadija and I are both invested in Hyderabad as a region of ethnographic and scholarly inquiry, so it's doubly delightful to be hosting this episode together. We really hope you enjoy it.
- [03:19]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
Hi Amini, it's so great to have you on the podcast and I'm so thrilled to be hosting this with Khadija. We're both big fans of the book and we were very excited to have actually read it one week after the other. So I borrowed the book from Kharija.
- [03:36]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
And I read it and Khadija read it.
- [03:38]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
So you know, we sort of had a synchronized reading session and we both really enjoyed it. So big congratulations on the book. We wanted to start the interview today with getting to know you a little bit and as I was telling you in our pre interview chat, I really appreciated what you wrote about yourself and your social position while writing the book. But can we hear a little more about how you became an academic to begin with and how you got interested in film studies and urban studies?
- [04:08]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Firstly, thanks a lot both Sneha and Khadija for inviting me to do this. And in fact I'm very happy that two others who are also working on Hyderabad are doing this. You know, it's, it's fun to have this discussion with both of you and I'm really happy that you enjoyed reading the book as well. Like, you know, it's always this thing of who am I writing for? And my first audience is someone who's interested in Hyderabad. So that way I'm really glad that you know, we're doing this together. So in terms of how did I become an academic? So it's actually like not the regular story in the sense of I was actually in proper corporate world. I worked there. I mean I had an education loan so I was paying up, paying that up. I worked there for four and a half years but I was very the sense, as you all know, as we all know as academics, how, how alienating the corporate world is. That's that was. I experienced that firsthand. Academia was never on the cards, but I had a professor who always used to say that you should be doing PhD. And when I was super disillusioned, or rather when my financial obligations to pay the loan were done, then I was like, okay, I'm free to do whatever. And that's when PhD came up as something which can be explored. I mean I was always interested in research in terms of master's dissertation. And after that also I was writing something that sort of a thing. But didn't really think of academia as an avenue of exploration. So it's more because of the disillusionment with the corporate world and how non academic jobs work. Not that academic jobs are whatever. So it's because of that that I came to academics and I had a background in media, so that's why film studies. And as I said, I mean I didn't really plan my PhD so without really planning I could appear for entrances of media because that was what I had. I mean my background was in like I decided on a particular day and in three months I was joining PhD. That's how short I didn't really prepare for it. So that's how I entered academia. And City is something I've always been Hyderabad. It's almost like if I don't write about Hyderabad, I can't write about anything else unless this is done, you know, that sort of a thing. Because even when I was in my undergrad I had actually made a film on Hyderabad, very amateur. It was still the time when the digital cameras were just coming very small, some friend had a camera, that sort of a thing. But you know, the city was very fascinating for me always. So as I was saying that unless I finish this, other things won't happen. That's why the city and the cinema intersection, one because of my background and that's the only thing I could at that short of a prep time and the other is more of a continuing interest since a long time.
- [07:20]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
That's such an interesting trajectory and I love this part of the new Books Network interviews where we hear a little more about how our authors came to become the academics that they are today. And your detour into corporate world, or rather like a longer route taken to academia is really interesting and I'm sure will resonate with a lot of our listeners.
- [07:40]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean I also feel like that changes the way I work simply because, you know, I Mean, because I've experienced whatever, like I was saying, the alienation firsthand. Although what people talk about inequalities firsthand, being in the corporate, when you're on the other side. So yeah, that sort of, I mean I think that it enriches my perspective on whatever material I'm working with.
- [08:05]
Khadija
Thank you, Sneha. And thanks a lot for writing this book. Yamini. So I wanted to ask you, how did this particular project start? Was there a moment when you felt like there was a central curiosity that took shape as a book?
- [08:20]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
So thank you for that question. Again, this like, I will continue with this chance discovery trajectory because basically even the book, while I was always sure that I'm working in this intersection of film and city, as I just spoke to you about it, that these two were going to be there. But how exactly, what exactly am I going to look at was more in the domain of like I'm still thinking about it. And it is because of the chance discovery at the archives that this book sort of took shape. Because I just went into the like Telangana State Archives, which houses the Nizam period's archives with this question of was there no cinema before Telugu cinema in Hyderabad? Because largely when we read, you know, film history etc, Hyderabad does not feature anywhere. I mean it starts featuring when people talk about Telugu cinema. But other than that, let's say if you're talking about 1920s, 30s, you don't know what's happening. So I was just curious to understand is there nothing, you know, which was there at that time? And it's a lot of chance discoveries at the archive because the archive does not have a category called as film or anything about film. And I found lots of material which is, you know, maybe different kinds of records where film was present. And that's how the, you know, instead of going, I mean I started in the 60s and I went back in time with this singular like interest to understand is there something before the 60s which everybody talks about and, and then it became a very long period which I was looking at and I was looking at this relationship between the city and cinema which is changing with different eras. And that's how the book took shape. I would say it's completely because of the archives and whatever I discovered in the archives that shaped this question of which I work through in this book.
- [10:17]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
So I think just moving along that trajectory. Right, so after these chance discoveries, how did you go about doing research for the book and you know, what were the other sorts of resources that you were drawing on? And yeah, I also really appreciated the way you weave in again, your social positionality as a researcher in terms of how you went about doing research. So I would love for you to speak a little bit about the research for the book in terms of the methods that you used.
- [10:46]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Yeah, thank you. So in terms of the methods, like I said, I was working with a very long period. The book covers roughly from 1890 to around 2000, which is over 100 years from the coming of cinema to 2000 and the new millennium as such. So there was no single method I could employ to work with throughout this period. So I had to go through different kinds of methods. Literally also because of, let's say, the archives, which are quite rich before 48, but after 48, contrary to popular understanding, they really thin out. They're not categorized. The gazettes are literally everywhere. It's really difficult to work with post 48 archives, but 348 is slightly better than that. So in the first 348 period, I relied a lot on archives. And there's archives also a variety of archives saying the state archives, but also magazines, newspapers. There are lots of libraries in the city. So I. I mean, I was really having a lot of fun going to all of these libraries in the city. For the pre 48 period. For the post 48 period, as I said, the state archive themes and also you don't hear, apart from this whole linguistic state perspective, you don't hear what was happening on ground much. And for that period, I used a lot of oral history to understand how was the movement of people, migration of people or building of resources physically in the city. How was that happening? I used a lot of. I worked with the labor unions. There are 24 labor unions in Telugu film industry. I used to go to the labor union offices and do oral history interviews to understand how they've moved. When was this, these things set up and how things changed, that sort of a thing. For post 48, of course, I also continued to use newspapers, magazines, which was sort of reporting on what was happening from the media perspective. So to be and then close as we move closer to the contemporary region. I was also doing, you know, expert interviews of people who are in, involved in this, you know, strategic decisions, etc. To understand, you know, how was this thing happening. And in terms of. While doing these oral history archives, my positionality, which I write about was interestingly very, I mean, instrumental in getting out these narratives simply because, like I am, I've lived all my life in Hyderabad. So I speak what they call Hyderabadi, Urdu, Quite well. And I speak Telugu also. So if you're talking about 348 or anyone who's talking about oral histories or even memories or things they've heard from their parents etc from P48, they would always be happy that here is someone who speaks Urdu like us, because it's largely a Urdu dominant culture sort of a thing. And that I live close to Malali in Hyderabad. So that I lived close to Malali also be replayed apart. And in the post 48 it is because I mean it's again a Telugu dominant culture. So that I can speak Telugu was actually useful as such. So actually within this field work also I could see how the linguistic cultures of the city have changed because the sources and their prominent languages or their cultural languages are also changing as I'm speaking to them. I mean, one could see that even within the field work.
- [14:32]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
Yeah, that's really interesting and I love the attention you pay to language throughout the book. And I know Khadija has a question about that later, so we'll hold on to the linguistic politics bit. But in terms of the conceptualization of the book, I found it very compelling when you argued that this historically rooted book examines the making and remaking of Hyderabad through film capital, labor and infrastructure, thereby putting film actually at the center of place making processes. And it's a very refreshing take, I would argue, on urban studies in urban studies more broadly. So can you speak a little bit about the analytical value of thinking about.
- [15:11]
Sneha Anavarapu
Film and the city together and what.
- [15:14]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
The particular case of Hyderabad brings to the table?
- [15:17]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Yeah. So the city cinema thing is like for urban studies, it is like has not really, as you pointed out, has not really played so much attention to, you know, cinema per se. But film studies bit, it's almost like over discussed. They've all. There's a lot of literature on city cinema, almost like conjoined twins. Because film studies has been predominantly looking at the question of modernity and what is the role of cinema as this? It is, it comes at the intersection of multiple things because, you know, as a technology, as some something which is drawing from existing performance traditions, and as something which is capitalist in nature. So it comes at all of these intersections. So film studies has a long history of a lot of literature on city cinema. However, they mostly focus on what's happening on screen or the construction of the cinematic city or could be narratives, could be tropes, could be, you know, the urban types. That sort of, that sort of work has happened. There's very little work on, you know, looking at it historically. And even that work has largely been in limited to colonial cities like Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Lahore, etc. This is again because largely people have focused on the colonial archive. You know, it's easy to work with. It is also much more easily categorized, all of that. So largely you will not see anything outside of the colonial cities as far as the city cinema question is concerned. So Hyderabad in that sense challenges this whole framework because usually, like I said, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, people speak about colonialism, people speak about censorship, anti colonial nationalism, all of this. You can't easily use all of this in case of a princely city like Hyderabad. So Hyderabad helps you expand this understanding of city cinema and also challenge the existing frameworks which are so predominant. As far as the colonial cities are concerned. It's almost as if, you know, there was only British India, not to say that the princely India has no connection with British India, but there were other things which were also operational, like something like, how does patronage play a part? This, this is not even a question as far as, you know, you look at, you know, colonial cities. So that way Hyderabad helps you think through the existing frameworks afresh. It is a new geography which nobody has really worked on. And it's also an entry point to both colonial cities and the565 princely states as such, it's almost like an entire geography which it opens up. That's the unique aspect of Hyderabad. And also in the question of within the question of nationalism and cinema, et cetera, Hyderabad again, neatly does not fit the question because, okay, here is a princely state which didn't really want to join India and it constantly keeps getting penalized for it as well, particularly the Muslim community. So all of this, how does this play out in cinema? And cinema becomes a central prism through which you can see all of these changes intersecting. It is among other forces. It's not the only force. But as I was saying, I was keen to look at this as something which binds together several of these or several intersecting, several forces intersect in cinema. And that's why cinema helps you to understand all of these varying currents.
- [18:51]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
Yeah, that's such a great way to really sum up the analytical concerns of the book and to speak to the uniqueness of Hyderabad as, as a site of study that can really push forward these frameworks that you're talking about. So thank you for that. And you know, like, I think again, extending this conversation about what Hyderabad brings to the table in chapter two, which.
- [19:17]
Sneha Anavarapu
I really enjoyed, you speak of how.
- [19:19]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
Cinema was integral to the creation of a modern Hyderabad during princely rule. So in this regard the state was creating opportunities and spaces for cinema and there was a consolidation of a public citizenry, you argue, rather than princely subjects alone. So you write about the imagination and the anticipation of Osmania Civic palace for instance as symbolic of the state interest in creating a centralized space for film. I also loved how this chapter showed how there are all these frictions in terms of how the culture of cinema manifests in the princely city versus the cantonment areas. So could you say a little bit about how the city was being reimagined at this time of princely rule vis a vis the Nizam and the British and the tensions between the viewing cultures of both these sorts of domains.
- [20:13]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Thank you. So modern Hyderabad, there are two things which, I mean several scholars have spoken about this. Two things which sort of assure modern Hyderabad in terms of the city infrastructure which is the floods 1908 floods and the subsequent formation of the City Improvement Board and the railways before that. So these are the kind of markers of, you know, infrastructurally speaking Hyderabad modern and cinema I argue has been a part of it as a significant part of it. It has multiple phases to it. One is as a representational regime. It allows you to self represent and present the state to the world. And the Hyderabad state was doing a lot of it that is trying to make films about the state as to, as a state what are they doing as a. The. The role of the government. I mean photography and cinema, both of them were, you know, quite central to this presenting, representing the new modern state. The second is infrastructure that is infrastructurally how is that transforming the city? Like as you pointed out, Ousmania Civic palace which was imagined as a state theater. That the state is imagining a theater is also a very significant thing because it's talking about a civic palace as instead of a palace for the kings, a palace for the people as such. And cinema, I argue that cinema is central to this imagination because cinema is all about paying public as opposed to earlier forms of entertainment which are deeply rooted in caste class networks while cinema also is participant in caste class networks. But it demands, you know, paying public. So in that sense it is, it brings in or helps, it's not like the only thing but it helps the creation of this civic as we say. And this imagination of civic was different between the princely city and the cantonment. The cantonment Sikhnabad Cantonment which was under the control of British, that is, they were, they were housing the military there and it was given to The British for a period of, for a certain set period as a, you know, administrative domain and there were set rules also what they could and wouldn't do. And there is a particular instance which I use to tease out the differences between how cinema and citizenship is imagined differently by the British and you know, the princely state once Nizam visits the British cinema the name of the cinema is British Cinema in Tirmalgiri which was the garrison and the Nizam can go to Tirumalgiri because he is given the land to the British. The British doesn't really have, cannot restrict him. And the British think of their cinemas which is largely attended by military and the people who work for the British and the officers et cetera they think of it as like an extension of British culture. And the Nizam, you know, because he's coming from a local performance traditions where you know, you can, he is the head of the state and he can behave however he wants. Nobody's really, there's no particular etiquette which is beyond his limit in the sense that he can speak during the show, he can appreciate people during the show. And it is also this time when cinema is not exclusively cinema it comes with other forms of entertainment like you know, dances, performances, cabaret, etc. And it is in one such performance Dunizam apparently speaks up, you know, shouts to someone, maybe one of his friends and this becomes a matter of huge discussion even until Delhi and London saying that how could someone behave like this in a British cinema? And this is not worthy behavior, this is not gentlemanly behavior which is the expectation of etiquette by the British and that someone like Nizam cannot, does not really know how to behave in a modern space like cinema. But it's, that's, that's again you know, that's the, that's their understanding of what is modern and what, what is the limits of modernity. That who can inhabit the space of modern and who can't. Whereas actually film is not modern. So is Nizam. It's not like he is not aware of all of this but the end however the, this event actually illustrates the limits to what British could control. So in spite of these long discussions even to London they are not able to restrict the movement of Nizam. He has the control over the, I mean over that land and also the theater. Whereas actually the British cannot enter Hyderabad without the permission of the Nizam. So in that sense cinemas also become the site where this negotiation between who is more powerful happens and what is the idea of the ideal citizen also happens for the British it is this, you know, gentleman, the idea of a gentleman with certain kind of etiquette, of course, racially loaded etiquette versus for the Nizam, it. I would say that it is a lot more expansive also because here you are talking about a princely state where his position is not really, you know, not really threatened by any of this. His position is permanent. So to be. So his idea of citizenship I would argue is way more expansive than the British idea of citizenship.
- [25:45]
Khadija
Yeah, it's really fascinating how you engage with the viewing cultures and regimes of the city. Yamini. Now moving ahead with chapter three, you discuss how film city urbanism in Hyderabad is intricately linked to the city's linguistic politics. We were speaking on that note as well previously. So as you note, debates around Urdu has been often focused on North India. But your work brings in Hyderabad's distinct perspective on the role of Urdu. How is the city transitioning from a multilingual space to a Telugu linguistic identity? And how do you see this shift resonating especially in contemporary India where everyday biases against Urdu, be it in the media, textbooks and public discourse continue to persist?
- [26:33]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Thank you. Thank you for that question. In fact, Hyderabad had a lot of stakes in Urdu often because of this North India centricity of all of this Urdu debate. It does not get featured much but it had a lot of stake because having Usmania University, which is one of the first vernacular university which was even teaching medicine in Urdu is a big feat as Kavita Datla's work has shown us. And so they had a lot of stuff stakes in the language because they were imagining the state around it. They were. I mean, I mean official sources show how they thought of Urdu as something which could, which is they, they characterized it as a mixed language. That is it drew from various languages like Telugu, Kannadam, Bharati, that is, there are, it has words which is, which have come from all of this and hence it is more, you know, inclusive. That's the state version of Urdu. However, the Telugu elite, I would say Telugu elite because again this is Himabindu Chintakunta whose dissertation, she looks at this more closely and I have used her work, she talks about how the Telugu elite often they were not happy with the lack of proximity to power and it is that which plays out in this question of Urdu as being separationist or Urdu as being excluding Muslim, I mean Hindus. However, it is actually this question of power and what is the more proximate language to power. And post which is in the book I talk about how the Urdu centric but multilingual culture is sort of sidelined and almost wiped out post 48 because of again the larger national politics of Urdu being termed as a communal, as only Muslim language and as a problem because Pakistan adopts it as the official language. So all of that plays even in Hyderabad which again doesn't get featured in much of work anywhere and in Fog cinema. What does it mean? That means that. That exactly means where I started off that that someone like me who's grown up in Hyderabad has only heard of Cinema from the 60s but hasn't heard of cinema before it which was, you know, centered around Urdu language as such. That's what it means that Urdu have been completely sidelined, almost erased and wiped out. And this also was a part of the official policy because you know, all the people who were employed by the Nizam State which used to function largely in Urdu and English were thrown out of job and people who knew Telugu were employed and so on. And this as you rightly pointed out, this marginalization of Urdu continues. However, I would say that contrary to like what a lot of us have been thinking that you know, will this language be killed because there is so many efforts to kill it. What I see interestingly is that there is a new crop of people who are adopting the language and they mostly lack historical context but it's become this exotic language which everybody wants to adopt, you know, because it's poetic etc. So the Lang but the context has totally gone, you know, something which is as a common cultural register, you know, the reams and reams of material talks about all the film people who were writing from Hyderabad they were arguing for Urdu cinema because it's more inclusive because Hindi cinema which is more Sanskrit oriented leaves out a lot of people. Urdu is more common. Everybody knows Urdu, people can understand that sort of a common register of Urdu is now becoming the exotic other. You know, very few people who are very like for poetic reasons etc have adopted Urdu. So that's the, the trajectory of language itself. And post the Telangana formation of Telangana it's been given or you know, official status again. However, not so much. Nothing much is happening on ground I think. I mean for the state it's been given an official status but I don't see anything much happening. So yeah, it has this very like, you know, strange position right now. It's lost its relevance in everyday life and is being continuously targeted for that. But it's become this exotic other.
- [31:01]
Khadija
As such I do hope Hyderabad's role in the Urdu sphere will get more Attention including outside of academia. As we were discussing moving ahead over chapter four, you note that even after the formation of the linguistic state, Hyderabad remained outside the imagination of Telugu cinema. The December 1960 Chitra Prabha report you cite highlights how Madras was viewed as the production center and Vijayawada as the consumption hub, leaving Hyderabad largely active unacknowledged. He also point out that while there were Telugu speaking communities in the Hyderabad state, the Telugu identity was largely shaped by the Telugu of the Madras Presidency who considered the Hyderabad variety of Telugu inferior. Could you talk about how this process of making a non Telugu city into a Telugu one unfolded over the following decades?
- [31:57]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Yeah, thank you. This is sort of a continuation with what we were discussing just now. So from something which is like a multilingual Urdu city with the migration of people, there are multiple aspects to it. One is the state initially thought of making a competing production center to Madras and Madras and Bombay. But the challenge of Telangana, which happens in 1969, which is the protests for Telangana, the first protests for Telangana after that is when the state tries to make it more Telugu. Both the film industry and the city as well, there's more focus on becoming or making Telugu. And that is when the state tries to invite the film industry, the Telugu film industry to Hyderabad with lot more force. While there were lots of discussions even before, but the Telugu Language association is foregrounded post the Telangana protests as such. And this transformation of city happens again at multiple levels. One is, as I said, through the state, the discourse of the state. The second is on ground infrastructure. All the film infrastructure of Hyderabad was created by Madras Presidency. Telugu's who came here and sort of set everything up. So it's a story of migration. And culturally speaking, I've argued that this migration, the intent of making the city Telugu also means that the intent of making the city more oriented towards capital. Madras being the colonial city was more attuned to industrial capitalism, industrial time, so to be. And some of the, in fact like a lot of interviews, the oral history interviews which I had done, some of them talk about how reluctant the film people, how reluctant they were to move to Hyderabad because it was Muslim city. They didn't really want to. For them Madras was a Hindu city. And you know, Hyderabad was a Muslim city and that's why they didn't want to move. The second aspect they talk about is also that the labor in Hyderabad is not attuned to working round the clock. They talk about how, you know, film work starts really early in the morning and there is nobody who's willing to work at that time. So the solution to this, what they find is they actually import all the labor and the incoming labor, the trains to exist the labor of Hyderabad. So when the city is becoming from a Telugu city, from a non Telugu city, it's also becoming more capitalist or more oriented towards capitalism from something like a princely state or a princely city kind of operation. And so Telugu for me is not just about just the language. It's also about orientation towards a particular kind of caste capital. And that's the transformation which happens via the film industry. And that's also why, going back to our earlier conversation, that's also why film becomes so central to understanding the city. Because film is re educating the city. Film is re educating the city to become more Telugu in that sense. And Telangana, as you rightly pointed out, that it was considered to be inferior. It was considered to be inferior also because of all of this. One is it has influx of a lot of Urdu words. Like for instance, I mean because I am from Hyderabad and like my parents have been from. I mean their language differs significantly from let's say the Kosalandra language which was the official register until the formation of Telangana as such. So one is the language. So it is inferior because it has influx of, lots of, you know, Urdu words. The second aspect is that it is inferior because they are lazy, they are not attuned towards capital, that is they are not productive and hence it's also inferior. So there are these two phases to it because of which the Telangana Telugu was considered to be inferior as compared to the coastal Andhra. And it is that re engineering which happens or re education, sorry, re education that happens through the film industry.
- [36:17]
Khadija
Thank you for that response, Yamli. The next question from chapter five is a bit personal because Hyderabad is my first city and I still remember my first ride along the outer ring road or the ORR as we call it. You describe how multiplexes have followed the development of the ORR which connects various destinations primarily through private transportation. The Hyderabad Urban Development Authority funded part of the project by auctioning surrounding lands that later become residential zones with multiplexes emerging to serve these new populations. You suggest that this model of urban growth is consumption oriented where film and entertainment infrastructures work in close relation with real estate and speculative development. The new convergence of cinema infrastructure and real estate seems central to this new imagination of the city. And what does this reveal about Hyderabad's urban landscape as such?
- [37:19]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Thank you for that question. So I think Hyderabad is quite one of the earliest ones to develop this kind of a Model which is the convergence between media, real estate and even information technology. All of them based on caste capital, the Kamma caste capital. And this was possible because of the fusing of the state power and the caste capital to the figures like ntr. NT Rama Rao, the film star turned politician who also, I mean ran on the platform of Telugu, you know, going back to our earlier conversation from a non Telugu city to a Telugu city, he was like, you know, fostering all of that Telugu ness. And Ramoji Rao, again a karma capitalist because of this fusing of the state power and the caste power. And you know, and the third aspect is the, the falling of the princely states. Once the princely state is gone there's a lot of land available which can be, you know, manipulated as such. This has again been discussed by a lot of other scholars as well. So there is a, there are these two, three unique aspects coming together which leads to this model which is fusing of media, real estate and information technology. And in that sense Hyderabad is one of the earliest ones to have developed this model. And there are several states who are trying to replicate this. I mean there is Uttar Pradesh very famously trying but not succeeding. Because these unique aspects of Hyderabad, one is the availability of land post the falling of the princely state. The second is also the fusing of caste capital and the state power in the way it did with NTR and Ramuji Rao is not really the way it is happening. It's also not the same time, you're in a totally different time. They are trying it right now. But that model has become something which a lot of states are interested, they're trying to replicate. In fact today as we speak, almost every state in India has, has attempted or is attempting to build a film city with the attempt to recreate this model of development, so to say.
- [39:29]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
Yeah, thank you so much Yami. This is all very, very interesting. And you know what Khadija was saying also about the ORR was sort of taking me back to moving from going to RTC Crossroads to watch movies and single screen cinemas to then actually not having gone there in more than a decade actually. And it's, it's quite sad and I feel a bit nostalgic about it. But you know, nostalgia is also a very powerful lens through which we view the city, particularly the cinema, your single screen theaters and efforts around sort of preserving them. And I was also thinking of this reel I saw this morning of a group of teddy, you know, fan clubs in the U.S. i think, who were apparently dousing a cutout of pawan Kalyan with milk in some. Like in some mall in the. In the US where there were. There's Cinemaplex. I was thinking of this, you know, question of modernity and incivility and fandom was sort of a very.
- [40:29]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Also like, it's very interesting that, you know, RTC crossroad is being recreated somewhere in the us. This is a total. This is a total RTC crossroad thing which you just mentioned. Exactly. Yeah.
- [40:41]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
My dad's office was on RTC Crossroads actually, right next to. I think it was Saptagiri Theatre. And there were times when he'd have to go very early to his office because there was a new film releasing and stuff. So even these temporal rhythms of commuting definitely took an effect with these things. So really, really interesting stuff.
- [41:00]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
So much to think about.
- [41:01]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
But I was also curious to maybe target a thread that you get to towards the end of the book, which is that something interesting is happening in the filmic representation of Telangana and the political discourse around film since the separation of Telangana and Andhra in 2014. So would you like to speak a little bit about what's going on now in terms of these linguistic politics and their representation in cinema?
- [41:27]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Yeah, yeah, that's a. It's a very interesting domain. In fact, I only like, you know, I don't deal with it completely because it's still developing as we speak. And so. But there are a couple of aspects to this. One is the question of labor. With the formation of the new state, there was a lot of tussle between the film labor, the Telangana film unions. I mean, there were new unions which were formed which called themselves the Telangana Film Unions. And earlier, whatever used to be the Andhra Pradesh film unions rechristened themselves as Telugu Film unions. Because if you are Andhra Pradesh Film Union, what are you doing in Hyderabad sort of a thing. And there was a lot of conflict. There was even a lot of violence which was happening at the Casco formation of the state. However, that has sort of subsided. However, there are still some unions which call themselves Telangana. So there is like some amount of undercutting of labor through these unions. That sort of a thing is happening. But the state has largely managed the labor union question by saying that even people who are not from Telangana can work here, which was not the stance they had taken before the formation of the state, but they have changed it and they have sort of managed the labor question. The second question is what you were asking me about, which is the representation question. And once the state has been formed or the state Formation was on cards like you know, once they were protest etc. There's been a lot of, you know, films which have been attempting to represent the Telangana culture by setting narratives in, you know, what, let's say for example in Nizamba, which never was featured in any cinema before or in various of these, you know, towns, small towns or places which are non Hyderabad but Telangana, that sort of a thing through language, through incorporation of again state promoted festivals like Patkama or you know, Ponalo etc or through songs through singers which you, which actually sang protest songs for the Telangana movement. They are now being included in lots of, you know, films etc etc. There are also a few directors who have come from Telangana trying to present the local stories etc, so there's been a lot of influx of that. So there are two ways of understanding this. One can say that, you know, because the state has created this, you know, fertile field for a new cultural representation. So this is coming up and this is, this can be seen as a, as an achievement of a new state. That, that's why they wanted a state where, you know, among other things which are materialist in terms of resources, water, all of that. It is also a cultural question. So the cultural question can be thought to have been addressed once the state is formed. There is a lot of representation and the language is also not secondary anymore, all of that. The second is also, if we look at it from a political economy perspective, that the industry largely still remains the same. I mean if you're talking about the caste capital or the caste being the, or a specific kind of caste capital being the organizing principle of the industry, it still remains the same. It hasn't changed much at all. And I don't think it's going to change anytime. I mean, at least there are no signs of that. However, it is allowing for this new kind of representation to happen. So the other way, I mean if you, if you foreground political economy to be like the market demands it and hence there is this new kind of representation which is emerging without changing anything structurally. So there is no structural changes, but a new representation emerges.
- [45:06]
Khadija
Thanks Yamini, especially for mentioning how the industry is still the same even after all these times. I think there is so much of fondness for Hyderabad in our conversation for the day and it's almost time to wrap up the podcast as such. So what are you working on now and what can we hope to read by you in the near future?
- [45:28]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Thank you for that question. This is actually like there are, this is not a film project. It will be it is something different. I'm trying to work on an intellectual history of the Deccan through the figure of Syed Mohiuddin Khadri Zor, the Deccani intellectual who was also fondly called as Babai Deccan. So there are some commonalities with this book that it is again, about Hyderabad. It is carrying that thread of Urdu and Urdu decentering the north and thinking about Urdu from the south. So that thread I'm carrying forward, but it is not about cinema per se. It's also more broad than the city. It's looking at the region, it's looking at the. I mean, Hyderabad and its interconnection with the Urdu world across the globe, so to say. So that's the next project I'm trying to work on. It's still in the preliminary phases, but largely trying to look at Zor's work as such.
- [46:32]
Sneha or Khadija (Co-host, likely Sneha)
Thank you so much. That sounds really, really interesting and we can't wait to read more of your work and especially from the new project, of course. But yeah, I guess as Khadija was saying, there has been so much excitement around Hyderabad. And as you said earlier when we started the podcast, I'm so glad that three of us are in conversation and Hyderabad is so dear to all of our hearts in very different ways through very different projects, but it kind of all comes, comes right around the center with Hyderabad being the, being the big heart of these passions. So it was, yeah, it was such a joy chatting with you about the book. And thank you so much for taking time out. We really appreciate it. And yeah, take care.
- [47:13]
Dr. Yamini Krishna
Thanks a lot for doing this, both of you. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it very much.