Singing for Revolution: Revisiting The Life and Lyrics of Gaddar
By P. Kesava Kumar. Kesava Kumar is a Professor of Philosophy at Delhi University. Translations by A. Suneetha and Gautham Reddy. Suneetha and Gautham are members of the Maidaanam Editorial Collective. Editor’s Note: Gummadi Vittal Rao (1949-2023), or Gaddar as he is more popularly known, was a historical phenomenon. He was unprecedented and little understood.…
What Makes a Telugu Song a Global Dance Hit? Unpacking the Viral Success of RRR’s Naatu Naatu
By Rumya Putcha. Rumya is an Associate Professor at the University of Georgia in the Institute for Women’s Studies as well as the Hugh Hodgson School of Music. Her research interests include citizenship, race, gender, sexuality, the body, and the law. She is the author of The Dancer’s Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transational India (Duke,…
Notes on the Second Annual Telugu Studies Conference at the University of Pennsylvania
By Chinnaiah Jangam. Chinnaiah is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University in Canada. His research interests include the social and intellectual history of Dalits in modern South Asia. He is the author of Dalits and the Making of Modern India. Over the past decade, we have seen an organized field…
Watching RRR: Film Scholars Monika Mehta and Anupama Prabhala Discuss the Movie’s Many Audiences and Contexts
Monika Mehta is Associate Professor of English at SUNY Binghamton. She is the author of Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema (2011). She has co-edited Pop Empires: Transnational and Diasporic Flows of Korea and India (2019) and Industrial Networks and Cinemas of India: Shooting Stars, Shifting Geographies and Multiplying Media (2021). Anupama Prabhala is Associate Professor of Film, Television and Media Studies at Loyola Marymount University,…
Going Vernacular: Naatu Naatu, RRR and the Poetics of the Global Telugu Sphere
By Chris Chekuri. Chris teaches History at San Francisco State University. He is a managing editor at Maidaanam. పొలంగట్టు దుమ్ములోన పోట్లగిత్త దూకినట్టు పోలేరమ్మ జాతరలో పోతరాజు ఊగినట్టు కిర్రు సెప్పులేసుకొని, కర్రసాము సేసినట్టు మర్రిసెట్టు నీడలోన, కుర్రగుంపు కూడినట్టు ఎర్రజొన్న రొట్టెలోన, మిరపతొక్కు కలిపినట్టు Like a raging bull prancing on a dusty farm Like Potaraju quivering in a Poleramma festival Like…
A Conversation with Gita Ramaswamy on Land, Justice, and Friendship
Editor’s Note: In the following essay, A. Suneetha and R.V. Ramanamurthy present an overview of the recently published autobiography, Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: The Memoir of a Lapsed Revolutionary (Navayana, 2022) by Gita Ramaswamy and lead a conversation with the author. An excerpt from this book has been provided to Maidaanam by the publisher and…
Between Dreams and Ghosts: A Conversation with Professor Andrea Wright on Indian Gulf Migration and Middle Eastern Oil
Editor’s Note: In the following essay, Neilesh Bose presents an overview of the recently published book, Between Dreams and Ghosts: Indian Migration and Middle Eastern Oil (2021) by Andrea Wright and leads a conversation with the author. An excerpt from this book has been provided to Maidaanam and can be read here: The Rig and…
When Persian was an Indian Language: The Fables of Jameh ul-Tamseel from Medieval Hyderabad to Modern Iran
By Alex Shams. Alex is a writer and PhD student of Anthropology at the University of Chicago whose work focuses on religion and politics in the contemporary Middle East. He is the editor of Ajam Media Collective, an online publication focused on culture and society in Iran and Central Asia. Follow him on Twitter @alexshams_.…
Extrajudicial Killings in India, Then and Now: Revisiting the work of K. Balagopal
By Jinee Lokaneeta. Jinee is Professor of Political Science & International Relations at Drew University. She is the author of The Truth Machines: Policing, Violence and Scientific Interrogations in India (University of Michigan Press, 2020). Her research focuses on law and violence, political theory including critical and feminist theory, global human rights, and interdisciplinary legal…
Who is Saibinn Mai for the Bombay Catholics?
By Elroy Pinto. Elroy is an independent filmmaker, researcher, and writer based in Mumbai. His first short film-essay, Kaifiyat (2019) introduces Ustad Nizamuddin Khan’s music and explores the historical and socio-religious contexts of Deccani aesthetics. His writing has appeared in NCPA’s ON Stage, Public Parking, The Satyashodhak, and Shambhashan. The six of us children, with…
A Semiotic Storm: The Afterlife of Sir Arthur Cotton
By Gautam Pemmaraju. Gautam is a Mumbai-based independent filmmaker, writer, and researcher working in the areas of history, literature, and art with a special interest in the Deccan. A Tongue Untied: The Story of Dakhani on the vernacular satire & humour poetry of the region is his first independent feature documentary film. He is a…
Found Objects: From Colonial Libraries to Postcolonial Archives
By Sravanthi Kollu. Sravanthi is a Postdoctoral Associate at Kilachand Honors College, Boston University. She writes on literature, history, and community with a focus on colonial and postcolonial Telugu literature and South India. Behind every historical account of South India lies a story of tattered archives. Artefacts, manuscripts, pamphlets and paraphernalia found serendipitously, lost and…
Fatima Alam Ali’s Intimate Glimpses of Hyderabad’s Mid-century Urdu Writers
By Nazia Akhtar. Nazia is Assistant Professor of Literature at the International Institute of Information Technology, Gachibowli-Hyderabad. Her research interests include the literature and history of Hyderabad, Partition Studies, women’s writing, and comparative literature. Fatima Alam Ali (1923-2020) was a writer of pen portraits (khaake) and humorous essays (tanz-o-mizah) from Hyderabad. Her work offers an untapped…
When Princely Hyderabad Looked to Imperial Tokyo
By Tariq Sheikh. Tariq is Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. His research interests include the intellectual history of early modern Japan and the history of India-Japan relations. The first floor of the eastern block of the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad houses the “Japanese gallery.” Inside this…
Deccan Vanguard: Rediscovering the Forgotten Revolutionary Srikishen Balmukund and Anticolonial Nationalism in Princely Hyderabad
By Gautam Pemmaraju. Gautam is a Mumbai-based independent filmmaker, writer, and researcher working in the areas of history, literature, and art with a special interest in the Deccan. A Tongue Untied: The Story of Dakhani on the vernacular satire & humour poetry of the region is his first independent feature documentary film. He is a…
Telugu Film Songbooks: New Sources for Gender and Caste History
By Rumya Putcha. Rumya is an Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia. Her research interests include citizenship, race, gender, sexuality, the body, and the law. Her current book project is entitled, “Mythical Courtesan | Modern Wife: Disembodiment and Anticolonial Praxis in Transnational South Asia” and aims to develop a critical race and feminist approach to South Asian performance cultures.…
Forty Years of Agrarian Change: The Fate of One Landlord and One Laborer in a Telangana Village
By R.V. Ramanamurthy. Ramanamurthy is a Professor in the School of Economics, University of Hyderabad. His research interests include agrarian change and political economy of development. He is the author of Agrarian Question: A Reader (2021). I was a child labour, employed initially for cattle grazing work. My own father was an annual farm servant.…
Sex, Gossip, and Scandal in 1940s Hyderabad: Aziz Ahmad’s Novel Shabnam
By Shefali Jha. Shefali teaches in Humanities and Social Sciences at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar. She has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and is currently working on publishing her doctoral dissertation on Muslim politics in Hyderabad. Anyone familiar with the zany world of Hyderabadi comedy knows…