Mana Desam (1949): Revisiting Telugu’s First Nationalist Movie that also introduced NTR to the Big Screen.

The veteran Dada Saheb Phalke awardee LV Prasad’s fourth movie as a director, Mana Desam, is the first movie to be made on Nationalist sentiments in Telugu cinema. As India celebrates its 78th Independence day, let’s revisit Mana Desam and its advocatism of Gandhian philosophy. 

What does it take to make a political movie in 2024? Well, the same doubts were pesting Meka Venkatramaiah Appa Rao Bahadur, simply known as the Raja of Mirzapuram (in Nuzvid, Krishna Dist., AP). He was the patron to Mana Desam under Sobhanachala Pictures banner, and presented by Krishnaveni– who acted as Shoba in Mana Desam and later married to the Raja of MIrzapur. 

Mana Desam was directed by the legendary L V Prasad. It was written by another legendary Samudrala Raghavacharya. The music was composed by Ghantasala Venkateshwara Rao, simply known as Ghantasala. 

DID YOU KNOW? Mana Desam is Ghantalasa’s second movie to be released as a solo credited music director. His first signed movie was Keelugurram (1949). 

Mana Desam starring Ch. Narayana Rao, C. Krishnaveni, Relangi Venkatramaiah, Vangara Venkatasubbaiah, A. Ramanatha Sastry, and  N.T. Ramarao in a brief role as a police officer working for the British Empire, is probably the first movie with Nationalist sentiments to be made in Telugu Language. If you see the kind of movies that were being produced in those days, they are primarily folklores and family dramas. Sensitive subjects like politics and religion and caste were not ideal bankable subjects back then and even now. 

Mana Desam is an adaptation of a book Vipradas written by classic Bengali writer Saratchandra Chattopadhyay who also wrote Devdas in 1917. 

Although the movie was released in 1949, two years after our Independence, Mana Desam was set in 1942. 1942 was a critical time period for the freedom struggle. We get to experience the struggles through the story of Madhu and Shobha, and the police department working for the British empire. 

Madhu is a Gandhian who gets imprisoned for his activities related to freedom struggle and this triggers Shobha and Ramnath too to join the freedom struggle. Ramnath is a naive optimist, who gets blamed by his mother Yashoda for the mental instability of Madhu after coming out from prison. However, as the adage of ‘happily lived ever after’, Madhu surprisingly regains his consciousness and India achieves its Independence. 

The liberal sense of politics is quite visible in the movie. But, the conservative system was not challenged as we may mistakenly expect. The makers did not hesitate to revere the stalwarts of the freedom movement and their values. Ramnath’s son is named Nehru in the movie. Shobha refuses the meal in Ramnath’s house as they wouldn’t mind preferring to throw the “polluted” plates. She also witnesses the elder women of the house trying to un-pollute the place where Shobha’s father had just eaten. Shobha is upset, not enraged. We see the discomfort and a slight stereotypical ‘womanly’ pouty-face confrontation. And, this scene is neither intensified thematically nor dragged. Just abandoned. 

The names and faces of M K Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar V Patel, even Bhagath Singh are heard and seen in the movie. Surprisingly, we don’t get neither a glimpse nor a uttering of B R Ambedkar. He might not be a freedom ‘fighter’. But, he certainly held very prominent importance in our Independent history. We might never know why Ambedkar was not even barely referred to. Anyway, we must not criticise a work of art for what is not in the art. 

Mana Desam might be the first movie that seriously dealt with the Nationalist sentiments of the Independence movement. So,on this day of the 78th Independence Day celebrations, we can watch Mana Desam for free on Youtube. 

A better version of Mana Desam is streaming on Sun Nxt.

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