Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has courted controversy again, this time with his Telugu film `Vangaveeti’. The movie is based on the life of Vangaveeti Mohana Ranga, known as Ranga, a powerful Congress leader from Vijayawada who was assassinated in 1988. Currently, a petition by Ranga’s widow Vangaveeti Radha is pending in court.
She claimed that the filmmakers had distorted facts and uploaded the trailer on the net without certification from the censor board as is required under the Cinematograph Act. Meanwhile Ranga's followers feel that Varma has portrayed their leader in a bad light, even as they raised objections to using his surname for the film. Radha Vangaveeti felt that the song and some scenes of the movie would provoke enmity between the Kamma and Kapu communities once again, the predominant castes in coastal Andhra Pradesh. The high court had sent a notice to the film’s producer Dasari Kiran Kumar.
But Varma refused to be cowed down and instead met with members of both the families of Vangaveeti and Devineni and clarified to them that the film was not against any caste and so they need not worry about any violence.
Varma who is very active on social media, especially Twitter, tweeted that while there were unresolved problems especially after his meeting with the Vangaveeti family, he would not compromise. "Just met Radha and his mother... Meeting did not go half well... Problems... I will not compromise... Have to see what happens," he tweeted.
Radhakrishna, son of Ranga spoke about his doubts to Varma and also pointed out that the matter was pending in court.
Meanwhile another bit of news is that Varma had announced earlier this year that "Vangaveeti", a film on the evolution of hooliganism in the 1980s in Vijayawada, will be his last film in Telugu. This was after he had said that `Raktacharitra’, a multilingual movie released in 2010, based on the bloody feud between the families of Paritala Ravindra and Maddelacheruvu Suri in the turbulent Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh would look like a children’s film before `Vangaveeti’.
HISTORY OF POLITICAL TURMOIL IN VIJAYAWADA
Vijayawada was the hotbed of political turmoil at one point of time with gang warfare being the order of the day. In a desire to take over the Vijayawada transport business, two leaders were killed allegedly by Vangaveeti Ranga’s supporters.
While Ranga was a Kapu, the murdered leaders were Kammas, leading to a caste war. Later there was a fight between rival groups headed by the Devineni family and Ranga was once again allegedly involved in the killing of two brothers of the Devineni family.
Ranga was on a hunger strike asking for better protection when his camp was attacked on December 25, 1988 and butchered in the early morning. The Kapu/Kamma caste riots hit the roof throughout the region during this time. More than 40 people were killed and property worth over Rs 100 crore was damaged.
The violence abated when the then Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao made his Telugu Desam Party (TDP) legislator Devineni 'Nehru' Rajasekhar surrender.