The controversy surrounding Ram Charan’s latest film Peddi began with criticism over its portrayal of women, particularly the treatment of Janhvi Kapoor’s character Achiyamma. However, the debate has since expanded into a larger discussion about women’s representation in Telugu cinema and the limited agency female actors often have within mainstream commercial frameworks. Following the backlash, director Buchi Babu Sana issued a public apology, stating that he “respects women” and promising to edit the scenes that drew criticism.
However, the problem with Peddi runs deeper than a few objectionable scenes.
At its core, the film attempts to emulate the anti-caste and politically conscious strand of Tamil cinema, represented by filmmakers such as Mari Selvaraj and Pa Ranjith, and films like Karnan, Sarpatta Parambarai, Lubber Pandhu, and Bison. Peddi’s eponymous protagonist comes from an oppressed and marginalised community, fighting for recognition and dignity in a system designed to exclude him. Like many of these contemporary Tamil films, Peddi positions its hero against structural injustice and state neglect.
But while Buchi Babu borrows the aesthetics, themes, and plot structures of these films, he fails to grasp the politics that animate them.
Filmmakers such as Mari Selvaraj and Pa Ranjith do not merely tell stories about poor people fighting oppression. Their films explicitly identify caste as the foundation of that oppression and examine how it shapes every aspect of social life, including gender relations. The struggle is not an abstract battle between the rich and the poor; it is a confrontation with caste power itself.
Mainstream Telugu cinema, particularly its big-star vehicles, has often displayed discomfort in explicitly naming caste oppression. A telling example is Narappa, the Telugu remake of Asuran. While the Tamil original clearly establishes caste as the foundation of the conflict between the Dalit family and the dominant-caste antagonist, the remake diluted that political edge into a generic rich-versus-poor narrative. Peddi suffers from a similar problem. It adopts the visual and emotional language of anti-caste cinema, while stripping away much of its political specificity.
The irony is that while the film borrows heavily from filmmakers like Mari Selvaraj, it ignores one of the most important aspects of their work: their commitment to portraying women as individuals with agency and dignity.
Mari Selvaraj once questioned the very culture of cinema that celebrates a lone woman dancing before dozens of men. “When a man and woman dance together, it is called romance. When groups of men and women dance, it is a celebration. But when one woman alone dances for dozens of men, what culture does that represent?” he asked. His critique was aimed at the long-standing tendency of mainstream cinema to reduce women to objects for the male gaze.
Yet Peddi embraces precisely the kind of representation that Selvaraj critiques. The film features and was extensively marketed through an objectifying dance sequence featuring Shruti Haasan and Janhvi Kapoor, performing before a crowd of intoxicated men. The sequence adds little to the narrative and reinforces the very objectification that the film’s defenders insist was never intended.
Across the film, in fact, Janhvi Kapoor’s Achiyamma is reduced to a decorative presence. The camera repeatedly sexualises her, framing her body as spectacle rather than treating her as a fully realised character. Her role contributes little to the narrative beyond serving the hero’s emotional and visual needs.
In his interviews, Buchi Babu has also defended such “item songs” as a necessary element of commercial cinema, arguing that they cater to a specific section of the audience. In a talk with journalist Prema before the film’s release, the director was asked whether commercial films really need such songs.
“They say cinema is a business. You have a phone in your hand, you have many options for entertainment. But an auto driver sitting in a rickshaw stand in Pithapuram doesn’t have as many options. For him, cinema is his only entertainment. There is a separate audience [for item songs],” he said.
Comparing films to a meal with multiple dishes, Buchi Babu added, “Films must be made in a way that appeals to everyone. Some people may not like item songs. If we go to someone’s house for a meal, they may serve 10 kinds of sweets and 20 kinds of curries. That doesn’t mean you have to eat everything. Everyone is meant to eat what they like. Similarly, item songs are meant to cater to one section of people.”
But this explanation reveals another contradiction in the film’s politics. The assumption that objectifying portrayals of women are necessary to satisfy the tastes of “mass” audiences often places the burden of regressive gender politics on the very communities whose stories these films claim to represent.
Peddi wants to tell a story about the dignity and humanity of an oppressed community, but repeatedly falls back on the idea that men from these communities either need or naturally relate to such portrayals of women.
It is the same contradiction visible in the film’s treatment of romance.
Peddi’s pursuit of Achiyamma involves stalking, coercion, and forced physical advances. At one point, he violates her consent under the guise of expressing love. But rather than interrogating this behaviour, the film attempts to justify it by arguing that Peddi’s social background leaves him incapable of understanding conventional courtship.
So instead of exploring how caste oppression shapes a person’s life while still holding them accountable for their actions, Peddi appears to excuse problematic behaviour through caste victimhood. The result is a deeply uncomfortable message that oppression can somehow be invoked to rationalise the violation of a woman’s autonomy.
The contradiction becomes impossible to ignore later in the film. When villains target Achiyamma through public humiliation by stripping her in public, Peddi is positioned as her protector. A similar moment appears in Pa Ranjith’s Kaala, but with a radically different approach. When a police officer forcibly removes a woman’s clothing, the scene does not center male heroism or female shame. Instead of desperately trying to cover herself, the enraged woman picks up a lathi and strikes back at the policeman. It is a revolutionary inversion of a familiar cinematic trope. It shows that a woman’s humiliation does not exist merely to awaken male rage, her anger belongs to her.
Buchi Babu’s apology acknowledges audience discomfort and promises corrections. But the criticism directed at Peddi cannot be resolved merely by trimming a few scenes. The film’s shortcomings stem from a more fundamental misunderstanding of the politics it seeks to emulate.
Peddi borrows liberally from Tamil anti-caste cinema, reproducing its themes, imagery, and emotional beats. What it fails to borrow is the ideological clarity that gives those films their power. Filmmakers like Mari Selvaraj and Pa Ranjith understand that caste oppression and patriarchy are intertwined systems. Their politics demand dignity for oppressed communities, which include women.
Peddi adopts the language of resistance while reproducing many of the prejudices that anti-caste cinema seeks to challenge. In doing so, it reveals the limits of simply copying the form of political cinema without understanding the politics that lie beneath it.
Views expressed are the author’s own.