About Srujana

Srujana

Srujana was a Telugu literary journal published from 1966 to 1992, founded in Warangal, Telangana, by the poet Varavara Rao and the Sahithee Mitrulu (Friends of Literature) circle he formed there. It began as a quarterly devoted to modern Telugu literature, became a monthly in 1970 as its popularity grew, and over twenty-six years published the work of young, local poets and writers. PEN International, in its statement on Rao, summarised the journal simply: from 1966 to 1992 he ran Srujana, a monthly journal focusing on modern Telugu literature.

Srujana's life traced the arc of Telugu revolutionary literature itself. It started without any outspoken philosophical commitment, became in effect the unofficial journal of the Revolutionary Writers' Association, Virasam, survived the proscription of several of its issues for sedition, and was kept alive through the Emergency years by Rao's wife Hemalatha as editor, printer and publisher while Rao was detained. When it ended in May 1992, it was succeeded in due course by Arunatara, the official Virasam journal; its complete run of some 200 issues has been preserved on DVD.

Founding in Warangal, 1966

Varavara Rao had conceived the idea of a journal as a forum for modern Telugu literature while teaching in Mahabubnagar district. In 1966 he founded, in Warangal, a group named Saahithee Mithrulu — Sahithee Mitrulu in another spelling — meaning Friends of Literature, and the group began bringing out Srujana from November 1966. Rao was by then based in Warangal, where he joined Chanda Kanthaiah Memorial College (CKM College) as a lecturer in Telugu and later became its principal; he had been born in Chinna Pendyala in Warangal district in 1940 and had taken his master's degree in Telugu literature at Osmania University in 1960.

At the start, Srujana was totally devoted to modern literature, without any outspoken commitment to a particular philosophical outlook. It appeared quarterly at first. Its purpose was literary: to give a platform to new writing, and above all to young, local poets, in a region whose writers had few outlets in the established Telugu journals.

Growth Into a Monthly

The journal's popularity changed its rhythm. Following wide popularity, Srujana became a monthly journal in 1970. That year was also a turning point for its circle: in 1970 Rao was instrumental in founding Virasam, the Revolutionary Writers' Association, inspired by the Naxalbari uprising, and in 1967 he had already helped form the Tirugubatu Kavulu, the Association of Rebel Poets, in Warangal. Srujana, without being an official organ, became the journal closest to that emerging revolutionary literary movement — Rao himself later called it an unofficial journal of Virasam.

Rao also compiled the anthology Tirugabadu (Rebel) in 1969, bringing together poets who stood in solidarity with the revolutionary Srikakulam movement, and Srujana's pages reflected the same ferment. A volume of Rao's editorials in Srujana was later published, indicating how central the journal's editorial voice was to his criticism.

Proscription and the Emergency

The journal's political turn brought the state down on it. Rao recalled that during 1972–74, six issues of Srujana were proscribed under sedition provisions. During the railway strike of May 1974, the journal published a poem by a railway worker, "Can jails run the rails", and an editorial under the same heading; that issue was banned. When Rao was detained under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act in October 1973, his wife Hemalatha took over responsibility for the journal as editor, printer and publisher, and she carried it until its end in May 1992.

During the Emergency, Hemalatha was arrested and prosecuted. She approached the High Court, which upheld the proscription; after the Emergency she was tried for sedition and given a two-year conviction, the court observing, as Rao recounts it, that it saw no repentance in her though she had three young daughters. Rao answered in verse, writing that if any day jails could run the rails he would repent for his writings. The episode made Srujana a byword for the risks of Telugu literary publishing in the 1970s.

Contents and Contributors

Srujana focused on publishing the works of young, local poets, and carried stories, poems and other literature from its circle. Rao, together with a group of Telugu writers, also periodically self-published stories, poems and other literature and sold them directly to booksellers — the same do-it-yourself publishing culture that sustained the journal itself.

The journal stood at the centre of Rao's own development as one of Telugu literature's leading critics. His book on the Telangana liberation struggle and the Telugu novel (1983) is considered a landmark of Marxist literary criticism in Telugu, and his criticism, like his poetry collections from Chali Negallu (1968) onwards, grew out of the milieu Srujana had created in Warangal. Writers of the Virasam circle, including figures such as Jwalamukhi, Nikhileswar, Nagna Muni and Cherabanda Raju, belonged to the same literary world the journal served.

The Final Years and Successor

Srujana continued until 1992 — a run of twenty-six years, unusual for a small Telugu literary journal produced outside the commercial publishing system. Its later years coincided with continued pressure on its founder: Rao faced a long series of cases, including the Secunderabad conspiracy case filed in 1974 that ended in acquittal in 1989, and periods of imprisonment through the 1970s and 1980s.

When Srujana ended, its role passed to Arunatara, which became the official journal of Virasam. In Rao's own account, Srujana had been the unofficial journal and Arunatara the official one — a formulation that captures Srujana's character: a journal born from a circle of friends of literature in Warangal that carried a literary movement before that movement had an official organ of its own.

Warangal as a Literary Centre

Srujana's Warangal base was part of its significance. Rao had worked in Siddipet, in New Delhi as a publication assistant with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and at Jadcherla in Mahabubnagar district, but he was rooted in Warangal and longed to work among the people there; the journal he founded was deliberately a product of that town rather than of Hyderabad or the coastal Andhra publishing centres. The Tirugubatu Kavulu, the rebel poets' association he helped form in Warangal in 1967, belonged to the same local scene, and the town became one of the homes of Telugu revolutionary writing.

For young poets in the region, Srujana offered something the metropolitan journals did not: an editor who taught Telugu literature at the local college, knew the writers personally, and was building a literary circle around the journal through the Sahithee Mitrulu group.

The Editor Behind the Journal

Rao edited Srujana while carrying on a full teaching career of about forty years, and he is considered one of the best critics in Telugu literature and a noted orator who addressed thousands of public gatherings. The journal's editorials were substantial enough to be collected later into a volume of his own, and his critical reputation — built on works such as his 1983 study of the Telangana liberation struggle and the Telugu novel — was formed in dialogue with the writing Srujana published.

That double role, teacher-editor, explains the journal's character: it was at once a classroom for young poets, a workshop for a new Telugu literature, and, increasingly through the 1970s, a public platform for the revolutionary writers' movement taking shape around its editor.

Preservation and Legacy

All 200 issues of Srujana have been made available in the form of a DVD, preserving the journal for a new generation of readers. That archive matters because the journal's print runs were small and several of its issues were banned; without the collected edition, much of the record of young Telugu poetry between 1966 and 1992 would be scattered or lost.

Srujana is remembered as the platform on which modern and then revolutionary Telugu literature found its Warangal base: a quarterly that became a monthly, a friends' circle journal that became a movement's unofficial voice, and a magazine whose editor's wife went to prison for publishing it. Few Indian little magazines of its era can show a comparable record of literary purpose sustained under comparable pressure.