An eleven-year old watching the film would be incredibly moved, and would begin dreaming of a film based on the revolutionary. Thirty years after his death, and seven years after India became independent, the NTR starrer Aggi Ramudu (1954) would feature a burra katha (folk ballad) venerating Alluri Seetha Rama Raju. Having spent over 40 Lakhs to capture the guerilla warrior, they now had to ensure that his death meant the death of the Rampa Rebellion. The photo of Alluri was also meant to be demonstrative-and demonstration was critical to the British. He insinuates that what the officials are doing through the photo is “ demonstrating the final fate – as decreed by “divine providence” – of a notorious guerrilla leader…meant to apply to every guerrillero on the continent”. But the occasions are seldom formal ones of demonstration”. In his essay about the photograph of Che Guevara’s corpse which was released by the Bolivian officials after the revolutionary’s execution, John Berger notes “Thousands of photographs are taken of the dead and the massacred. This was followed by an exhibition of the body in the villages where the revolutionary had operated. The photos were ostensibly taken right after a public execution in 1924 in which he was tied to a tree and shot. To those not from the Telugu states, the only photos that exist of the adult Alluri Seetha Rama Raju might come as a grim, sobering surprise-they are of a thin twenty-seven year old, bullet-stricken, dead.
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