Sri Sri - The Icon of the Progressive Movement

Sri Sri was the popular name of Srirangam Srinivasa Rao. He was acclaimed as ‘Maha kavi’, ‘poet of the poets’. He has heralded a new era in the history of Telugu poetic tradition with his innovative approach to the themes and style in modern Telugu poetry. His ‘Mahaprasthanam’, the Forward March is his magnum opus. He was the greatest representative poet of the progressive movement. Gurazada was his model not only in his use of spoken idiom but also in his zeal for social reform, social criticism and hope for a new world. He gave new direction to Telugu Poetry when it reached a decadent stage of romanticism. He too walked for some time along with the great Telugu romantics like Tilak, Krishna Sastry and Rayaprolu Subba Rao. Later on he shifted his stance from the innocence of common man to his struggle for existence. For the first time, the struggles of the farm worker and factory worker found their place in Telugu Poetry, in the verses of Sri Sri.

The first and foremost figure in the progressive movement is Sri Sri. The economic depression, the democratic reaction against fascism in the 1930s and the after effects of the Second World War have sown seeds for the progressive movement. Marxism which came as a reaction against capitalism has become life force to this movement. The militant peasant struggle of Telangana has given it the cultural impetus. Thus the movement began not only with a set of ideology but also with a social commitment dealing with the sad plight of the poor, the unfortunate and the neglected lot of the society. Sri Sri being the most popular, the other prominent poets of the movement are Ramadoss, Dasaradhi, Anisetti Subba Rao, Pattabhi, Tilak, Somasundar, Kaloji, Muddukrishna, Arudra and others. All these poets are primarily concerned with the hardships of the downtrodden and the exploitation of the poor by the rich.

The manifesto of the Indian progressive writers was released in England in 1930. Most of the poems in “Mahaprasthanam” came out in Journals in the thirties, though they were published in book form only in 1950. In the preface to the book Sri Sri said: “I responded to the fast changing world around me and spoke boldly about the inequities and injustices. But I did not know at that time that it was called by the name social realism. Nor did I know then that Marxism provided the philosophical impetus for the progressive movement.”

Sri Sri admitted that in his “Forward March” there were only progressive ideas and seeds of revolution. He showed only the ills of the society and the woes of the downtrodden. Perhaps they could only be cured by revolution. In his “Nava Kavita” (‘New poem’) Sri Sri himself talks about his modern poetry. He extolls the red colour as a symbol for struggle, the struggle of the working class. The progressive movement has taken the shape of a cultural weapon in the hands of these poets to awaken the sleeping workers, to stimulate them to action. In his “Forward March” he analyses the social injustice meted out to the unfortunate people of the society. The fiery moralist says:

“The strong with their might
made the weak their slaves
the rulers are the cannibals
yet regarded great in history
No place on earth is
without a battle field
The past is only
past soaked in blood or in tears.”

Sri Sri felt that the old metrical form was rather constricted for his poetic expression. So he chose new metrical forms following Gurazada and folk forms. His lines became so popular that people in Andhra sang them on public occasions.

Indian struggle for Independence was yet another great force that fired the imagination of Sri Sri. The patriotic fervour and the strong currents in his poetry were drawn from the Telugu romantic poetry. In his “Forward March” he gives expression to his convictions and beliefs. He believed in the possibilities for a new India.

He pronounced the birth of a new India, a new nation. For him it is a new world. In his own translation of “Forward March” he gives a stirring call:

“Bounce forward
Advance onward 
Announce the birth of another world
Hear ye not the ringing singing
Drum beats of another world.”

Sri Sri was influenced by Swinburne, James Joyce, W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas and Lewis Mac Neice. He was particularly fascinated by Edgar Allan Poe for his use of Onomatopoeia, (a figure of speech in which sound echoes sense). He translated all these poets into Telugu. He liked the poetry of the French poets too like Baudelaire, Breton and Villon and translated them into Telugu. He studied all the literary and artistic movements that took place in Europe between the two world wars. He was also influenced by ‘futurism’ and ‘cubism’. He was very successful in his experiments with ‘surrealism’ and ‘symbolism’. He experimented with non-sense verse also. His khadga Srushti is a master piece in non-sense verse. He has become a model for the younger poets who eagerly imitated him and all these rich experiments flourished and enriched the Telugu poetic tradition. So he is hailed as ‘Mahakavi’ and poetic meets inevitably quote Sri Sri as the trend setter who has given a new direction to modern Telugu poetry in the matters of thought, theme and style.