Allu Arjun: Decoding the Rise of an Indian Icon
Allu Arjun’s rise to the top of Telugu cinema, with monikers like ‘Icon Star’ and ‘Stylish Star’, is at the confluence of three Ps: the 'Pushpa' franchise, his Pan-Indian appeal, and his being the product of an illustrious lineage.
The most striking sequence in Pushpa 2: The Rule, which, at the time of writing this article, happens to be the second highest-grossing Indian film of all time, worldwide, occurs at Gangamma Jathara: a festival prominent in Tirupati and other Telugu-speaking regions. In it, actor and titular star Allu Arjun, adorned in a blue sari, dances in a rapturous trance in an attempt to appease the river goddess. In the long wake of the biggest success of his career, as well as the biggest controversy, a look back at Allu Arjun’s 2003 debut, Gangotri — named, incidentally, after the very same river’s origin — is revealing.
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In Gangotri, Allu Arjun plays a young man from humble origins in love with the local landlord’s daughter. In this too, there is a song in which Allu Arjun is cross-dressing — this time, for some low-brow humour — but listen to the lyrics that wink at his family’s legacy: “Mavayya di Mogalthuru, ma naanna di Palakollu” (My uncle is from Mogalthuru, my dad is from Palakollu). Arjun’s father, Allu Aravind, hails from Palakollu, and the uncle referred to here, is the biggest Telugu film star since NTR: Chiranjeevi.
To talk about Allu Arjun, then, is to talk about Telugu film stardom in the context of — and as a product of — lineage, as much as it is to talk about Pan-Indianness and Pushpa. We begin with Allu Ramalingaiah, one of the prominent “comedian” actors in Telugu cinema of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s; incidentally, Ramalingaiah was also a freedom fighter who was jailed during the Quit India movement by the British prior to entering films. In 1980, the young Chiranjeevi married his daughter, Surekha, and thereafter, Geetha Arts, the production company started by Allu Aravind, Allu Ramalingaiah’s son, went on to produce several of Chiranjeevi’s films as the latter ascended the throne to being Telugu cinema’s biggest star.
Chiranjeevi filled a void left by NTR who turned to politics after founding the Telugu Desam Party and becoming the chief minister in 1983. By the turn of the millennium, he would become the biggest Telugu film star. In 1996, Chiranjeevi’s younger brother Pawan Kalyan (who happens to be the current deputy chief minister of Andhra Pradesh) would make his debut in a 1996 remake of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1998) produced by Allu Aravind. Seven years later, Allu Arjun would be the next lead debut from the Konidela-Allu family, with Gangotri.
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“A few years after Arya (2004), I had bought a new car for ₹85 lakh — a sports car, what a car! I was sitting in the car and holding the steering wheel, and I sat there thinking — who are the people responsible for me being here? And the first name I thought of was Sukumar. Darling, if not for you [in tears, voice quivering], there is no me. There is no Arya. There is nothing,” said Arjun at a success meet for Pushpa: The Rise (2021).
Allu Arjun’s breakout role would come with Sukumar’s debut film Arya (2004), a romance in which he played a young man in love with a woman in a relationship with a toxic boyfriend. In it, he is persistent with his affections despite the woman’s lack of interest in him — perhaps to the point of harassment. And yet, Allu Arjun plays this with an endearing sincerity. His aim: to demonstrate that his love for her does not mean that he has to possess her. Arya’s success consolidated Allu Arjun’s on-screen image as “Bunny” — a sincere boy-next-door figure, the yearning underdog who will go to any length for the one he loves — even if it means risking his life to ensure that she gets married to her fiancé. Bunny (2005) and Happy (2006) would follow with his characters written in much the same mould.
The year 2007 saw Allu Arjun in Puri Jagannadh’s Desamuduru, a film in which his character’s persistence borders on the obnoxious and toxic (when the heroine who has taken a monastic vow of celibacy refuses his advances, he asks her why she can’t sleep with him if, after all, they’re dust and to dust they should return). But Desamuduru would also see Allu Arjun becoming the first Telugu film star to show off a six-pack; it would also be the film whose success would cross over beyond the Telugu states — to Kerala — leading to the moniker ‘Mallu Arjun’. Over the next decade, Arya 2 (Sukumar’s 2009 spiritual successor to Arya), Julayi (2012), Race Gurram (2014), and others would follow, consolidating his status as one of the leading stars in the Telugu industry.
Like Chiranjeevi in the ’80s and ’90s and Hrithik Roshan in the 2000s, Allu Arjun built a reputation for being something of an “all-round hero” — even if he, unlike them, often played the underdog. Here was someone who could dance fluidly and acrobatically, show off a sculpted body, and turn out great performances — and yet seemed to have none of the ego pervasive in stars of his calibre. The films didn’t wink at you or reference his star image. (This era would see him gain a reputation for dressing well — among his many monikers, one that has stuck: ‘Stylish Star’)
Vedam (2010) went a long way in cementing his reputation as an actor. Amidst a run of star-vehicles, Allu Arjun was content playing a character in a serious hyperlink drama — to not tower over the film’s ensemble. In the film, Allu Arjun plays “Cable Raju”, a chain-snatching slum-dweller who lives a double life — pretending to his high-society girlfriend that he belongs to the Jubilee Hills elite. It’s an affecting performance, his best alongside the Pushpa films with none of the “mass” pageantry of the latter.
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In 2021, coming off of the success of Trivikram Srinivas’s Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo (2020), Allu Arjun would reunite with Sukumar for Pushpa: The Rise. What is remarkable about Pushpa is that unlike most of the leading Telugu film stars, Allu Arjun doesn’t play himself (or rather, his star image). Instead, we saw him subsume himself into Sukumar’s world, rooted in southern Andhra Pradesh with its masala undergirded by class and caste politics. Pushpa Raj, much like Amitabh Bachchan in Deewaar (1975) and Chiranjeevi in Khaidi (1983), is shunned by antagonists who are higher on the class hierarchy than him; he walks with, as others have pointed out, a literal chip on his shoulder.
It is hard to deny that Pushpa being a recognisably “working-class hero”, is in many ways responsible for the film’s Pan-India success: In The Rise, he’s humiliated by a moneylender who he has borrowed money from, and when the latter gets his comeuppance, a country where a majority of the populace live in economic precarity cheered. Pushpa fits into scholar S.V. Srinivas’s characterisation of the “rowdy hero”: an “excessively masculine” subaltern protagonist characterised by his “propensity for enjoyment”, which is intended for the audience to vicariously partake in. What is undeniable is that it is a great performance (a National Award winning one, even).
In Pushpa 2: The Rule, when Pushpa is arm-twisted into uttering an apology to the antagonist, Bhanwar Singh Shekhawat, you can’t help but hang on to every facial tic of Allu Arjun — watch him go through a drunken swirl of emotions, before he utters the word. And then watch him in the scene that follows, when, as he’s driving off, he monologues from a mind distorted by his psychological wounds, much like a Shakespearean hero. A better, braver film would perhaps have the consequences also play out in an equally Shakespearean fashion; nonetheless, the performance exists, and the accolades are well-deserved. It is, however, impossible to speak about the film or the actor, without speaking about all that has transpired since the film’s release.
On 4 December 2024, a 35-year-old woman died and her 9-year-old son was hospitalised in a comatose state due to a stampede at Sandhya theatre in Hyderabad, which erupted when the actor arrived to watch a premiere show with fans. The chief minister of Telangana, Revanth Reddy, held Allu Arjun responsible for the tragedy, going as far as calling him “inhuman” — alleging that the actor lacked permission to attend the show due to security concerns and that he behaved irresponsibly, exacerbating the situation. Allu Arjun has since come out to state that the incident was an “unfortunate accident”, that certain facts have been misrepresented, and that no one person can be held responsible for the death. The actor was arrested, and is currently out on bail.
When a celebrity is accused, we inevitably find ourselves trying to reconcile the cognitive dissonance between the public image of the star and the portrait the allegations seem to be painting. Regardless of who you believe, the incident seems to be the consequence of a film culture that knows how to admire only through deification — manufacturing gods whose little movements ripple out to cause avalanches, and don’t the gods partake in cultivating this religion themselves? It is impossible to cleave film and fandom, when one engenders and nurtures the other. What we might have to come to terms with is that admiration, even when it is warranted by genuine talent, can be an instrument of tragedy.
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