Jaladi Raja Rao

Jaladi Raja Rao was a lyricist, poet, and a scriptwriter in the Indian film industry. He worked predominantly in Telugu film industry. He was born on 9 August 1932 in Gudiwada, Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh in India. His family was a Mala caste family which comes under the Dalit category but converted to the Christianity religion later. His father was Jaladi Emmanuel who was a freedom fighter of India and had the membership of Krishna District Board, and his mother was Amrutamma.

He was their fourth son. He completed a course of S. S. L. C. in the Telugu language. His career started by working in schools of the District Board as a teacher of drawing. He got the chance to learn the slang of many different languages spoken in various areas of the state by working in a large number of districts. He gave resignation from his job while working in Veeraghattam, Srikakulam District for a fixed period in the year 1968.

Then he later migrated to the South Indian state Chennai and tried his hands in movies. He debuted into the film industry as a lyricist in the movie named “PalleSema” of 1976 through the song “ChurattakuJarutadhiSitukkuSitukku” whose tuning was done by K V Mahadevan. He has also written the lyrics of many patriotic and social songs of the Telugu films. There were Telugu words spoken in various regions of the Andhra Pradesh state in his songs.

Since he had a Dalit background, his most of the songs were about the social issues like poverty and related to life in a village. He wrote more than 1500 songs during his lifetime and worked in more than 270 films. He also had a keen interest in writing books. Two of his books are Viswamohini and Kakulamma. He was the writer of many plays such as Karumeghalu, Amarajeevi, Samadhi, and Tandri.

He received many awards during his lifetime. He got the award for Best Writer for his play named ‘KaruMeghalu’ in the Vijayawada Cultural Association. He was also honored with the ‘Kala Prapoorna’ award given by the Andhra University in 2008, Nandi award from the Andhra Pradesh government, ‘Kalasagar Award’ and ‘Kalasagar’ title for his song named ‘Punya Bhoomi NaaDesamNamonamami,’ and many more remarkable awards plus titles. He was a popular figure of the Indian cinema, but he died on 14 October 2011 in Vishakhapatnam.