The story was absurd and the distance from reality was of solar proportions. Its abuse of history was vulgar. The early part of the movie is set Hyderabad’s old Adilabad district, populated in those days mostly by Gond Adivasis.
Hyderabad, being a princely state, had no British administrators. The only British officer serving in the Nizam’s government was the revenue member in the Executive Council. At about the time of the movie, it would have been W.V. Grigson ICS, a man who if anything loved the Gonds. He was the author of the masterful anthropological study The Maria Gonds of Bastar (1938), which is still the last word on them. The movie depicts a very cruel and despotic British rule where an English family shanghaies a young Gond girl to Delhi. The first part of the movie is about one of the heroes (NTR Jr.), who goes to the imperial capital to rescue her.
The Nizam’s administration was mostly Muslim. In 1941 a report on the Civil Service revealed that of the 1765 officers, 1268 were Muslims, 421 were Hindus and 121 others,
— source thewire.in | Mohan Guruswamy | 27/Jan/2023