The popular Tollywood actor, Pawan Kalyan makes his mark in Andhra Pradesh’s politics after a patient wait of ten years since the founding of his Jana Sena Party (JSP)! It makes him a rare, uncommon actor-turned-politician who stood by his principles and patiently waited for a decade before he experienced success as a politician. He floated his JSP in 2014 around the time of the bifurcation of the larger state of Andhra Pradesh into the Andhra and Telangana regions.
The JSP party did not contest the 2014 elections but openly supported the TDP and BJP parties, both contesting as pre-poll alliance partners. The Jana Sena Party’s first electoral participation was in the 2019 elections, but Pawan’s party did not bag the expected numbers. However, its six percent vote share is said to have impacted the Telugu Desam Party negatively resulting in narrow-margin defeats in many seats, thus giving an undue advantage to the YSR Congress party, which benefited from the vote-share split and won the 2019 elections.
In the rather long, ten-year wait, Pawan Kalyan preferred to stand by his core values and principles instead of giving in to the pressures of typical Indian politics, involving false promises of easy welfare without the hard work and participation of citizens. He has always said that the state should help in assisting/ supplementing the hard work of all citizens rather than making them fully dependent on too many welfare schemes, which do not require them to work. He has consistently refused to entertain political gimmicks based on caste or religion.
Pawan Kalyan is the younger brother of popular Tollywood actor, Chiranjeevi. The youngest of three brothers, Pawan, always stood out for his independent ideas and out-of-box thinking. He dropped out of college but did not allow it to dampen his curiosity for knowledge. He continued to educate himself on various subjects through plenty of reading and conversations. His voracious reading, respect for knowledgeable people, and reverence for values that define the deeper, true, human spirit, sets him apart from most formally educated citizens and most people in the cash-rich Telugu film industry. He remains an enigma and a big inspiration to his large fan base, with his ideas and lifestyle.
Pawan Kalyan is a martial arts “black belt” in Karate, yet another talent distinguishing him from the crowd. Kalyan Babu Konidela, popularly known as Pawan Kalyan was born in Andhra’s Bapatla town, about fifty kilometers from Guntur, in 1968. The name “Pawan” meaning, wind or a strong wind, was a title given to him during a martial arts presentation. His films among the Telugu audiences earned him his “power star” title.
Pawan’s views on human relationships, societal responsibilities, and rights, living standards of the common man, the needs of the less fortunate, and his understanding of modern-day challenges for young people and their aspirations, define the type of person and politician he is – a self-educated, sincere, compassionate person who believes on delivering his promises to the best of his capability while holding his constituents responsible for hard work and good civil behaviour. He has always stressed the need for unity among people and the diminishing of caste divisions, to elect the right government representatives for themselves.
True to his values, Pawan has demonstrated several times, his reluctance to play pure caste-based politics, stressing the need for Hindu society to come together for mutual understanding, cooperation, and basic human needs resulting in community prosperity. He has demonstrated through several talks, public meetings, and campaigns over the last ten years, his steadfast commitment to a non-divisive, non-casteist, united Hindu approach to solving societal issues via the election of principled politicians and citizen cooperation.
A practical example of such views was on full public display when he continued to downplay his “Kapu” caste card against the more dominant Kamma Naidu (also called Chowdary) and the Reddy caste. He proactively sought out a healthy partnership with Andhra’s TDP (Telugu Desam Party) founded and headed by the Kamma community. Yet another example of his “beyond-caste” actions is reflected in his decision to invite and work with a strong Kamma politician, Nadendla Manohar, as his party’s principal advisor.
Pawan Kalyan was among the first public figures to visit Chandrababu Naidu in prison after Naidu’s scandalous, secretive, extra-judicial midnight arrest by Jagan Reddy’s YSRCP, on trumped-up, unproven charges. Pawan courageously chastised Reddy for beyond-normal corruption in the state, Reddy’s petty vendetta politics, his divisive caste/religion-based tactics, and his total disregard for developmental projects. Through his ten years of political activism, PK has continued to consistently talk about setting caste aside, to effectively resolve the common man’s problems.
His core values, sincere spirituality based on his personal principles/ views on an ideal society and service to fellow humans, and his open and bold statements on caste division emphasizing the urgent need for all sections of Hindu society to come together, have caught the attention of some prominent BJP leaders as well as leaders like N Chandrababu Naidu of the TDP, the current chief minister of Andhra Pradesh.
Pawan Kalyan first experienced politics when his older brother and the popular Telugu film hero, Chiranjeevi, floated his political party in the erstwhile, united state of Andhra Pradesh including present-day Telangana, back in 2008. In the 2009 united Andhra elections (Andhra and Telangana before the 2014 bifurcation of the larger state), Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party, banked on the actor’s popular “hero of the masses” image and caste calculations relying on the almost twenty percent electorate of his BC, OBC and general category (OC/ Forward Caste) Kapu sub-castes, all classified under the larger “Kapu” caste umbrella. Chiranjeevi’s expectations of garnering votes from his fan base spread across the present-day Andhra and Telangana areas as well as pitting his caste card against the more dominant yet numerically smaller, forward-caste groups of the Kamma and Reddy communities – this strategy paid a few dividends, although the party fell miserably short of the numbers that Chiranjeevi had hoped for. His party won only 18 of the 294 assembly seats in the 2009 state elections and within two years thereafter in 2011, Chiranjeevi dissolved his party in favour of a political merger.
Quickly setting aside his bigger political ambitions in consideration of financial benefits and political favours from the Central Government of the day, Chiranjeevi disappointed all his fans, his community, and all the local leaders who contested elections in his party’s name, when he chose to merge his brand new Praja Rajyam Party with the Congress party, just two years after its electoral debut.
It has often been reported that Pawan Kalyan was unhappy with his older brother, Chiranjeevi’s style of campaigning, use of caste-based politics, his quick/ fly-by-night attitude towards politics and the public’s emotions, which resulted in his brother’s irresponsible decision to merge his party with the larger Congress party for financial and political gains. The brothers, both Tollywood stars, appear to have made up with each other in recent times but the Telugu people of both the Telugu states, have higher respect and admiration for Pawan Kalyan, his character, his values, and principles, which have enabled him to work hard towards the survival of his ten-year-old party, not disappointing the people that believed in his core values and his continued non-casteist attitude towards the people and politics. In the Telugu industry too, he has worked and succeeded on his terms, without playing the caste card, in an industry (both film and television) dominated by the Kamma community. His fan base is widespread across all castes, classes, and religions in Andhra and Telangana.
Pawan Kalyan lives a simpler, non-ostentatious life, in relative comparison to the lavish, loud, wealth-on-display, Bollywood-style lifestyles of most Tollywood stars in Hyderabad. Pawan Kalyan is related to the Telugu actor of the national blockbuster film ‘RRR’, Ram Charan (his brother Chiranjeevi’s son). Through his brother Chiranjeevi’s wife, he is also related to the Telugu actor, Allu Arjun of the famed “Pushpa” movie, a pan-Indian success. His simplicity is reflected in his wardrobe and dressing style, reflecting a stark difference between him and most other top Tollywood stars including members of his own family.
On the professional, non-political front, Pawan started his career with the 1996 film, ‘Akkada Ammayi, Ikkada Abbayi’. Most of his films have been successful at the box office. His list of films includes Gokulamlo Seetha, Suswagatham, Tholi Prema, Jalsa, Thammudu, Gabbar Singh, Attarintikki Daredi, and Bheemla Nayak.
Pawan Kalyan has been married three times and has been outspoken about his emotional struggles and his search for true love. His willingness to talk about his weaknesses/ vulnerabilities and his trials and errors in the search for love has earned him much admiration among both men and women. He married his second wife after a period of their live-in relationship. While some people criticized it, many others, admired his honesty and his willingness to discuss it openly. His current wife, Anna Lezhneva, is a Russian and they have been happily married for ten years now. Pawan’s fans applaud Anna for her interest in following all aspects of Indian culture and traditions.
Currently, Pawan’s Jana Sena Party is in an alliance with the TDP and the BJP in Andhra Pradesh, as a part of the NDA coalition. The coalition, guided and led by Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP, won a landslide victory in the recent 2024 elections, bagging an impressive 164 seats out of the total 175 state assembly seats, resulting in a massive blow to Jagan Reddy’s YSRCP government. The TDP-led NDA alliance also won 21 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats. Pawan’s fans were seen loudly cheering him on, at the June 12 oath-taking ceremony held near Vijayawada city, in which Pawan Kalyan was sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister with additional responsibilities for Panchayat Raj, Rural Development, Environment, and Forests, Science and Technology. Best Wishes to Andhra Pradesh’s new leadership team headed by Chief Minister, N Chandrababu Naidu and his Deputy Chief Minister, K Pawan Kalyan.
Shivani is a freelance writer from Vijayawada.
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