The film takes up the story of the Telangana Rebellion, which escalated in the Indian princely state of Hyderabad between 1944 and 1946. At the center of this epic film adaptation of Krishan Chander's novel is the landless farmer Ramayya, who refuses to accept the prevailing conditions. Ramayya goes all the way from illiterate and starving day laborer to communist agitator and guerrilla fighter. Goutam Ghose's reappraisal of this chapter of Indian history was directly linked to the social grievances in India and specifically to the famine of 1974, which was similar in scale to that of 1943 in Hyderabad.