Mother India- Remembering Masters
By -Sunanda Vashisht

This series on SAWF will showcase some great classics of Indian Cinema as we remember the masters and pay tribute to them for leaving us with this great legacy.

Film: Mother India Year: 1957 Director: Mehboob Khan Cast: Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Raj Kumar Music Director: Naushad Lyrics: Shakeel Badayuni Singers: Shamshad Begum, Mohd. Rafi

Sitting with a group of friends the other day I was discussing the current breed of Hindi movies. The discussion ranged from Parallel Hindi Cinema to Masala movies and of course latest movies like Lagaan and Asoka which walk the tightrope of being categorized as both art and commercial films. I have always been against this categorization of Parallel vs Commercial Cinema. According to me there can be only two categories of cinema. Good Cinema and bad cinema. I have always felt that good cinema will always be appreciated by classes and masses alike. While we were talking on these lines somebody asked me about any movie that I had seen in last ten years that reflected Indian Woman completely, her strengths and her failings equally.

I began to think and strangely enough I couldn't think of any such movie made recently. Most films had reflected women as cardboard figures. They could either be sari-clad sati-savitri or cigarette smoking vamp that was always breaking homes and had to be killed in the end. The Grey areas were hardly tackled by any significant movie that catered to the masses and classes alike. They do not make those kinds of movies now.

The only movie that has showcased the Indian Woman completely with her strength and emotions is a movie that was made more than forty years ago. Mehboob Khan's Mother India is really a great tribute to an Indian woman. The 1950's are now known as the "Golden Age" of the Hindi cinema due to the influx of talented writers, lyricists, actors, directors, and technicians. Mother India was the most successful and critically acclaimed film of that decade. It won a 1958 Oscar nomination for best foreign language film and won 1957 Film Fare Awards including the Best Actress, Best Cinematographer, Best Sound Recordist, Best Director and Best Film.

Mother India had a huge canvas and dealt with variety of social and emotional issues. It told the story of a newly independent nation-state on the brink of industrialization and social change, it also unfolded a family melodrama that reflects extreme tragedy and then miraculous renewal.

Nargis, one of India's great screen stars, plays Radha, a hardworking and strong-willed peasant woman. It tells the story of Radha from a young bride to an old woman, and the series of tribulations that she faces. Told mostly in flashback the film opens and closes with Mother India as an old woman on the fertile land, which she helped to create.

Radha's family lives in a village and her husband is a land tiller. Almost every peasant in that area owes money to the vicious moneylender who takes advantage of poor farmers and their ignorance. Radha's husband too owes money to the moneylender and in the process has to pawn most of his land to him. Radha isn't by any means a doormat wife who has no opinion. When the need arises she is ready to work as hard as her husband and till the land. In one such farming accident her husband is maimed and hence can't work in the farm anymore. Radha is shattered but still possesses great will to take care of her husband and her family. Her husband unable to lead a life of a invalid runs away from home and leaves Radha with the responsibility of raising her two children and living in the village where living was far more worse than dying.

She is at mercy of a malevolent moneylender who lusts after her. The rains destroy her crops and her home, she is pushed to near starvation where her mother-in-law and her youngest son die. Yet she rises to the occasion and lives with dignity and honor. Her older son grows into an obedient son while the younger grows into an angry young man full of vendetta against the moneylender.

In the film, the most electrifying moment comes at the end, when Nargis, picks up the gun and kills her own favorite son, Birju, who has become a dacoit and decides to take revenge against the moneylender at whose hands his mother has suffered all her life.

The most touching scene in the film is when Birju is on the horseback and is ready to kidnap moneylender's daughter. He almost challenges his mother's love for him and says, " You can't kill me. You are my mother" Nargis almost becomes larger than life character in this scene when she declares that she is a woman first and then shoots her own son. The pain of a mother who has killed her own son is depicted in the song immediately after the scene where we see Nargis singing-
o mere laal aaja , tujhko gale laga loon seene mein tujhko chuppa loon.

Everytime I watch this scene I am immediately moved to tears. This is one of the most fascinating and tragic scenes captured in the history of Indian Cinema.

Mother India is almost like an epic poem, an ode to the suffering image of the Indian woman as exemplified in the transformation of Nargis, from a beautiful bride, to the anguished wife, mother, tiller of the soil, a single woman whose body is desired by a greedy moneylender, and finally the savior of the village who goes against her innermost instincts to kill her son.

A great film with a great message and a film that easily enraptures our imagination. The music of the film is truly evergreen with people still singing songs like-
Duniya mein hum aaye hain to jeena hi padega
or
Nagri nagri dwaare dwaare dhoondoon re saaNwariya
The message in the film is very subtle and that is why I think Mother India withstood the test of time to be one of the great classics of our time.

Watch out this space as we take a trip down the memory lane and remember the great works by great masters.

Start a discussion on this article