Mother India Movie Free Download

[Oswald Lemus]

Thetitle of the film was chosen to counter American author Katherine Mayo's 1927 polemical book Mother India, which vilified Indian culture. Mother India metaphorically represents India as a nation in the aftermath of its independence in 1947, and alludes to a strong sense of Indian nationalism and nation-building. Allusions to Hindu mythology are abundant in the film, and its lead character has been seen as a metonymic representation of an Indian woman who reflects high moral values and the concept of what it means to be a mother to society through self-sacrifice. While some authors treat Radha as the symbol of women's empowerment, others see her cast in female stereotypes. The film was shot in Mumbai's Mehboob Studios and in the villages of Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh. The music by Naushad introduced global music, including Western classical music and orchestra, to Hindi cinema.

The film was one of the most expensive Indian productions and earned the highest revenue for any Indian film at that time. Adjusted for inflation, Mother India still ranks among the all-time Indian box office hits. It was released in India amid fanfare in October 1957 and had several high-profile screenings, including one at the capital, New Delhi, attended by the country's president and prime minister. Mother India became a definitive cultural classic and is regarded as one of the best films in Indian cinema as well as being one of three Hindi-language films to be included on the list of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. The film won the All India Certificate of Merit for Best Feature Film, the Filmfare Best Film Award for 1957, and Nargis and Khan won the Best Actress and Best Director awards respectively. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, becoming the first Indian film to be ever nominated.

In 1957, the construction of an irrigation canal to the village is completed. Radha, considered to be the "mother" of the village, is asked to inaugurate the canal. She reminisces about her past when she was newly married.

While Shamu works to bring more of their rocky land into use, his arms are crushed by a boulder. Ashamed of his helplessness (being without arms) and humiliated by Sukhilala for living on the earnings of his wife, Shamu decides that he is of no use to his family and permanently leaves Radha and their three sons, walking to his probable death by starvation. Soon after, Radha's youngest son and her mother-in-law die. A severe storm and the resulting flood destroy houses in the village and ruin the harvest. Sukhilala offers to save Radha and her sons if she trades her body to him for food. Radha vehemently refuses his offer but also loses her infant to the atrocities of the storm. Although the villagers initially begin to evacuate the village, they decide to stay and rebuild it, persuaded by Radha.

Several years later, Radha's two surviving children, Birju and Ramu, are young men. Birju, embittered since childhood by the demands of Sukhilala, takes out his frustrations by pestering the village girls, especially Sukhilala's daughter, Rupa. Ramu, by contrast, has a calmer temperament and is married soon after. Birju's anger finally becomes dangerous, and after being provoked, he attacks Sukhilala and his daughter, stealing Radha's kangan (marriage bracelets) that were pawned with Sukhilala. He is chased out of the village and becomes a bandit. Radha promises Sukhilala that she will not let Birju cause harm to Sukhilala's family. On Rupa's wedding day, Birju returns with his gang of bandits to exact his revenge. He kills Sukhilala and kidnaps Rupa. When he tries to flee the village on his horse, Radha, his mother, shoots him. He dies in her arms. In 1957, Radha opens the gate of the canal, and its reddish water flows into the fields.

The title Mother India was inspired by American author Katherine Mayo's 1927 polemical book of the same name, in which she attacked Indian society, religion and culture.[4] Written against the Indian demands for self-rule and independence from British rule, the book pointed to the treatment of India's women, the untouchables, animals, dirt, and the character of its nationalistic politicians. Mayo singled out what she thought to be the rampant and fatally weakening sexuality of its males to be at the core of all problems, allegedly leading to masturbation, rape, homosexuality, prostitution, venereal diseases, and, particularly, premature sexual intercourse and maternity. The book created an outrage across India, and it was burned along with her effigy.[5] It was criticised by Mahatma Gandhi as a "report of a drain inspector sent out with the one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country to be reported upon".[6] The book prompted over fifty angry books and pamphlets to be published to highlight Mayo's errors and false perception of Indian society, which had become a powerful influence on the American people's view of India.[7]

Mehboob Khan had the idea for the film and the title as early as 1952, five years after India's independence; in October that year, he approached the import authorities of the Indian government to seek permission for importing raw stocks for the film.[d][8] In 1955, the ministries of External Affairs and Information-and-Broadcasting learned of the title of the forthcoming film and demanded that the director send them the script for review, suspicious that it was based on the book and thus a possible threat to the national interest.[9] The film team dispatched the script along with a two-page letter on 17 September 1955 saying:

There has been considerable confusion and misunderstanding in regard to our film production Mother India and Mayo's book. Not only are the two incompatible but totally different and indeed opposite. We have intentionally called our film Mother India, as a challenge to this book, in an attempt to evict from the minds of the people the scurrilous work that is Miss Mayo's book.[4]

The script of Aurat was devised by Wajahat Mirza, based upon a story by Babubhai Mehta.[14] For Mother India, it was reworked by Mirza and the young screenwriter S. Ali Raza. Apart from Mehboob Khan, Mirza and Raza, prominent screenwriters Aghajani Kashmeri, Zia Sarhadi, Akhtar Mirza, music director Naushad, assistant director Chimankant Desai and many others were consulted.[15] The dialogue, reworked by Mirza and Raza,[16] is a blend of Urdu,[1] vernacular Hindi, and its literary counterpart.[17] As Mirza and Raza were from the Urdu literary tradition, they wrote the dialogues in Urdu script.[1]

The script was intentionally written in a way that promoted the empowerment of women in Indian society (including the power to resist sexual advances) and the maintenance of a sense of moral dignity and purpose as individuals; this was contrary to what Mayo had claimed in her book. These themes, present in Aurat, were further developed with a strong sense of nationalism and nation-building, using characters personifying abstract qualities such as "beauty and goodness, wealth and power, poverty and exploitation, and community spirit".[18]

Before principal photography began, Nargis and Raaj Kumar familiarised themselves with farming practices such as ploughing the fields, reaping and sowing, and cotton picking.[29] The extras in the song and dance sequences of the film were from local dance groups in villages where the shooting took place instead of the usual ones from Mumbai.[29]

According to Indian film scholars Gokulsing and Dissanayake, while aspiring to traditional Hindu values, the character of Mother India also represents the changing role of the mother in Indian cinema and society in that the mother is not always subservient or dependent on her husband, refining the relationship to the male gender or patriarchal social structures.[47] The New Internationalist said in a 1999 review that Radha transforms from a submissive wife to an independent mother, thereby breaking female stereotypes in Hindi film.[48] In contrast, in a 2012 article in the newspaper The Hindu, author Tarini Sridharan has pointed out themes such as upholding female chastity, wifely devotion and saintly motherhood that reinforce gender stereotypes.[49] While the action of sacrificing motherhood to uphold a woman's dignity is termed as feminist by some, other authors see it as an attempt of a community woman to protect the patriarchal village structure, that esteems izzat (honour) of women.[49] A promotional pamphlet to introduce the social context of the film to western audiences described Indian women as being "an altar in India", and that Indians "measure the virtue of their race by the chastity of their women", and that "Indian mothers are the nucleus around which revolve the tradition and culture of ages."[50]

In a 2002 review in The New York Times, film critic Dave Kehr compares the film with Stella Dallas (1937) for the thematic similarity of the series of sacrifices made by the female lead, and with Gone with the Wind (1939) as an epic mirroring social upheavals.[51] Film critic Mark Cousins and author Tejaswini Ganti agree that the film is the Gone with the Wind of Indian cinema.[52]

Authors such as Eshun and Woods state that Radha and Ramu are the archetypal champions of virtue in battling hardship and injustice, while Birju is a mischievous child who becomes the anarchist whose uncontrollable rebellion destroys order.[69] Mishra has noted that although Radha upholds Dharma (the natural law or order) in the film, it is Birju who achieves identification from the spectators; in his rebellion lies the agenda of political action that will usher social change.[70] Mishra notes that due to such conflicting ideas, the film is very much conforming, and yet "defiantly subversive".[70]

In Mother India, a piece of Hindu myth-making directed by a Muslim socialist, Mehboob Khan, the Indian peasant women is idealised as a bride, mother, and producers of sons, as long-suffering, stoical, loving, redemptive, and conservatively wedded to the maintenance of the social status quo. But for Bad Birju, cast out from his mother's love, she becomes, as one critic mentioned, 'that image of an aggressive, treacherous, annihilating mother who haunts the fantasy of Indian males'.[71]

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