Mehboob Khan’s “Mother India” is defined as a melodramatic film. A melodrama by definition gives precedence to plot over character and indeed Radha, the female protagonist, is depicted without flaw, making her a trope of the ideal Hindu wife and mother. Throughout the movie she makes sacrifices for her husband, her mother-in-law, her sons and ultimately for her village which largely signifies the sacrifices Indian women make for India. However the film was titled “Mother India” to counter the racist, imperialist book “Mother India” by Katherine Mayo, a book which robs Indian women of their agency. On the surface the film is compatible with Mayo’s book because one may think it reduces Radha to an ideal form rather than a human being and perpetuates the unrealistic demands placed upon Hindu women, however a deeper analysis of the film shows that it uses Radha as a vessel to carry and protect concepts fundamental to Hindu dharma such as izzat and lag, concepts which “The Texts of Mother India” claims are “the non-negotiable primacy of the eternal dharma in Indian culture” and can be used politically against the writings of Mayo and the Christian evangelists.
While Radha fulfills her duties as a wife, mother and citizen with godly perfection she is not presented as weak-willed or unconscious. We see Radha’s transition from a delicate, pristine, demure bride to a sweaty, dirty, toughened woman who works side by side with her husband in the field and also cooks, cleans and tends to the children at home. There is no doubt that the character Nargis depicts is industrious, competent, intelligent and unbreakable. Radha indeed acts for the preservation of her izzat but it is not a blind act. She does not believe in izzat for the sake of believing in izzat, she recognizes virtue and chastity as a thing fundamental to who she is, not as a woman but as a human being. She refuses to let her children eat the money lender’s food, she refuses to be seen as a simpering beautiful bride, she is the only member of the village not to abandon it after the storm; Radha is a woman full of pride. She sees her izzat not as a commodified chastity but as a spiritual devotion to herself, her husband, and to the culture she must bear for her people. To assume these are not conscious decisions she makes for herself, by herself is to rob Radha of her agency, an act that only we as the audience can do, not the makers of the film.
In this way Radha, as a Hindu woman, challenges the notion that Indian women are victims. Indeed Indian society was and is patriarchal and regressive for women but women are also active members of society. As written in “The Texts of Mother India” when the village girl is abducted by Birju “Mother India must... be re inscribed into her role as the law, as the renouncer who is also the upholder of dharma”; the film beautifully shows how complex Indian society is, a fact that Katherine Mayo seems to completely miss. While Radha sacrifices her son for the greater good the question arises if she was forced to sacrifice or willfully sacrificed. Mayo may argue that Radha was forced to kill her son and represents the quintessential Indian woman who must forgo all happiness for the sake of izzat. However one may also argue that Radha represents the sacrifice women make not for men but in spite of men. Various sources identify the protagonist Radha with Hindu goddesses such as Lakshmi or Kali thus we again see Radha not as a prisoner chained to the expectations placed upon her by Indian society but as transcendent of society, a goddess unaffected by the influences of mortal men. To her izzat does not symbolize sexual chastity but is the cornerstone of Hindu dharma, and Hindu dharma cannot be separated from the goddess herself and so it can be argued that ultimately Radha never sacrificed anything for the sake of anything or anything but herself.
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