Mother India

Mother India (Hindi: मदर इंडिया, Urdu: مدر انڈیا‎) is a 1957 Hindi film epic, written and directed by Mehboob Khan and starring Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Rajendra Kumar and Raaj Kumar. The film, a melodrama, is a remake of Mehboob Khan's earlier film, Aurat (1940). It is the story of a poverty-stricken village woman named Radha who, amid many other trials and tribulations, struggles to raise her sons and survive against an evil money-lender. Despite her hardship, she sets a goddess-like moral example of what it means to be an Indian woman, yet kills her own criminal son at the end for the greater moral good. She metaphorically represents India as a nation in the aftermath of independence.

The film ranks among the all-time Indian box office hits and has been described as "an all-time Indian blockbuster" and "perhaps India's most revered film". The film won the National Film Award for Third Best Feature Film in 1958. Mother India belongs to a small collection of films, including Kismet (1943), Mughal-e-Azam (1960), Sholay (1975) and Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994) which continue to be watched daily throughout India and are considered to be definitive Hindi cultural film classics. The film was India's first submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1958 and was chosen as one of the five nominations for the category.