ISBN 978-81-925489-2-0 - ramniranjan jhunjhunwala college

From Sacrifice to Selfhood:
Representations of the Mother in Hindi Films
Sucharita Sarkar, Dept. of English, D.T.S.S College of Commerce
sarkarsucharita@gmail.com
The mother figure holds a central position in traditional Indian culture and consciousness. From epics to films,
the mother has been a construct of the others’ gaze, bearing the burden of society’s expectations of
‘motherhood’. Her identity as a nurturing, son-bearing, procreative power has been invested with sacredness;
while her identity as a woman has been effaced and erased: ‘glorification without empowerment’ (Krishnaraj
2010). This has led to an accretion of clichés of the ‘ideal mother’ and ‘good mother/ bad mother’ stereotypes in
the filmic discourse of the twentieth century: how mothers should be sacrificing, suffering and silent.
‘The mother cult has been, from the beginning, one of the strongest thematic strands in Indian cinema, ranging
from noble, self-sacrificing mothers to those who pamper their sons and persecute their daughters-inlaw….Thematically,
Mother India, made in 1957, is one of the most successful as well as one of the most
idealistic films in Indian terms’ (Gulzar et al 2003, p.70).
Mother India emblematized the mother as a metaphor for respectability and sacrifice. Gayatri Chatterjee quotes
a comment on how contemporary critics lauded the film as being about a mother ‘round whom revolves
everything that is sacred and glorious in our culture, tradition and civilization’(Chatterjee 2002, p.49). The
prescriptive theme-song of the film states:
‘Duniya mein hum aaye hain to jeena hi padega
Jeevan hai agar zahar to peena hi padega
Aurat hai who aurat jise duniya ki sharam hai
Sansaar mein bas laaj hi nari ka dharma hai
Zinda hai jo izzat se who, izzat se marega’.
Mehboob Khan visualised Nargis’s character as the Earth Mother, an extension of Sita, who is abandoned by
her husband and has to rear her sons on her own. Tilling the fields is a man’s role, the woman is forced to do
this because of circumstance, not voluntary choice. Yet her virtue and her values remain intact throughout her
struggle with deprivation and depravation. By shooting her womb-begotten son at the end to restore justice, she
becomes more – not less – of the ideal mother: mother not just of one wayward son, but mother of the entire
village, society, nation. The choice she makes is a difficult one – between maternal love and social duty – and
even though it is a gendered portrayal of nationalist ideology, the character rises above the helpless-motherstereotype
to become a hero: a change-agent.
148