A Hindi film called Mother India, made by a well-known director, Mehboob, released in 1958, became an unprecedented critical and popular hit of its time. Our parents took us to the theatre with the enthusiasm of missionaries escorting children to a moral science class. The Statesman reported that it almost won the Oscar for the best foreign film, losing to Federico Fellini's Nights of the Cabria by a solitary vote in the third round.
The narrative was constructed around the memories of an old woman, Radha, eponymous wife of Lord Krishna and therefore Mother of India, who had been abandoned by her depressed husband after he lost his arms in an accident. She had three sons: one drowned; the second was a good boy; the third, Birju, a rebel who grew up to become a dacoit. Impoverished Radha was a paragon of virtue, and spurned the attentions of a leering moneylender, Sukhilala, who demanded sex as interest on his loan. Whether this moneylender was a symbol of the World Bank or not was left unclear, but there were plenty of other allegories. In a climax that had father, mother, brother and sister India in tears, Mother India shot her dacoit-son Birju to save the honour of the village. It was an epic superhit, its peasant-patriotism and femme-nobility high on the approved agenda of a nation that still wanted to believe in itself.
Radha was played by Nargis, a Muslim. Jaipal, Kalyan Singh's slightly precocious son, thought this ridiculous. Mother Pakistan was a Muslim; how could Mother India be a Muslim as well? Could Muslims partition the motherland and still claim ownership of both nations? "You Muslims are greedy. You want everything. You take your own country, and then say India is your country as well."
"Yes," agreed Shyam Singh. "Muslims must make up their minds. They go to Pakistan when they like, they live in India when they want. We Hindus can't do that."