Do Bigha Zameen
Do Bigha Zameen (1953) is a Hindi movie, directed by
Bengali director
Bimal Roy. The film has heavy socialist themes, and belongs to the parallel cinema tradition. The movie is notable for
Balraj Sahni's effective performance. Like other movies by Roy, art and commercial cinema are merged to produce a movie that is still looked upon as a benchmark.
The story revolves around a farmer, Shambhu (
Balraj Sahni), who has been hit badly by a
famine in
Bengal. The real reason of his sorrow is that the
Zamindar (land owner) wants to acquire his land on the pretext that Shambhu had taken some loan from him. Shambhu has to pay back the landlord and hence moves to the city to look for some other source of money.
The most famous scene from the movie is when Shambhu pushes himself to the limit pulling a
rickshaw. The rider on the rickshaw offers Shambhu more money to pull faster because he is chasing (probably) his girlfriend in another rickshaw. Shambhu can not resist the temptation, and he keeps smiling in anticipation of getting more money. However, his wealthy customer is not worried the least about the lower class' plight. In this race, rickshaw loses a wheel and Shambhu is injured.
However, through all these hardships Shambhu does not lose his righteousness, which is the moral of the movie. Shambhu's son steals money to help his father, only to be reproached by his father later. Shambhu's morality is the only thing that remains his own till the end.
Do Bigha Zameen won the Internation Prize at the
Cannes Film Festival. The movie won the first ever
Filmfare award in
1954. Bimal Roy won the filfare in the best director category. The movie also won the National Film Award of India.
The movie highlights the condition of poor farmers in pre-independence (and early post independence)
India. The society of the time was
agrarian and the farmers were poor. This poverty is mainly due to the fact that most farmers had very small land holdings and were uneducated. The farmers were gullible while the land owner, money lender, and the
Brahmins were skilled. Many people moved to the cities either in the anticipation of gaining fortunes, or because they could not survive the atrocities of power holders. The movie has a theme that can be found in works of notable Indian authors of the era like
Munshi Premchand or
Sarat Chandra Chaterjee.
The movie won a lot of acclaim when it was released, but due to its socialist theme and therefore its black and white portrayal of rich as arrogant and conceited, and the poor as moralistic (it departs from Sarat Chandra Chaterji's style in this regard, who portrayed the poor as unfortunate but not completely altrusitic or faultless) the movie is sometimes criticized in modern times. In addition one after the other misfortunes fall on Shambhu. But in the 1950's most movies in India had socialist themes and were quite popular through out the world especially in Russia, Greece and China. In such countries with a fledgling movie industry and a huge population of poor, movies like Do Bigha Zameen found a sympathetic view and were well received.
The name of the movie means "Two
Bigha of Land." Bigha is a unit of measuring land. Bigha varies from state to state. In Bengal, where the movie is based, 3 bigha is one acre (4,000 m²). Therefore, Shambhu owns only 2,700 m².
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