...India.
India became independent of British rule in 1947
...aggression.
As an additional touch her surname is Singh which means that she belongs to the warrior caste of Kshatriyas. Another message of progressiveness that this films tries to project is by showing all the levels of the caste hierarchy interacting to the extent of marital alignments. Vishal is an Agnihotri (a Brahmin subcaste), Amar Saxena is a Kayasth (a subcaste just below Kshatriyas), Jindal is a Baniya (trader caste.)
...mangalsutra.
A particular kind of pendant on a string worn only by married North Indian women
...conservatism.
The mythological film was an important genre in Hindi cinema in its early years. This early preoccupation with mythology and religious themes was a simple corollary of the way in which cinema in India evolved from and continued to be closely related to folk theatre. In fact as late as 1975 Jai Santoshi Maa became one of the largest grossing films ever.
...love.
This is achieved by naming her Radha and her husband Shamoo. Shamoo is another name for Lord Krishna. Radha love for Lord Krishna has been portrayed in folk forms as perfect love and has been interpreted as the soul's yearning for the divine
...panditah''
I am not very sure of the original source but this shloka is quoted in numerous Sanskrit texts
...him.
There is an interesting Oedipal subtext to the intense scenes which take place between Nargis and Sunil Dutt. Sunil Dutt plays her son but in actuality he was her husband. In fact they fell in love during the filming of this film. This fact is a well known part of popular mythology and has a definite impact on any viewing of the film by any Indian since he would have grown up with the Nargis-Sunil Dutt pairing as part of the social context. This incestuous subtext is heightened by Birjoo's desire to get back her bangles (traditionally a symbol of marriage) and put them on her hands, a duty performed by a husband rather than a son
...Manushi
An Indian publication which deals with women's issues
...Kali.
Kali is the destructive form of Shakti or the female power which is a pre-Aryan concept in India. Kali's name means black and she is shown to be very dark with a sickle in her hand, tongue stained with blood and a garland of skulls around her neck
...dark
It is ironical that a Muslim should be the vehicle for the invocation of a Hindu goddess but that probably ties in with some rudimentary concept of cross communal solidarity which the film doesn't explore in any depth.
...kaajal
A form of black eyeliner
...1930s
Although there is no mention of an actual year, the reference to Swaraj (self rule) probably places this film in the post 1929 period because the Congress first made a demand for Purna Swaraj (total self-rule) in its 1929 session
...practices.'
Akerkar's footnote to this is: We borrow the understanding of discursive practice from Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, Verso, London, 1985. The concept of discursive practice affirms that every reality is constituted as an object of discourse i.e. as an object of articulation.

Amitabha Bagchi
Wed Dec 18 15:44:09 EST 1996