Farmers’ Angst Can Be Understood by Revisiting ‘Mother India’

With the image of the lady with the plough, Mehboob Khan gave the Indian woman farmer the respect she deserves.

In a country where more than 65 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture even today, it’s a shame that the contribution of one half of our citizenry has seldom been recognised. Their contribution is undermined in our textbooks, our folk songs and dances.

Women are largely perceived as performing the so-called “softer”, visually-pleasing tasks of picking crops such as tea, apples and cotton. (Try searching the internet using the keywords “Indian farmer” — 9 out of 10 images thrown up will be those of men.)

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A 2012 study by Nishi Slathia, Participation of Women in Agricultural Production showed that about 70 percent of farm work is performed by women. Women play a significant and crucial role in agricultural development – including sowing, transplanting, weeding, harvesting and threshing (grain), as well as in allied fields including livestock production, horticulture, post-harvesting operations, agro/social forestry, fishing, etc.

Studies have shown that despite women performing back-breaking labour in our fields, they are either paid no wages at all (where they are working in their family-owned fields), or very low wages.

Lack of education and skill training renders these women vulnerable; as a result they are underpaid and exploited, with their land holding (if at all they own any), being very small. They are our unsung heroes.

‘Mother India’ Gives Voice to Indian Working-Class Women

In such a scenario, it is relevant to point out how Mehboob Khan’s iconic poster for his film Mother India (1957) brought the image of the lady farmer to the fore in popular imagination. The film’s greatest strength lies in the fact that Radha represents the impoverished farm worker, a woman belonging to the lowest socio-economic strata of rural India. Never before had the Indian woman farmer been recognised, let alone honoured, in popular culture.

Radha’s struggles are real and timeless — a woman fighting to protect her honour and keep her children alive. Even today, in many parts of the country, an abandoned woman is deemed public property, with key decisions about her life being taken by complete strangers.

For such a disempowered woman, to be seen taking up the plough (as she is too poor to hire oxen), is to attribute to her the quality of physical strength – which was hitherto seen as an exclusively male attribute.

Radha was a precursor to Indian women who have made great strides in every field, having even joined combat divisions of the armed forces.

Lal Bahadur Shastri’s famous slogan “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan” needs to be reimagined to include women.

A Fitting Response to Racism

Farmer suicides continue even 70 years after Independence; yet we may take solace in the fact that our women farmers seldom give up. Instead, they stoically continue to work in our fields, feeding their children and ours, leading Radha’s harsh life, singing her song: “Duniya main hum aaye hain to jeena hi padega, Jeevan hai agar zeher to peena hi padega” (Since we have been born, we need to live; if life is poisonous, then poison we must consume).

By giving us the iconic, pan-Indian image of the lady with the plough, Mehboob Khan gave the Indian woman farmer the respect she deserves. It is said that when Khan set out to remake his own 1940 film Aurat, he was inspired to name it Mother India as a rebuke to American author Katherina Mayo’s deprecating book by the same name.

Mayo’s book was seen as racist and pro-imperialism, prompting Mahatma Gandhi to call the book “the report of a drain inspector sent out with the one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country”. Radha’s character of a virtuous, hard working woman, one who wields the plough and feeds the nation, was Mehboob Khan’s dignified response to the derogatory premise of Mayo’s book.

Bharat Mata — Every Indian Woman

In fact, the film’s title was an allegory for a newly independent nation trying to build itself from scratch, and it recognised the fact that women were an integral part of this nation building. Noble Radha, the sacrificing , ideal wife and mother, is as close as can be to the ascetic mother figure (Bharat Mata) of Abanindranath Tagore (1905). The idea behind the original image was to humanise the nation, an abstract concept, and to foster a sense of nationalism among Indians.

Radha is also close to the figure of the ‘Mother Goddess’ with the lion (Bharat Mata in popular calendar art), who can pick up a weapon when required, to defend her village, her community, and her nation.

Radha is the flesh-and-blood version of Bharat Mata, the embodiment of nobility, strength and selfless sacrifice — she is also ‘The Provider’ and ‘Protector’.

A truer depiction of the Indian woman is hard to find. Let us salute the hands that feed us.

(The author is a civil servant. She can be reached at @nirupamakotru. The views expressed in this article are her own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)