Satyakam

1969 160’ col Hindi d Hrishikesh Mukherjee pc Panchi Art sc Bimal Dutt st Narayan Sanyal’s novel dial Rajinder Singh Bedi lyr Kaifi Azmi c Jaywant Pathare m Laxmikant-Pyarelal lp Ashok Kumar, Dharmendra?, Sharmila Tagore?, Robi Ghosh, David, Sanjeev Kumar, Tarun Bose, Sapru, Rajen Haksar, Baby Sarika, Manmohan, Uma Dutt, Dina Pathak, Paul Mahendra, Kanu Roy, O.P. Kohli, Anand Mama, Abhimanyu Sharma

Nationalist melodrama using the metaphor of illegitimacy. When Satyapriya is born his mother dies (cf. Mukherjee’s Anupama, 1966). His father turns into a sanyasi (ascetic) and he is raised with strong nationalist feelings by his grandfather, a Sanskrit scholar. He grows up (Dharmendra) to become an engineer at the time of India’s independence. Employed by a princely state, he discovers that few of his nationalist-utopian dreams have been realised. The critique of the state of the nation is illustrated by the unfortunate Ranjana (Tagore) who has been raped by the prince and is pregnant. Satyapriya marries her and she gives birth to the child. The rest of the film concerns the aged grandfather’s refusal to accept a child born of sin and refers to a mythological tale from the Upanishads: Gautam accepted Jabala’s son, Satyakam, under similar circumstances.

Film