Nargis

Nargis (1929-1981), Indian film actress working in Hindi- and Urdu-language films. Born Fatima Rashid, she was the daughter of the actress, singer, and film director Jaddanbai. Her mother introduced her into films as a child actress under the name Baby Rani. Her early films as a teenager were directed by Mehboob Khan, who later—towards the end of her career—also directed Nargis in her best-known film, Bharat Mata (1957; Mother India). However the star and director with whom she was most closely associated was Raj Kapoor, for whom she acted in Barsaat (1949; Rain), followed by Awara (1951; The Vagabond), and Shri 420 (1955; Mister 420). These films feature the star duo in some of the most extraordinary love stories ever made in Indian cinema, shot with a lyrical and passionate energy only occasionally achieved in the romance genre. So associated with the work of the R. K. Studio did the pair become that the emblem which Kapoor later created, showing Nargis leaning on his arm in a balletic pose, became the studio’s logo.

In all the different genres in which she worked—from her early Arabian Nights-type fantasies, to Shakespearean tragedies (Romeo and Juliet, 1946), to costumed epics (Humayun, 1945), and in her best-known films with Kapoor—Nargis’s work often used her screen persona to authenticate and reinvigorate these genres for new audiences in post-independence India. Much of this is encompassed in her larger-than-life performance and role as Mother India, in a sweeping epic about modern industrialization where she literally fertilizes the earth with her son’s blood. Shortly after this film, she married its male lead Sunil Dutt (who played her son in the film), and retired. She remained a public figure even later, as an Indian National Congress-Indira Member of Parliament, from which platform she mounted a scathing attack on the director Satyajit Ray, saying that his films exported a poverty-stricken image of India.