Ram Teri Ganga Maili is a 1985Bollywood film directed by actor-director Raj Kapoor. The movie starsMandakini and Rajiv Kapoor, son of Raj Kapoor. It was Raj Kapoor's last film. The film was the highest grossing Hindi film of 1985. The music directorRavindra Jain received a Filmfare Award for this film. The film became very controversial because of Mandakini's bold scenes of breastfeeding and bathing in a transparent saree, which wasn't something the conservative Indian Censor Board allowed then. Yet, it had a U age rating, which was later amended to U/A. The Film is included in the All-time blockbusters list ofHindi Cinema. It was certified Diamond Jubilee in Mumbai and Golden Jubilee in other Major cities. At the Box-office it collected approx. Rs. 14 crore net with a distributor share of around 8 crore. It is also the Top grossing film of the 80s decade along with Maine Pyar kiya.
Plot
Ganga lives in Gangotri with her brother, Karam. One day she comes to the assistance of a young man, Narendra Sahay, who has come with a group of Calcutta-based college students to study the source of the holy river Ganga and to get some holy water for his paternal grandmother, who uses a wheelchair. Both are attracted to each other, and on the next Puran Mashi get married, and spend the night together. Narendra leaves but promises Ganga that he will be back soon. Months go by, but he does not return. She gives birth to a son, and as soon as she can, she starts her journey to Alipore, Calcutta, to confront Narendra and ensure a better future for their son. At Rishikesh, she is exploited by two women and a man from whom she escapes and takes shelter in a crematorium. Then at Banaras, she is molested by a Pandit, rescued by the police and given a ticket to Calcutta. When she alights en route to get water for her baby, the train leaves, and she falls into the clutches of Manilal who feigns blindness and lures her to a brothel near Banaras, where she is forced to stay so that she can provide for her son. It is here that she is introduced to a powerful politician, Bhagwat Choudhary, who pays a hefty sum and asks Manilal to bring Ganga to Calcutta where he intends to keep her as his and Jeeva Sahay's mistress. What Ganga does not know is that Bhagwat's daughter, Radha, is Narendra's bride-to-be; that Jeeva is none other than Narendra's father, and that soon she is asked to perform on her husband's wedding. It creates a scene when Naren recognises that the girl dancing in the veil is none other than Ganga. He stops the marriage saying that he is already married but his family asks him to marry Radha and not that "polluted" girl. However, he disagrees and leaves his house with Ganga and his child.
According to Philip Lutgendorf, the movie is an allegory that "synthesizes classical and mythic narrative, soft-core political and social commentary. The narrative recapitulates the Abhijñānaśākuntalam story that first appeared in the epic Mahabharata and then was reworked, some six hundred years later, by the poet Kalidasa." The final song sequence "Ek Radha ek Meera" brings Raj Kapoor's personal experiences with filmdom and reality. This song sequence is the climax of the plot where the bride-to-be is face-to-face with the other "saut", the culturally "polluted" dancer who has made that journey from the pure source of the Himalayas to the ever-flowing and ever-absorbing Ganges with all of the human impurities. It also differentiates between the love of Radha and Meera and reconnects the movie back to the Krishna Leelas. The movie was a hit, and it earned Mandakini a Filmfare nomination as Best Actress. The film also caused a stir because of two scenes: one in which Mandakini bathes under a waterfall wearing only a flimsy white saree through which her breasts are clearly visible and another in which she is shown breast-feeding a child. Some critics claimed that the scenes were vulgar and exploitative, and were used to get around the Censor Board's stringent rules against nudity. Kapoor defended the inclusion of the scenes stating that they were tasteful.
