General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Aashirwad (आशीर्वाद)

Aashirwad (आशीर्वाद; also known as The Blessing) is a 1968 Hindi-language drama film directed, co-produced, and edited by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, starring Ashok Kumar as Shivnath "Joggi Thakur" Choudhary, a poet who breaks with his harsh landowner wife and later blesses his estranged daughter at her wedding without revealing that he is her father¹^•². The film won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi and brought Ashok Kumar both the National Award and the Filmfare Award for Best Actor³.

Key fact	Detail
Year and language	1968, Hindi, color, 35 mm¹^•⁴
Director and producers	Hrishikesh Mukherjee (director, story, screenplay, editor); produced with N.C. Sippy for Film Enterprises, Bombay¹
Lead cast	Ashok Kumar (Shivnath "Joggi Thakur" Choudhary), Sanjeev Kumar (Doctor Biren), Sumita Sanyal (Neena "Bittu" S. Choudhary), Veena (Leela S. Choudhary)²
Music	Vasant Desai; lyrics and dialogue by Gulzar, co-lyricist Harindranath Chattopadhyay¹
Runtime	146 minutes, 15 reels; censor certificate Bombay/55993 dated 24 December 1968⁴
National awards (1968)	Best Feature Film in Hindi (Mukherjee, Sippy); Best Actor, Bharat Award (Ashok Kumar)³
Filmfare Best Actor	Ashok Kumar, dated 1970 by the Times of India awards listing and 1969 by the Ministry of External Affairs journal India Perspectives⁵^•⁶

Spoilers

Plot

Shivnath Choudhary lives comfortably in Chandanpur with his wife Leela and their eight-year-old daughter Neena. He mixes freely with the village's poorer folk, to his wife's annoyance⁹. Leela, an iron-fisted landowner, extorts taxes from the local Harijan (former term for Dalits, oppressed 'untouchable' castes) villagers and threatens to burn their huts; Shivnath, a poet who learns the dhol from the Harijan musician Baiju Dholakia and is called Jogi Thakur by the villagers, refuses to respect caste boundaries⁴. When he steals money from Leela's coffers to help the poor, she has the huts burned and forbids him to see their daughter, and he leaves home⁹.

In Mumbai he entertains children in a park with the song "Rail Gaadi". After the death of a poor girl he has befriended, he returns to Chandanpur, kills the estate's chief accountant to protect an abducted girl from assault, and truthfully confesses in court, receiving a jail sentence⁸. In prison he tends the garden, writes poems, and wins the friendship of the jail doctor, Biren, who turns out to be the fiancé of the now-grown Neena⁸. Pardoned for good behavior but knowing his daughter hates criminals, he hides his face, joins the beggars gathered for the wedding feast, and gives her his blessing unrecognized. He collapses on the road outside, is recognized, and dies as his daughter reaches him⁸. A contemporary review noted the story's kinship with Rabindranath Tagore's short story Kabuliwala, previously filmed with Balraj Sahni¹⁰.

Production

Mukherjee wrote the story and screenplay himself, with Gulzar writing the dialogue and Anil Ghosh credited as associate writer on story and screenplay². The cinematographer was T. B. Seetaram and the art director Ajit Banerjee⁴. Mukherjee later described the film's origin as a retort to Ashok Kumar, who teased him for having cast him only in character roles and never as a hero; Mukherjee told him "the time had come for the buddha to play hero"⁷. The film was dedicated to B. N. Sircar, founder of the New Theatres studio where Mukherjee had begun his career in the 1940s, and to the filmmaker V. Shantaram⁷.

Sources disagree on the release date: Moviebuff records a wide theatrical release in India on 5 March 1968, while the Times of India lists 1 August 1968⁸^•⁵.

Music

Vasant Desai composed the score, using folk forms throughout, with lyrics by Gulzar and Harindranath Chattopadhyay¹¹^•¹. The nine-song soundtrack, recorded for HMV and later issued by Saregama, includes "Rail Gaadi" and "Naav Chali" sung by Ashok Kumar himself, "Ik Tha Bachpan" and "Jhir Jhir Barse" by Lata Mangeshkar, "Jeevan Se Lambe Hain Bandhu" by Manna Dey, and "Saaf Karo Insaaf Karo" by Asha Bhosle, Hemlata, and Ashok Kumar¹^•¹².

Ashok Kumar, who had sung his own songs in the 1930s and 1940s but had restricted himself to acting after playback singing became prevalent, returned to playback singing here with five songs¹⁰^•⁷. Chattopadhyay also debuted as a playback singer and lyricist with this film⁷.

"Rail Gaadi" and Hindi film rap. Ashok Kumar's spoken-word recitation of Harindranath Chattopadhyay's poem "Rail Gaadi", performed to a group of children in a park, is widely considered the first rap song in Hindi films; Vasant Desai's accompaniment mimics the sound of a coal train engine¹³. The Tuli Research Centre describes it as India's earliest rap-like cinematic composition, using rhythmic spoken delivery with minimal instrumental accompaniment¹⁴.

Awards and reception

At the 16th National Film Awards (for 1968), the film won Best Feature Film in Hindi, credited to Hrishikesh Mukherjee and N.C. Sippy, and Ashok Kumar won the Best Actor award, the Bharat Award³. The National Film Archive of India's catalog for that awards year calls his work in the film "one of his finest performances"¹⁵. He also received the Filmfare Best Actor Award for the role; the Times of India dates it to 1970 while the Ministry of External Affairs' India Perspectives gives 1969⁵^•⁶. Dinesh Raheja, writing in Rediff, credited Mukherjee with daring to build the film around Ashok Kumar when the actor was 55 and had long been playing character roles, and judged that the film "ultimately rests on Ashok Kumar's hunched shoulders"¹⁰.

The film has since been released on DVD by Shemaroo and Eagle Home Video, and a full print is available on YouTube¹⁶^•¹⁷. As of 2025 it is not available on any Indian streaming service; it previously streamed on Sony Liv (December 2018 to September 2020) and MX Player (October 2020 to January 2021)¹⁸.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Indian films (individual works) › Hindi films before 1970

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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