General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Roti (रोटी) (1942 film)

Roti (रोटी; English: Bread) is a 1942 Hindi-Urdu social film directed by Mehboob Khan and produced at National Studios in Bombay, known for its critique of capitalism through the contrast between an industrial city and a tribal community living outside the money economy.¹^•² It was the last film Mehboob Khan made before founding his own production company, and it was a hit at the box office.²

Key fact	Detail
Director / studio	Mehboob Khan; National Studios (Sagar National Studios Ltd.), Bombay¹^•³
Language / genre	Hindi-Urdu; social film³
Principal cast	Chandra Mohan (imposter Laxmidas), Sheikh Mukhtar (Balam), Sitara Devi (Kinari), Akhtaribai Faizabadi (Darling), Ashraf Khan (Jaggu)¹
Key crew	Story: R.S. Choudhary; screenplay and dialogues: Vajahat Mirza; music: Anil Biswas; cinematography: Faredoon A. Irani⁴
Release	Recorded as 01 January 1942 by Bollywood Hungama and Moviebuff, and as 25 August 1942 by Letterboxd and FMDb⁵^•⁶
Runtime	128 minutes per Cinemaazi; 2 hours 33 minutes per Moviebuff¹^•⁴
Box office	Hit²^•³

Spoilers

Plot

The film is set in an imaginary India in which social mobility does not exist and power is acquired through violence, repression, and death.² It is narrated by Jaggu (Ashraf Khan), a sadistic and manipulative commentator who mocks the poor for their starvation and destitution.¹

The imposture. Jaggu finds among the homeless a man who looks exactly like Laxmidas, the son of a wealthy woman who has been missing for fifteen years. Her business is co-owned by Tarachand, whose daughter Darling is intended to marry Laxmidas and unite the two halves of the firm. The homeless man (Chandra Mohan) agrees to impersonate Laxmidas to escape poverty.¹ After the old woman dies, the imposter locks Tarachand in a vault and absconds with gold and Darling.¹

The tribal world. A plane crash brings the pair among a tribal community led by Balam (Sheikh Mukhtar) and Kinari (Sitara Devi), who treat them royally and tend Laxmidas's injuries.¹⁰ The tribal farmers share out the harvest in an altruistic way, presented as the antithesis of the economic segregation Laxmidas embodies; Balam and Kinari have no concept of money and live connected to the earth and its rituals.²

The city. When Balam and Kinari come to the city to recover two bullocks Laxmidas took, they are told the animals have been sold and that they must work in a cotton mill, live in a shanty room, and save enough to buy them back.¹⁰ Balam finds the work humiliating, is led into theft, and wrecks a machine set to replace him; Kinari is nearly raped by a foreman at the mill.²

The ending. The ruined Laxmidas flees the city with his car full of gold and Darling, but they get lost in the desert and Darling perishes from thirst and starvation.¹ Balam and Kinari find Laxmidas and offer him water, but he refuses it, because accepting it would leave him indebted to Balam for life, and he chooses to die of thirst.¹^•²

Production context

Roti was made while Mehboob Khan (1906–1964) was working at National Studios, where he directed from 1940 to 1942 alongside Kardar.⁷ The film was his last before he established Mehboob Productions in 1942, a company formalized as a studio in 1952 and later the home of Mother India (1957).²^•⁷ The story came from R.S. Choudhary, the director under whom Mehboob had acted early in his career; Vajahat Mirza wrote the screenplay and dialogues, and the songs were written by Safdar Aah, Arzoo Lakhnavi, Behzad Lakhnavi, and Mirza.⁴^•⁸

The cast paired two established stars with a rare screen appearance by the ghazal singer Begum Akhtar, credited as Akhtaribai Faizabadi, who played Darling; a retrospective account notes she appeared in only five films in total.¹^•⁹

Themes and style

A capitalist allegory. The film condemns capitalism as an immoral and dehumanizing system in which the poor are crushed by greed, and it does so within a mainstream studio narrative.² It opens with a montage that moves from a plowed field and a wheat field to the rich eating, servants clearing leftovers, and food thrown into an alley where the poor fight over scraps, ending with a starving old man run over in the road clutching a scrap of roti.² A Hindi-language survey of socially significant Hindi cinema places Roti, with Mehboob's Aurat (1940), among the films that depicted the reality of hunger, and notes that it presented a society centered on labor while underlining the futility of a society centered on capital.¹¹

Expressionist cinematography. Faredoon A. Irani's cinematography is described as expressionist, and the film's visual style is said to have influenced later Hindi films including Kaghaaz Ke Phool and Awaara.² A Letterboxd synopsis likewise describes the film as inspired by German Expressionism and structured around two models of life: a millionaire possessed by money and power in an industrial civilization, and a tribal couple living in a primeval state of nature.⁶ The city's depiction as treacherous and corrupting, set against rural and traditional heartlands, found parallels in later Hindi melodramas of the 1940s and 1950s such as Do Bigha Zamin.²

Music

Anil Biswas composed the music, with Ashraf Khan, Akhtari Bai (Begum Akhtar), Sitara, and Anil Biswas himself as the singers; recorded songs include "Chaar Dinon Ki Jawaani", "Garibo Par Daya Kar Ke", "Phir Faasle Bahaar Aayi", and "Ulajh Gae Nainawaa", all with lyrics by Safdar Aah.⁴^•¹⁶ The Pakistan Film Magazine song list additionally credits Rajkumari as singer on several songs.³ The Mehboob Khan and Anil Biswas combination is described in a music-history account as having produced another success with Roti in 1942.¹²

Reception and legacy

Contemporary and later assessments differ in emphasis. A 1942 review in FilmIndia magazine called it a "morbid story with no entertainment".⁶ Later scholarship treats it as a singular film in Mehboob's oeuvre and a benchmark of his socialist framing, and argues that it needs reclaiming so that Mehboob's status as an auteur can be reconsidered in its rightful context.²^•¹³ A Cinemaazi feature on food inequality in film describes the film as opening with a shot of a farmer tilling fields and wheat swaying in the breeze, underlining a sacred harmony between peasants and land, and cites the film scholar Omar Ahmed on that reading.¹⁴ A film of the same title, directed by Manmohan Desai and starring Rajesh Khanna, was passed by the censor board in 1974; the Hindi Film Database notes that a film with the same title had also been passed in 1942.¹⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026