औरत (1940) — मेहबूब ख़ान की पहली 'मदर इंडिया'

Mehboob Khan's Aurat (1940) — Sardar Akhtar's Radha, a peasant mother battling poverty and the predatory moneylender Sukhilala. Scored by Anil Biswas, it is the original of the story Mehboob remade in 1957 as Mother India.

At the heart of Mehboob Khan's Aurat (1940) is Radha — a peasant mother, played by Sardar Akhtar. Her husband Shamu (Arun Kumar Ahuja), broken by circumstance, abandons the family, and Radha alone raises her sons, tills the land, and battles the village's greedy moneylender, Sukhilala. Amid poverty, ruin and a predatory creditor she refuses to bend — and that refusal is the film's soul.

Mehboob Khan began Aurat just as Chimanlal Desai's Sagar Movietone merged with General Pictures to become National Studios. So the film started in Sagar's studios and was completed under the National Studios banner. The dialogue was by Wajahat Mirza and the cinematography by Faredoon Irani — the very team that would reassemble seventeen years later for Mother India.

The music of Aurat was composed by Anil Biswas with lyrics by Safdar 'Aah' — folk colour, devotion and homestead melodies flowing through this rural tale. In 1957 Mehboob Khan reshaped the same story as Mother India; Kanhaiyalal again played Sukhilala and Wajahat Mirza again wrote the dialogue. Aurat is thus the first draft of one of Indian cinema's grand legends.