Sagina Mahato

Sagina Mahato is a 1970 Bengali film. Produced by Shri J.K. Kapur and directed by Tapan Sinha, the film stars Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu. The film is based on the true story of the labour movement of 1942-43, told through with fictional characters, and the mock trial of Sagina Mahato, the trade union leader of a factory in Siliguri. It was entered into the 7th Moscow International Film Festival. The film was shot on locations in Kurseong, near Darjeeling. The film was remade as a Hindi film titled Sagina in 1974, by Sinha with the same leads, produced by the same producers team J.K. Kapur and Heman Ganguly, though this version wasn't successful.

Plot

This is story of a tea estate labour leader in the north eastern region of India during the British Raj. Sagina Mahato fights for the rights of the labourers and has the courage to face the tyranny of the British bosses. He is helped by a young communist Amal who comes to the place to upraise the poor and downtrodden masses. Amal, an outsider, turned Sagina as a leader and thus alienated him from the mass by elaborating, appropriating, codifying, approximating his social hierarchy. The story by Gour Kishor Ghosh (first published in Desh25:12, 18 January 1958, reveals the problems of vulgar vanguardism from the Radical Humanist standpoint.