''Jagriti'' () is a 1954 Indian

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

-language film directed by Satyen Bose. A remake of Bose's 1949 Bengali film ''Paribartan'', the film stars Rajkumar Gupta, Abhi Bhattacharya, and Ratan Kumar in the lead roles. The film won the Filmfare Award for Best Film at the 3rd Filmfare Awards in 1956. Bhattacharya received the

Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor The Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor is given by ''Filmfare'' as part of its annual Filmfare Awards for Hindi films, to recognise a male actor who has delivered an outstanding performance in a supporting role. Although the awards starte ...

for his outstanding performance in ''Jagriti'' at the same ceremony. ''Jagriti'' still considered one of the best children-centric films of India. The film was screened retrospectively on 14 August 2016 at the ''Independence Day Film Festival'' jointly presented by the Indian

Directorate of Film Festivals The Directorate of Film Festivals in India was an organisation that initiated and presented the International Film Festival of India, the National Film Awards and the Indian Panorama. Although the Directorate helped appoint members of the jury ...

and Ministry of Defense, commemorating the 70th Indian Independence Day.

Plot

The film is about a spoiled rich kid, Ajay (Rajkumar Gupta), who is sent away to a

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...

by his uncle. In the hostel, Ajay meets mischievous boys like him. They have a superintendent called "King Kong". Ajay then meets Shakti, a poor boy with a missing leg. Ajay befriends him. The days pass and the naughtiness of the boys is only increasing day by day. One day, a man named Shekhar becomes the new superintendent. He is a calm man who hardly loses his temper. When the results of an exam are out, most students fail. Shekhar then introduces a new scheme of learning where the children are given leniency. All the boys listen to Shekhar, barring Ajay. He starts doing the opposite of whatever Shekhar tells. Shakti tries his best to change him. One Day, Ajay kicks a boy in the stomach while playing a football match. Seeing this, Shekhar becomes furious, and tells everyone to boycott Ajay and suspends him. Hurt, Ajay decides to leave the hostel and run away. Shakti tries to persuade him to not leave. He starts going after Ajay on the road to stop him. A car hits Shakti and he is taken to the hospital. Later, Shakti passes away and Ajay realises that his stubbornness was the cause of Shakti's death. Many months later, Ajay is a changed boy who stands first in class thereby fulfilling his promise to Shekhar and Shakti. Shekhar decides to leave the hostel and go. He regrets boycotting Ajay and leaves. The film ends in a song sung by Shekhar as he leaves.

Cast

* Abhi Bhattacharya as Shekhar * Pranoti Ghosh * Bipin Gupta * Mumtaz Begum * Rajkumar Gupta as Ajay * Ratan Kumar as Shakti * Chandan Kumar * Dilip * Raja * Mohan Choti * Ghanshyam * Navneet * Girish * Padmakar (as Padmaker) * Nanda

Soundtrack

This movie is known for its classic patriotic songs, written by one of the greatest Indian poets and lyricists of all time, Kavi Pradeep, and set to music by

Hemant Kumar Hemanta Mukhopadhyay (16 June 1920 – 26 September 1989), known professionally as Hemanta Mukherjee and Hemant Kumar, was an Indian music director and a playback singer who primarily sang in Bengali and Hindi, along with several other India ...

Awards

National Film Awards The National Film Awards are awards for artistic and technical merit given for "Excellence within the Cinema of India, Indian film industry". Established in 1954, it has been administered, along with the International Film Festival of India ...

1954 Events January * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown–IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head ...

- National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi - Certificate of Merit

Remake

The Pakistani film '' Bedari'' had an identical plot and the songs, with replacement of some words, and music taken directly from ''Jagriti''.Gandhi replaced with Jinnah: The story of how an ode to India was plagarised in Pakistan
by Rudradeep Bhattacharjee. '' Scroll.in''. Ratan Kumar (Syed Nazir Ali), who had moved to Pakistan with his family, acted in Bedari also.Rattan Kuma
Profile, Selected Filmography
12 November 2011 When ''Bedari'' was released in Pakistan in 1956, it too made fabulous business in the first few weeks of exhibition. However, it dawned upon the Pakistani cinemagoers that they were watching a plagiarized film. There was a mass uproar that caused public demonstrations against exhibition of the plagiarized film. The Censor Board of Pakistan immediately put a ban on this film.''Paying plagiarised tribute to Quaid''
Sayed GB Shah Bokhari (Ex-Member Censor Board), on Dawn.com

References

External links

*
Jagriti
at ultraindia.com {{FilmfareAwardBestFilm 1954–1970 1954 films 1950s Hindi-language films Indian children's films Films scored by Hemant Kumar Filmfare Awards winners Films directed by Satyen Bose Indian black-and-white films Indian comedy-drama films 1954 comedy-drama films Indian children's drama films Films set in boarding schools Films about social class Films about poverty in India Hindi remakes of Bengali films