6 min readJul 30, 2026 08:06 AM IST
“I was a worshipper of nudity. I think it all started because of my intimacy with my mother, who was young, beautiful, and had the sharp features of a Pathaan woman. We often bathed together, and seeing her in the nude must have left a deep erotic impression on my mind. There is an excellent Urdu phrase, mugaddas uriyan (sacred nudity), which describes this perfectly. In my films, bathing scenes recur often.”
This is how Raj Kapoor described his fascination with the female body in his daughter Ritu Nanda’s book Raj Kapoor: The One and Only Showman. And if you have seen Raj’s last feature film, Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985), you can see this thought in action. Many films from Raj’s later career, like the one mentioned above, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Prem Rog, have not aged well, and with the younger generation that is now discovering the works of the director, it is nearly impossible to defend these films because honestly, even the generation that was the audience for this, couldn’t defend them as artistic pieces of cinema. Ram Teri Ganga Maili, which starred Raj’s youngest son Rajiv Kapoor, and the newcomer Mandakini, who, a few years later, would be remembered for being picturised in a thoughtless, crass manner in this film, and a rumoured affair with Dawood Ibrahim.
Rajiv Kapoor and Mandakini in Raj Kapoor’s last film Ram Teri Ganga Maili.
Raj Kapoor doesn’t grant any agency or escape to Ganga
Ram Teri Ganga Maili was the story of a woman named Ganga, played by Mandakini, who lives in the mountain town of Gangotri, and meets a ‘sheheri babu’ named Naren from Kolkata when he lands in her village. They fall in love, get married, she gets pregnant, and he leaves for the city with a promise of returning. If one were to hear this today, one would instantly say that the man is took advantage of a naive, innocent woman; and honestly, that is how he comes across in the film. Ganga, with an infant son, travels from Uttarakhand to Kolkata, and on the way, every person she runs into is an evil, opportunistic villain. It almost makes you wonder if Raj Kapoor was getting some kind of sadistic pleasure from pushing Ganga into a corner at every possible turn. He neither granted her any agency, nor allowed her an escape.
Mandakini, who was a newcomer, wasn’t a great actor. But neither was Rajiv. It was almost as if Raj cast Mandakini so his son wouldn’t draw all the criticism for poor acting. But once you start watching the film, you realise that this wasn’t a film that relied on strong lead actors. Raj focused on sexualising the lead woman, much like he did in Satyam Shivam Sundaram. Raj took it a step above when he decided to dress Mandakini up only in a sheer white cloth. The way she was dressed would invite a strike on Instagram in 2026.
Decades later, when Mandakini was asked about this particular, she told Mid-day that she had no regrets.
Mandakini in Ram Teri Ganga Maili.
It wasn’t just this scene under the waterfall, but many other scenes when Raj insists on placing the camera while she breastfeeds. It is the most natural thing, but the way the director presents it, with men watching her like a hawk, he turns into one of those men as he shoots those scenes.
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Raj Kapoor addressed the criticism of ‘scantily dressed Ganga’
The footfalls for Ram Teri Ganga Maili were high, as Raj and his team would have expected but there was enough criticism for the way he presented her. Addressing the criticism, he told daughter Ritu in the same book, “Although there was tremendous criticism of the so-called nudity, of the scantily dressed Ganga, it was the faith in the purity of the Ganga (the river), which sustained the faith in the innocence of Ganga (the character in the film). This is what held on and, despite all the criticism, the Ganga still flows.”
Ganga is shown as a helpless woman who is taken advantage of in every town she stops at. In Varanasi, she becomes the victim of a human trafficker and is mistreated repeatedly. One would wonder where Naren goes missing while Ganga is struggling through all of this, and the man, who is a full-grown adult, is shown getting beaten by his father, being locked up in his own house and being forced to marry another woman. He too, is shown as a helpless man who is cheated even by his parents.
Raj does not allow Ganga any grace until the last few seconds, and even then, the only bleak way that he gives her a happy ending is that he lets her live.
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The film constantly repeats that Ganga (the river and the character) is pure, and is violated as she finds her way through the many cities and towns to get to the ocean. He implies that she should be worshipped but, in the name of trying to show her as a deity, he repeatedly disrespects her. Of course, he blames society and the people who can’t treat her with dignity, but he doesn’t do that either.
