Indrani, a Bengali film made in 1958, begins with a poor man who has just discovered his new child is a girl. He names his baby girl Indrani and supplies her with quality education so that she might be self-dependent. Once she is grown, he sends her off to college where through a roommate she meets Sudarshan, a young man who is educated, yet unemployed. The two are attracted to each other almost immediately. After only a few encounters with Sudarshan, the two arrange to get married. Because of their opposing castes(social classes), their families are greatly offended at their doing so. It is hard for them to live with Sudarshan's family(after marriage, the women would come live with the husband's family), so they decide to rent/buy(?) a small house to live in together. Being the independent woman she is, Indrani wants to support the couple financially. She becomes highly esteemed in her work while Sudarshan loses respect for himself because he has little to do and is seen as another person riding on Indrani's work. The couple pulls apart and it is not long before Sudarshan simply leaves. Indrani continues in her work, supposing he is just jesting and will come back soon, while Sudarshan joins an old man in an effort to educate and help small rural communities. When Sudarshan's work appears in the newspaper, Indrani is impressed and leaves behind her job and everything she has to go and reunite with him. At first, Sudarshan is confused and doesn't want anything to do with her, but after a fire in the village he realizes that he needs her and the two are reunited.
In their marriage, both Indrani and Sudarshan experiment with living by their own independence and both find that they need one another. Indrani in particular tries to be "alpha" and ends up failing. The movie puts a negative light on this but it also negatively portrays the other extreme. At the beginning of the movie, Indrani's father is showing a friend an article he wrote about how women need to return to their traditional role. The father is repulsive in his person and portrayal of the article, casting a bad, and even ridiculous light on the idea. Furthermore, at the end of the film, Indrani and Sudarshan come together as equals to rebuild as one. Throughout the movie their relationship and other subtle uses of humor and dialogue point to socialism.
Even within the music in the film, some socialism is expressed. In the song "break, break, break" one line goes,"break the barriers with hands strong as lightning." The entire song is focused around breaking rocks, their work. Even so, it is a metaphor for how they want to break social barriers. In helping the people in those small communities and even in marrying Indrani, a woman of a different caste, Sudarshan himself is breaking those barriers on a personal level.
Another example of how socialism is expressed is when Indrani hears what Sudarshan is doing to help the people in Shalboni. People in her workplace scoff at what he is doing because they don't think him capable of it. They believe the news to be bogus and untrue. She becomes angry with them and tells them Sudarshan is doing the impossible, something they could never do. Then she leaves abruptly, forfeiting her job to go to Shalboni and help Sudarshan. In leaving those people of a high caste and going to the low caste of the people of the villages of Shalboni, she shows an indifference to the caste system and pushes towards equality.
Overall, the film seems to push for a world in which people work, but not for their own glory, for the well being of the community. It also pushes equality between all people and seems to go against gender roles or social classes. These features are part of socialism, the main ideology behind this film.
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