At a ceremony held at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi the film Kabuliwala, directed by Tapan Sinha, received the President’s gold medal for the best Indian feature film of 1956 on this day. The film was also nominated for the Golden Bear prize at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival and won the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury at the same event for its music, composed by Pandit Ravi Shankar.
Sinha’s film was based on Rabindranath Tagore’s moving short story by the same name. The story is about a Kabuliwala. A person from Kabul in Afghanistan was called a Kabuliwala, but it was a description generally for Afghans.
Kabuliwalas came to Calcutta in large numbers once. They came here to make a living by selling things and lending money. In the story, a Kabuliwala sees in a little Bengali girl his own little daughter, whom he has left behind at home. A beautiful friendship develops between the two. Rahamat, the Kabuliwala, becomes the symbol of the universal human spirit. Chhabi Biswas played Rahamat memorably in the film.