Doctor (1941)

Arnar Nath (P. Mullick), progressive son of an aristocratic family, becomes a doctor to address the cholera epidemic ravaging his ancestral village. He marries village girl Maya (Panna) against the wishes of his father Seeta Nath (Choudhury), causing a break with his family. Maya dies in childbirth and Arnar Nath agrees to let Dayal (A. Mullick), his father's secretary, adopt the infant son on condition that the boy's antecedents are kept secret. The boy Sornnath (Prakash) becomes a doctor and, fired by the idealist zeal of Arnar Nath but unaware that he is his father, decides to start a drugs factory in the village. The son falls in love with Shibani (Bharati) but this pits him against Seeta Nath, unaware he is his grandfather. The Mukherjee story invokes the standard reformist moral conflict between ancestry and vocation often used to subordinate ideals of progress and modernity (e.g. medicine) to 'tradition'.