June 1st, as many might know and also might not know is celebrated world wide as World Milk Day. Yes, a day dedicated to Milk and its importance. World Milk Day isn’t any simple ritualistic day that has been made fancy, there’s a lot of history behind World Milk Day and how India is linked and most amazingly how a movie was made based on milk.
“Manthan” is a Shyam Benegal movie that was released back in 1976. The movie’s importance in Indian cinema is completely different and unique. The movie is based around India’s most successful revolution till date, “The White Revolution”. The movie is set in the backdrop of the revolution and shows a fictionalised story of how a young veterinary surgeon got together with a social worker to make milk accessible.
The movie shows how these two men and their team earned the trust of people of a small and poor village, whose only work was to rear cattle and sell milk, for which they were being horribly low amounts. These two men came in with an aim of establishing a co-operative society that will not only help farmers but also help increase the production. They were successful in defeating the caste system and worked together to bring the biggest change in India.
Dr. Verghese Kurien was the man behind the “White Revolution of India”. He is the man who made India into the world’s largest milk producing nation from a milk deficient country. He is hailed as the Father of this revolution and was also the leading man behind India’s most successful milk brand “Amul”. He has also contributed to the establishment of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd and the National Dairy Development Board.
The movie in reality tells the story of Dr. Verghese Kurien and is inspired by his work of revolutionising milk in India. The movie was directed by Shyam Benegal and written by Dr. Verghese Kurien himself, along with Vijay Tendulkar. The movie stars Girish Karnad, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Smita Patil and Naseeruddin Shah in the lead roles. When the movie was released, it received immense success, becoming a critically acclaimed movie.
The movie is also India’s first crowdfunded film as 500,000 farmers each donated Rs. 2 to create this film. The entire movie was made and launched with the money that was collected, which also gives out the message of “collective might”. The movie won the 1977 National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi and National Film Awards for Best Screenplay. This was also India’s submission for the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film in 1976. Besides all these, Preeti Sagar, the singer for the title song of the film won the Filmfare Award for Best Playback Singer that year. The song now has become Amul’s theme song.
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation marked June 1 as World Milk Day from 2001. The day focuses on raising awareness about the importance of milk and milk products as part of our daily diet. The day also celebrates the importance of dairy farmers and dairy sectors.
“Manthan” is available as free to watch on Amul’s YouTube Channel.