Funeral at Nargis' house made Balraj Sahni feel like a 'corpse', got special permission from cops during jail time to shoot a film

The 1940s was a very tricky time for Hindi cinema. While there was one section of the moviemaking folks who made it their mission to entertain the masses during stressful times, there was another section where actors, writers and filmmakers participated in the freedom struggle in their ways.

- 

But, the struggle didn’t end after August 1947. The country was in political disarray and those who had learnt to fight for their rights continued to do so for getting rid of British rule wasn't enough. Balraj Sahni, one of the upcoming actors in those days, who had worked with Mahatma Gandhi at Sevagram, lived with Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan and worked with the likes of TS Eliot and George Orwell at the London office of BBC, was one of the prominent members of the Communist Party in India, and also a member of Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), where he worked with the likes of Prithviraj Kapoor and Ritwik Ghatak, found himself behind bars for participating in a protest march. After a party meeting in 1949, when the party workers took to the streets, Balraj was arrested by cops. He spent months in a prison and strangely, was allowed to shoot for a film with Dilip Kumar and Nargis during his time in prison.