In a study of media and popular culture in South Asia, author Mahasveta Barua draws a parallel between the film's metaphorical representation of the mother as a nation, and the metonymic identification with India that Indira Gandhi, India's only woman prime minister, sought and tried for during her tenure (1966–77, and 1980–84). In his book "Terrorism, Media, Liberation", John David Slocum argues that like Satyajit Ray's classic masterpiece "Pather Panchali" (1955), Khan's "Mother India" has "vied for alternative definitions of Indianness". However, he emphasises that the film is an overt mythologising and feminising of the nation in which Indian audiences have used their imagination to define it in the nationalistic context, given that in reality, the storyline is about a poverty-stricken peasant from northern India, rather than a true idea of a modernising, powerful nation.