Film scholar Vijay Mishra has pointed out the presence of the "highly syncretic hyphenated Hindu–Muslim nature" of Bollywood in the film. Parama Roy has interpreted that Nargis's legendary status as the titular "Mother India" is due to Hinduisation of the role and her real-life marriage with a Hindu; she is, according to Roy, scripted as a renouncer of Muslim separatism in the film. Mishra has found metacritical value in Salman Rushdie's commentary on the film in his novel "The Moor's Last Sigh" (1995) in which Rushdie describes: