The term "Mother India" has been defined as "a common icon for the emergent Indian nation in the early 20th  century in both colonialist and nationalist discourse". Many authors, including Gayatri Chatterjee, author of "Mother India" (2002), interpret the film as an allegory signifying patriotism and the changing situation in the newly independent nation, and how India was functioning without British authority. It echoes the tale of a modern India, liberating itself from "feudal and colonial oppression". The film, an archetypal nationalistic picture, is symbolic in that it demonstrated the euphoria of "Mother India" in a nation that had only been independent for 10 years, and it had a long-lasting cultural impact upon the Indian people. Film scholar Saibal Chatterjee considers "Mother India" a "mirror of independent India", highlighting problems of a nascent nation, including rural exploitation of farmers by money-lenders, in a dramatic fashion understandable to the common viewer. It also represents the agrarian poverty and hardship of the people at the time. The red water that flows from the canal irrigating the green fields at the end of the film is seen by Chatterjee as a metaphor to represent the blood of Indians in the struggle for independence, flowing to nourish a new free India. The canal is described by Virdi to signal the imminent end of the feudal order. However, despite Radha's struggle against feudal oppression depicted in the film, her action of stopping the rebellious Birju and upholding status quo—the feudal and patriarchal order—is seen as "regressive" by various authors.