The film begins with the finishing of a water canal for the village set in the present. Radha (Nargis), as the mother of the village, is asked to open the canal and remembers back to her past when she was newly married, mirroring the new independence of India. The wedding between Radha and Shamu (Raaj Kumar) was paid for by Radha's mother-in-law, who got a loan from the moneylender Sukhilala. This event starts the spiral of poverty and hardship that Radha endures. The conditions of the loan are disputed, but the village elders decide in favor of the moneylender, after which Shamu and Radha are forced to pay three-quarters of their crop as interest on the loan of 500 rupees. While trying to use more of their land to alleviate their poverty, Shamu's arms are crushed by a boulder. He is shamed by his helplessness and is humiliated by others in the village. Deciding that he is no use to his family, he leaves and does not return. Soon after this, Radha's mother-in-law dies. Radha continues to work in the fields with her children and gives birth again. Sukhilala offers to help alleviate her poverty in return for Radha marrying him, but she refuses to sell herself. A storm sweeps through the village that destroys the harvest and kills Radha's youngest child, and the villagers start to migrate but decide to stay and rebuild because of Radha's urging. The film then skips forward several years to when Radha's two surviving children, Birju (Sunil Dutt) and Ramu (Rajendra Kumar), are young men. Birju, embittered by the exactions of Sukhilala since he was a child, takes out his frustrations by pestering the village girls, especially Sukhilala's daughter. Ramu, by contrast, has a calmer temper and is married soon after. He becomes a father ,but his wife is soon absorbed into the cycle of poverty. Birju's anger finally becomes dangerous and, after being provoked, attacks Sukhilala and his daughter and violently lashes out at his family. He is chased out of the village and becomes a bandit. On the day of the wedding of Sukhilala's daughter, Birju returns to exact vengeance. He kills Sukhilala and takes his daughter--but Radha, who had promised that Birju would not do harm, shoots Birju, who dies in her arms. The film ends with her opening the canal and reddish water flowing into the fields.

On the day of his wedding, the life of a jailer is saved by an inmate during a prison break. Back in his cell the prisoner, Kishore, recounts his life story. He spent his childhood amidst the family of a wealthy thakur (landowner) and was treated like a son. But when the thakur died his jealous son relegated Kishore to the status of a servant. Kishore's romance with Asha, the young thakur's sister, earns him a beating. Rather than besmirch the family's honour by eloping, he agrees to leave on condition that he may return when he has become worthy of Asha's hand. He finds a job as a carnival daredevil, diving in flames from a high platform into a tank of fire. However, the carnival's lady owner wants thrills of a different kind and she isn't one to be trifled with -she killed and stuffed her cat to stop it running away..... When Kishore makes it clear that his heart lies elsewhere, Madame is not amused. She arranges for Kishore to be murdered. But the plan goes awry and Kishore ends up being wrongly convicted of her murder and thus finds himself in jail. Both the jailer and his fellow inmates sympathise with him. The jailer wants him to meet his new bride whilst his fellows work on a plan to get him released. One of these is a good idea, the other is not.

Ostensibly a Central Asian war story about the Decossackization policy, a conflict between the Bolsheviks and the Cossacks, a tale that advocates national independence. The Cossacks are oppressed by the despotic Soviet premier Vladimir Lenin, the grandson of a Tatar man, and Jabir, a commander for a Tatar Red Army military unit. Murad, a Bolshevik intellectual and revolutionary, becomes sympathetic to the Cossacks' plight, and gets arrested for treason and escapes. He meets the wild Gulnar and gets her to spy as a maid of Nigar, a scion of a wealthy Cossack family. Nigar falls for Murad and Gulnar withdraws from the scene for the sake of her nation.