This film is based on a novel by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore which offers an Indian view of events in 1908 triggered by the British attempt to split Bengal into Muslim and Hindu provinces. In a story that is talky, stylized, and slow-paced, Indian director Ray has captured the nature of certain very real fissures in the private lives of the Indian people at a point in their history when the modernism of the West began to impinge on ancient Eastern ways.
Nikhil (Victor Banerjee) is a wealthy liberal Bengali merchant who is married to Bimala (Swatilekha Chatterjee). He decides that his wife should learn English and be exposed to the new world which is emerging. To please him, Bimala masters the language, dresses in Western clothes, and eventually defies tradition by abandoning purdah, the strict isolation imposed upon upper class Hindu women.
Nikhil wants to test her love for him, and so he introduces Bimala to his old friend Sandip Mukherjee (Soumitra Chatterjee). She's very impressed with this charismatic politician who is leading a campaign calling for a boycott of all foreign goods. Hikhil doesn't believe in this effort since it will harm his poor Muslim tenants. When Sandip's call for nationalism fails to animate the local people, his men begin terrorist activities against them.
Sandip manages to enchant Bimala but fails in his attack on the British system. Nikhil is disappointed in the choices his wife makes but finally finds the courage to stand up for his own principles. And Bimala learns some hard lessons about both the home and world as she journeys from a sheltered life to a more complicated one in which the messes and miseries of humankind are not solved either by revolutionary rhetoric or Eastern resignation. This is one of the best films on India and must be seen.