India has been submitting films to the Academy Awards since 1957, making it one of the longest-running national presences in the history of the Academy's International Feature Film category. Over nearly seven decades, India has produced films that have earned nominations, critical acclaim and in one unforgettable case, a standing ovation and a Best Original Song win on Hollywood's most celebrated stage. This is the complete story of India at the Oscars.
India's first serious engagement with the Academy Awards came in 1957 when Mehboob Khan's masterpiece Mother India was submitted as India's first official entry in what was then called the Best Foreign Language Film category. The film — a sweeping rural epic about a poor farmer's widow who sacrifices everything to uphold her moral principles while raising her children — was not only nominated for the Academy Award but came tantalizingly close to winning, losing by a single vote according to film historians.
Mother India remains one of the most important films in Indian cinema history. Its portrait of rural India, its exploration of poverty and dignity, and the performance of Nargis as the central character set a standard for social realism in Indian cinema that influenced filmmakers for decades. Nargis's performance is still considered one of the greatest in the history of Indian acting.
💡 Fun fact: Mother India was so culturally significant that it was selected as India's entry despite the fact that its director Mehboob Khan passed away before the Academy Awards ceremony. The film continues to be screened in Indian universities and film schools as a foundational text in Indian cinema history.
Bengal's Satyajit Ray is the only Indian filmmaker to have received an Honorary Oscar — presented to him by the Academy in 1992 for his "rare mastery of the art of motion pictures, and his profound humanitarian outlook, which has had an enduring influence on filmmakers throughout the world." The Oscar was presented to him in his hospital room in Calcutta, where he was recovering from the heart condition that would take his life weeks later.
Ray's Apu Trilogy — Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1957) and Apur Sansar (1959) — is among the most praised trilogies in world cinema. His films combined neo-realist technique with deep humanism and a musical sensitivity (he composed his own film scores) that made them unlike anything else in cinema. Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Akira Kurosawa have each named Ray as a major influence on their own work.
Ashutosh Gowariker's Lagaan remains India's most commercially successful Oscar journey. The film — a three-hour epic about Indian villagers who challenge their British colonial rulers to a cricket match to avoid paying their agricultural taxes — was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2002, competing against films from France, Bosnia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It ultimately lost to the Bosnian film No Man's Land, but its nomination generated enormous excitement in India and introduced international audiences to a new kind of Bollywood film that was simultaneously spectacular entertainment and serious historical drama.
India's official Oscar submissions are selected by a committee appointed by the Film Federation of India — and the selection process has often been controversial, with films that received international critical acclaim occasionally passed over in favour of more commercially mainstream choices.
Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding (2001) was submitted but not nominated. Vishal Bhardwaj's Omkara and Haider received critical praise but were not selected as India's official entries. Aamir Khan's Taare Zameen Par — about a child with dyslexia — was controversially passed over in 2008 in favour of Taare Zameen Par in different selection. These debates about which film best represents Indian cinema to international audiences continue to this day.
The most significant Indian victory at the Academy Awards came not through the Foreign Language Film category but through the work of composer A.R. Rahman on Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008). Rahman won two Academy Awards at the 81st Academy Awards ceremony — Best Original Score and Best Original Song for Jai Ho — becoming only the second Indian to win a competitive Oscar (after costume designer Bhanu Athaiya in 1983).
Rahman's acceptance speech — during which he said "Allah rakha, sabka rakha" (God's protection for everyone) and thanked his mother — was watched by hundreds of millions of Indians. His wins transformed international perception of Indian music and opened doors for Indian musicians, composers and music producers in global entertainment.
The most recent and arguably most exhilarating chapter in India's Oscar history came in 2023 when SS Rajamouli's Telugu-language epic RRR (Roudram Ranam Rudhiram) swept through awards season with its spectacular action sequences, its emotionally charged story of resistance against British colonial rule and its irresistibly joyful musical centrepiece Naatu Naatu.
Naatu Naatu won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song, performed by M.M. Keeravani and sung by Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava. At the Academy Awards ceremony, Naatu Naatu was performed live on the Oscars stage — the first Indian song ever to be performed at the ceremony — before winning the Oscar for Best Original Song. The performance, featuring dancers and the pounding, celebratory energy of the song, received a standing ovation from the Hollywood audience.
The victory was significant not just for the award itself but for what it represented — the global recognition of Indian regional cinema beyond Bollywood, the power of Telugu cinema (Tollywood) as a creative force, and the extraordinary global appetite for stories told with Indian energy, scale and emotional directness.
India's relationship with the Oscars is a mirror of Indian cinema's own evolution — from the village realism of Mother India to the colonial epics of RRR, from intimate family dramas to the most expensive films ever made in Asia. The Academy's growing openness to non-English-language cinema, demonstrated by the success of Parasite, Drive My Car and other international films, creates the most favourable environment in history for Indian cinema to finally achieve the Best International Feature Film award that has eluded it since 1958.
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