Katha Sangama

• B. Saroja Devi
• Rajinikanth
• Kalyan Kumar
• Leelavathi

The movie is based on a short story by the Kannada writer Giraddi Govindaraj. It is about a poor university professor with high moral values and integrity who is offered a bribe from a wealthy contractor to push some grace marks to his son in his exam paper so that he could get enough percentage to qualify for a medical college. This happens just when the professor's young son is critically ill and requires expensive medical treatment. Whether the professor succumbs to the circumstances or he let go of his integrity forms the crux of the story.

It tells the story of an aged woman who is presently a warden at a girls hostel. She in her young age had refused to marry the man who loved her because she was too headstrong about the idea of feminism. She even goes one step further and decides not to get married and stay unmarried her whole life to be an example. But when she finds herself completely lonely in her later stages of her life she starts regretting her decision of not accepting true love when she had the chance and goes into depression.

It has a story of wealthy man marrying a blind girl (Aarathi) out of pity, but in his absence she is raped by an adolescent youth and later blackmailed. The husband eventually "forgives" her for having been raped. Aarathi plays the role of the poor blind girl and Rajinikanth plays as a small role as a man who rapes her (Aarathi) in the absence of her husband.

The 1984 Tamil movie Kai Kodukkum Kai was a partially based on this movie as an extended version of the Munithaayi story. Rajinikanth played the role of blind girl's husband in that movie. Further, Rajinikanth's characterisation in this movie went on to be used in the 1977 movie 16 Vayathinile.

• Karnataka State Film Awards 1975–76
  • Fourth Best Film
  • Best Actress – Aarathi
  • Best Supporting Actor – Master Umesh

• The film was Rajinikanth's first in Kannada and his second overall.
• Director Bharathiraja was one of the assistant directors of Puttanna Kanagal in this movie, he later became a great director in Tamil. He gave Rajini a very similar kind of role in 16 Vayathinile.
  The third part of this movie was later remade in Tamil as Kai Kodukkum Kai, by J. Mahendran, with Rajinikanth in the lead role and Revathi playing the blind girl.

• Katha Sangama on IMDb