A chronicle of the real-life story of Dwarkanath Kotnis (Shantaram), a member of a medical team sent by India during WW2, an intensely nationalist period, to fight alongside the Chinese during the Japanese invasion. Kotnis goes to China where he works almost single-handedly to provide medical relief to the wounded. During his stay there, he meets and marries a Chinese girl, Ching Lan (Jayashree). Events take a terrible turn when Kotnis goes into battle whilst developing a cure against an epidemic.

Dr Kotnis Ki Aamar Kahani is remarkable for its absolute abandonment of any pretence at cinematic realism and its powerful nationalistic rhetoric. This is undercut with documentary footage of Nehru at a mass meeting.

The film succeeded in simultaneously pleasing the Communists, the Congress and the colonial occupational force. Shantaram re-edited a shorter version in English in 1948 in which, according to S. Bannerjee and A. Srivastava (1988), the 'clothing of Indian characters' was made 'more ethnic to please a Western audience'.