The film included Rabindranath Tagore's song, "Jana Gana Mana", even before it became the national anthem of India.
Radhamohan Bhattacharya as Anup, an idealistic man from the poor ranks of society takes on the exploiting capitalist group represented by Rajendra.
Binota Roy plays the role of Gopa, Anup's love interest and companion, who belongs to a wealthy family.
Baburao Patel, editor of Filmindia called it "a picture for intellectuals" that fulfilled "the higher purpose for which the screen is intended".
Bimal Roy, an unknown director at the time, was lauded for using a new cast of characters for the film, who managed to leave "vivid impressions".
Patel singled out the lead characters for their performances stating, "Radhamohan's stoic restraint, his unintrusive culture and his spiritual identification with the role that he plays, give his portrayal the requisite dramatic intensity needed for the theme.
His negative comments about the film were that "it dragged in the first three reels", and that though ""Hamrahi" propagates its theme beautifully", it did so by focusing on just a handful of people to highlight the poor-rich situation thus losing "its universal appeal".
[6] Hamrahi and its Bengali version Udayer Pathey received a positive response from the audiences, making both a success at the box-office.
Nasreen Munni Kabir gives the reason for the film's popularity in her book, The Dialogues of Devdas, where she quotes director Ritwik Ghatak from the cine-mag, Filmfare, (4 March 1966), "People for the first time saw in them their everyday life – this revolutionised the concept of film as a social document of contemporary reality".