Awara: Musical or Bollywood Blunder?

Deciding whether or not Raj Kapoor's film Awara is a musical is truly debatable and it was certainly a tough call for me. But I have come to the conclusion that it is indeed a musical in that it contains the melodramatic song and dance aspects that are present in all traditional Hindi cinema films. The in depth way that I made this decision was because I compared the film with that of Tom Hooper's Les Miserables. Granted, these films are hugely different for dozens of reasons and should never be compared for other purposes, but I noticed a few key traits of Awara that match the musical traits of Les Miserables. For example, both films are about the struggle between the paths of crime and justice in life. When I then considered the song and dance aspects of both films, I came to the conclusion that Kapoor's film indeed possesses the necessary traits of being a musical that are present within Hooper's film.