Amitabh Bachchan first rose to fame during the ‘angry young man’ phase in the 1970s, but in contrast to the modern-day media adoration of cinema stars, Bachchan was completely disregarded at the time. In a 2017 blog post, Bachchan explained that despite the fact that nearly all of his films were box office successes, the film media had banned him since they believed he was to blame for the press ban during the Emergency period. As a result, they refused to publish any of his images or interviews.
When he attended events or premieres, Bachchan claimed that photographers would put their cameras down, and occasionally even his name would be omitted from the magazine credits. Even the star made the decision to prohibit the journalists from his movie sets in reaction.
“Nothing was ever printed or written about me .. no coverage of any of my films or my works .. and no pictures if I was to attend a function. The photographers would put down their cameras on the platform where I stood and so long as I was there, they protested and never took a single photograph .. if there were to be a credit title description of a film .. for eg., say ‘Nastik’ .. it would be Hema Malini, (,) and Pran .. I was the comma in the film and so on ..” he shared.
Sanjeev Kumar won the Best Actor award for his performance in Aandhi while one of Bachchan’s biggest hits, Deewaar, was released under the press ban. To give his adversary the prize, Bachchan was asked. He acknowledged that “many commentators of the time and rival media when talking to me, expressed opinion that the move was to deliberately degrade me by carrying out this deed,” but he never paid any regard to the doubters.
Because he admired the actor, he gave Sanjeev Kumar the award. And continued, saying that if Dilip Kumar didn’t receive recognition for Ganga Jamuna, the actor’s best performance in his opinion, “main kis khet ki mooli hoon.. (Who am I?)
As per the actor, this went on for almost 15 years until he met with the near fatal accident on the sets of Coolie. After the accident, one of the leading magazines of the time which had also banned him wrote a “sympathetic and compassionate piece” which came as a surprise for the actor. After he recovered he met with the editor of the magazine and asked why they printed a sympathetic piece for the actor. The response was an “emotional moment” for him.
“In his most forthright and honest manner he said .. ‘we were upset and annoyed with you, because of what you had done to the media, and we wanted you to fail .. but we did not want you to die .. and so we wrote this piece when you recovered’ .. It was an emotional moment and from then on we have been the normal best as before ..” he shared.
