Actor Manoj Kumar’s Bollywood career creates an emotional and cinematic story in itself. He is considered a pioneer of patriotic films, and films such as Kranti, Purab Aur Paschim, Roti Kapda Aur Makaan and Shaheed have earned him the fame of “Bharat Kumar”. His life as an actor had his own crest and valley, but in a turbulent emergency, one of the more memorable episodes took place when he approached to make a professional government film, but ultimately sued the government for a variety of reasons.
In the event of an emergency, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s administration tried to quell the public’s backlash by having Manoj Kumar make a film for them. He is known for playing a deeply loyal patriot, and was considered the perfect candidate to help the Gandhi government regain the trust of the people. According to an interview with Lehren, he brought Salim Khan and Javed Ahtar on board as writers.
In a conversation with the Hindustan Times, Manoj Kumar revealed that the film should be called Naya Bharat and will meet and discuss with Prime Minister Gandhi and his son Sanjay Gandhi. “In the beginning, they loved the script. She even agreed to make a special appearance on it. But a few months later, they said that only her voice could be heard in the film. The script had to be changed so I wasn’t OK with that.
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A while later, Kumar expressed concern about releasing the film on television just two weeks after his theatre debut. The government had decided to show Doardarshan a patriotic film in order to inspire patriotism among the masses. Naturally, this had an impact on the number of people going to the cinema. According to Manoj Kumar, his 1972 film Shor did not perform optimally at the box office due to the policy of the last two weeks. His 1976 film Dus Numbri suffered from the same fate. This led him to take legal action against the government, which led him to win.
Interestingly, Shor was re-released before trial after being banned first. The actor stood on his ground during this difficult time, and was not the only person from Bollywood that rebelled against the government. He passed away on Friday at the age of 87.
