Amitabh Bachchan, one of Indian cinema’s most iconic stars, has dominated the silver screen for decades. However, during the peak of his career, he faced an unexpected professional hurdle—several film magazines imposed a ban on mentioning his name following the Emergency of 1975.
Magazines banned Amitabh Bachchan after Emergency
Film critic and author Bharathi S Pradhan recently recalled this unusual episode in an interview with ANI. She explained that after the Emergency was lifted, some film publications accused Bachchan of playing a role in censoring their content.
“Just after the Emergency was lifted, a few magazines got together and banned Amitabh Bachchan because they felt that he and VC Shukla were all one gang of Congress people and they had been blue-penciling all copy,” Pradhan said.
Magazines avoided his name
As a result of this perceived involvement, magazines refused to mention Bachchan, even in filmographies. Pradhan revealed that if his name appeared alongside a co-star like Hema Malini, editors would replace it with just a comma instead.
“If there was a filmography of, say, Hema Malini, and Amitabh Bachchan was her co-star, they would just put a comma instead of his name because Amitabh Bachchan was banned, so you can’t put his name in the magazine,” she explained.
Bachchan’s subtle response to the ban
The Sholay star was well aware of the boycott and even adjusted his behaviour accordingly. According to Pradhan, he positioned himself strategically in group photographs to make it easier for editors to crop him out.
“Once he got to know that this is what they were up to, when there would be a group picture, he’d go stand on the extreme right or extreme left,” she said. “He told me, ‘Just to facilitate their cutting, I would stand on the extreme right or extreme left,’” she recalled.