'See your Prime Minister on screen': What led to a ban on Gulzar's 'Aandhi' during Emergency

New Delhi: "Aandhi" was running in theatres in 1975 when lyricist-filmmaker Gulzar, who was in Moscow to present it at a film festival, received the news about the movie being banned in India.

Set against the backdrop of elections, "Aandhi" is a love story between a hotel manager (Sanjeev Kumar) and his estranged wife, played by Suchitra Sen, who reconnects years later after she becomes a politician.

Author Saba Mahmood Bashir's 2019 "Gulzar's Aandhi: Insights into the Film" sheds light on the controversy around the movie and the political climate in the country during its release.

Many had noted the similarities between prime minister Indira Gandhi and Sen's characters, including the white streak of hair, the attire and the walk but the then I&B ministry, headed by IK Gujral, found nothing objectionable in it and the movie was released in theatres in February.

Then on June 25, 1975, Gandhi declared Emergency.

In July the same year, Gulzar was in Moscow to present the movie at a film festival and that's when he got to know that. It had been in theatres for over 20 weeks at the time.

"He learnt that he would have to pull out of the show as the film had been banned in India. To be sure, it was a film magazine that had published a feature on 'Aandhi', with the headline, ‘See your Prime Minister on screen’," Bashir writes in the book.

The book also featured an interview with Gulzar, who spoke about how he rushed back to India after the ban.

"Sanjeev was also there with me. After we got back, J Om Prakashji (film's producer) tried very hard to have the ban lifted. We were already in the twenty-fourth week, so we decided to modify two scenes," the cinema veteran recalled.

One of the new scenes that were incorporated featured Aarti Devi looking at a portrait of Indira Gandhi and calling her a "role model".

"They made us add that bit. They insisted. By then the movie was running in its twenty-third or twenty-fourth week," he said.

Gulzar insisted that there was no similarity between the lead character and Indira Gandhi but he did borrow references from the late prime minister for Aarti Devi's personality traits and mannerisms.

"At the time, it was not Indira Gandhi’s life story. But even today, there is no one like her, so she was the best persona to keep in mind. Accordingly, that was the reference one could offer to any actor - the way she used to walk, the way she used to descend a flight of stairs, the way she would come out of a helicopter.

"We used her traits in good taste - not because the character was based on her or her life. But then things happened - the opposition parties remarked that Aarti Devi’s character is shown to consume alcohol, and some decided to connect the two unrelated personalities," Gulzar said.

According to Gulzar, what added fuel to the fire were the advertisements and posters for the film.

In the book, Bashir wrote that it was baseless to debate whether "Aandhi" has been modelled on the life of Indira Gandhi but the similarities between the real and reel characters were quite striking.

"Both Aarti Devi and Mrs Gandhi had an estranged marriage. If stones were pelted at Aarti Devi at a rally, they were also pelted at Mrs Gandhi in 1967 at a rally near Bhubaneswar, Orissa.

"It is this coincidence about the estranged marriage, and the fact that Feroze Gandhi too ran a hotel in Allahabad that led the critics and viewers to connect the dots and begin to believe that 'Aandhi' was the story of Indira Gandhi," she wrote.

Gulzar recalled that he went to Moscow at a later time where he met Gujral, who was serving as the Indian ambassador to the Soviet Union.

"Gujral sahib told me that it was Sanjay (Gandhi) who had not taken the controversy well. Otherwise, there was no objection from the others. I remember my reply too, that it was just one of those things which happens in a democracy."