Latest news with #Sholay
India.com
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- India.com
Amitabh Bachchan vs Salman Khan: Who is richer? The answer will shock you, their net worth is...
Amitabh Bachchan is all set to return with Kaun Banega Crorepati 17, and this time, he's making headlines not just for hosting but for his massive paycheck. With reports claiming he's earning per episode, Big B has become the highest-paid TV host in India. The quiz show, known for its iconic theme and legendary host, premieres on August 11, and excitement is already sky-high. This marks yet another chapter in Bachchan's long-standing association with the show. But this time, it's not just the format that's making headlines; it's the price tag. How much is Amitabh Bachchan earning? According to Amitabh Bachchan is reportedly charging a whopping Rs 5 crore per episode for KBC 17. Since the show airs five times a week, that's an estimated Rs 25 crore per week, making him the highest-paid TV host in India. Is he earning more than Salman Khan? In terms of TV hosting fees, absolutely. Salman Khan, who reportedly charges around Rs 25 crore per weekend for Bigg Boss, has been overtaken by Big B's per-week rate. However, net worth is a different game altogether. As per media reports, Salman Khan's total net worth stands at Rs 2,900 crore, while Amitabh Bachchan's is around Rs 1,600 crore. So while the Sholay star may be winning on TV, the Sultan still leads in overall wealth. Earlier this year, Bollywood Hungama reported that Amitabh might skip this season due to personal reasons. But those reports were soon debunked when Sony TV released the first promo on April 4, announcing that registrations were open.
News18
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- News18
50 Years Of Sholay: Restored And Timeless
The restored Sholay will keep film scholars busy for a while; but I hope it claims a small place in the consciousness of an audience born many years after it set screens on fire On Friday, 27 June, the fully restored uncut version of Ramesh Sippy's Sholay had its world premiere at Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy. 'It was a magnificent evening in Bologna yesterday to watch the restored Sholay play out for the first time on a giant screen in the Piazza Maggiore in front of an audience that filled the seats, the steps around the square and even the floor as they watched one of India's most iconic films come back to life 50 years after it was released," Mumbai-based Film Heritage Foundation, which has painstakingly restored the classic, posted on Facebook. This version includes the film's original ending—changed due to objection from the censors—and deleted scenes. This work by the foundation could be the most important such project in India till date, given the near-mythical status that Sholay enjoys in our cinema. Sholay, billed as 'the greatest story ever told", was released on 15 August 1975. It went on to earn a still-standing record of 60 golden jubilees (50-week runs) across India, and was the first film to celebrate a silver jubilee at over 100 theatres. It was screened continuously at Bombay's 1,500-seat Minerva theatre for over five years. As a pre-teen schoolboy in Bombay, I watched it on Sunday, 18 August. Some 25 years later—I had watched Sholay many times more by then—quite by chance, the uncut version came to me, the one that Ramesh Sippy had originally submitted to the Censor Board. A colleague had bought a bootlegged CD of the film in Kuala Lumpur and watched it over the weekend. On Monday, a very puzzled man walked into my cabin. 'Sir," he asked, 'did Thakur Baldev Singh kill Gabbar Singh?" 'No," I said. 'He's about to, when the police arrive and stop him." 'But here he does!" my colleague said, producing his CD. I immediately knew that he had inadvertently bought a rare gem. It was fairly well-known among fans that Sippy and screenwriters Salim-Javed had originally killed off Gabbar, but the censors had insisted on getting the climax reworked. I borrowed the CD and watched it that night. The uncensored version is of course longer than the current one available to the public, but two scenes stand out. Young Ahmed, played by Sachin Pilgaonkar, is captured by Gabbar's men and brought to his den, where he is resting. Chunks of meat on a skewer are being roasted on a fire behind him. The bandits tell Gabbar: 'This boy is from Ramgarh. He was going to the station and we found him on the way." Gabbar thinks for a few seconds, watching a fly crawling down his forearm, then smiles and slaps it dead. The next sequence is Ahmed's horse, carrying his corpse, walking into Ramgarh. This is what see in the current censor-certified version. In the uncensored film, after he kills the fly, Gabbar shouts: 'Have you heard, all of you? The people of Ramgarh have started running away from the village now!" Ahmed asks Gabbar to let him go. The bandit replies: 'Tum jaante ho main kaun hoon? Hum Ramgarh ke baap hain, baap ('Do you know who I am? I am Ramgarh's father)." He then asks Ahmed to rub his nose on the ground at his feet. When Ahmed does not move, an enraged Gabbar yells at him to come forward. The young man tries to attack him and the bandit brings him down with one blow. His men are about to shoot Ahmed, but Gabbar stops them. 'You think a man feels any pain when a bullet kills him?" he says. 'Isko toh main tadpa tadpa ke maarunga, bahut tadpa tadpa ke maarunga (I'm going to give him a painful death, a very painful death)." He picks up a sharp iron rod from the fire, yanks Ahmed's head up by his hair and holds the rod next to his eye. We then see Ahmed's horse carrying his master's corpse home. In the current Sholay, in the climactic fight sequence between Thakur and Gabbar, a bloodied and exhausted Gabbar is lying on the ground and Thakur is about to kill him by stamping his face with his hob-nailed sandals when the police arrive and dissuade him. In the uncut version, the bloodied and exhausted Gabbar is still staggering around. Thakur is about to strike him again when he notices that right behind Gabbar is a sharp iron rod protruding from one of the two stone pillars which the bandit had used to string him up to hack off his arms. Thakur leaps, hammering Gabbar on his chest. Gabbar falls on the rod, gets skewered and dies. Veeru then drapes Thakur's shawl round his shoulders and holds him tight. Thakur rests his head on Veeru's shoulder and weeps uncontrollably. Over the years, Ramesh Sippy has said in several interviews that he did not agree with the cuts that the censors demanded, but had to comply because this was during the Emergency—a time of tough censorship. Even after the censored Sholay was released, there was a furore in the media about its 'extreme violence and cruelty"—that the film should have been certified Adults Only. By today's standards, the violence in Sholay is rather mild. And there is remarkably little blood that we see on the screen—only a few bullet wounds. Yet, in my opinion, Sholay is one of the few Indian films that the censors actually improved a bit, though absolutely accidentally. Film Heritage Foundation has recovered a priceless historic artefact of Indian cinema, but is the uncut version better than the one we are familiar with? My answer is no. The cruelty in Sholay lies in the acts that Gabbar commits, but the gory violence directly associated with them is off-screen. We do not see Thakur's arms being chopped off or his grandchild being shot by Gabbar. When Gabbar swats a fly dead, we know that the innocent Ahmed will be killed and the effect is far more chilling than a graphic description of how he is killed. The latter—with its iron skewer—is merely stomach-churning. The censors gave the scene a haunting—and aesthetic—subtlety by leaving the details of Ahmed's horrific end to the viewer's imagination. But the original ending with Gabbar dying exactly where he had chopped off Thakur's arms is much more emotionally satisfying than the current one. It is poetic justice, neatly closing the loop between the atrocities that Thakur suffered and the punishment that Gabbar deserved. I will certainly enjoy a Sholay with this sequence replacing the current one. But the dacoits chasing Basanti's horse-carriage for a full five minutes, which is a very long time in a movie? I can live without that. Or more of Soorma Bhopali and the jailor? We do not need that. Sippy himself pared Sholay down a few times. The film I watched in its 100-th week re-release was shorter, with a few sequences dropped or shortened from the 15 August 1975 one. The current DVD and streaming platform versions are even shorter. In 2007, I had the dire misfortune of watching Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, Varma's unauthorised remake of Sholay. The next day I wrote a column in the newspaper I was working for then that it was an act of barbarism—Varma had no clue what made Sholay… Sholay. Salim Khan, co-writer of Sholay, read the piece and took the trouble of finding my phone number, and called me. The conversation lasted more than an hour. I asked him about the various Hollywood films that he and Javed Akhtar had 'lifted" ideas and entire sequences from—after all, the basic Sholay storyline itself is redux The Magnificent Seven, a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Some of these sources are well-documented—Once Upon A Time In The West (the train robbery sequence and Gabbar killing Thakur's grandchild), The Professionals (the final chase as Veeru and Jai are escaping Gabbar's den with Basanti), Garden of Evil (the card draws inspired Jai's coin-flipping tricks that underpin the entire narrative)—and so on. I told him that I thought that every copied sequence was done far better in Sholay than the originals. Then I asked him the question that he must have faced a thousand times. 'Who was the real writer in Salim-Javed?" I asked. 'That's a wrong question," he replied. 'The man who sits outside a post office, a pen stuck behind his ear, waiting to fill up money order forms for poor illiterate people—he too writes (Woh bhi toh likhta hai). The correct question is 'Sochta kaun hai (Who is the thinker)?" I did not press that point. He revealed that Sippy was upset that some upstart had remade his epic, but he had told Sippy that Varma's misbegotten attempt would only add to Sholay's glory and make its status in the Indian film pantheon even firmer. Varma's film, I assume, would have been withdrawn by the theatres within a week. top videos View all I intend to watch the uncut Sholay when it is released in theatres in India. Of course Gen Z-ers may find it boring—it is almost three and a half hours long—and even insipid—computing power has made action sequences incredibly more awesome. Some may find it misogynistic. But like all great films, Sholay's fundamental themes remain universal and timeless—justice, loyalty and sacrifice. The restored Sholay will of course keep film scholars busy for a while; but I hope that it also claims a small place in the consciousness of an audience born many years after the film set screens all across India on fire. The reviewer is former managing editor of Outlook, former editor of The Financial Express, and founding editor of Outlook Money, Open, and Swarajya magazines. He has authored several books. He tweets @sandipanthedeb. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication. tags : Sholay view comments Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: July 01, 2025, 14:00 IST News opinion Opinion | 50 Years Of Sholay: Restored And Timeless Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
India.com
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- India.com
This song of Amitabh Bachchan was shot in a cowshed, producer was going through debt, became bankrupt, this song saved him from…, song was…
This song of Amitabh Bachchan was shot in a cowshed, producer was going through debt, became bankrupt, this song saved him from…, song was… In the glitzy and glamorous world of Bollywood, many stars come and go, but there are some rare gems whose magic and presence on screen remain untouched and unmatched. One such similar tale is of the legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan. Also, famously known by the name of 'Big B' and Shahenshah of Bollywood. Amitabh has delivered a streak of hits in his career trajectory like Sholay, Deewar, The Great Gambler, and Dostana. But among the many blockbusters, one film that stands out and has carried its legacy forward is Don. This cult classic film broke many records, but besides that, it also has some great behind-the-scenes stories that are nothing short of amazing. Don: The Cult Classic Don was released in the year 1978. This film was initially produced by Nariman Irani, who was drowning in debt. To help recover from his financial constraints, director Chandra Barot took on the project. But destiny had something else in store. In an unfortunate event, Irani passed away during the shoot of another film. However, Chandra Barot didn't give up. Despite the emotional and financial blow, he completed the project. It took him three and a half years, and he even released it without any promotional budget. How Much Did Don Earn? For the first week, the film was struggling, and within some time, the film picked up its pace. This film became the third-biggest hit of the year, earning Rs. 7.20 crores. Besides this, the film also featured 5 five songs, all of them turned out to be superhits. The film also went to bag awards and recognition. Don won three Filmfare Awards, including Best Male Playback Singer for Kishore Kumar, Best Female Playback Singer for Asha Bhosale, and Best Actor for Amitabh Bachchan. Why was 'Jise Taise Karlo Pyar Se' Shot Last Minute? What's interesting is that the song of the film 'Jise Taise Karlo Pyar Se', was a last minute addition. Amitabh Bachchan had to fly for an international trip and had just one day in hand. The team shot this superhit song in just a single day in a cowshed in Goregaon, Mumbai. Within a few hours, the song was filmed, and history was made. However, the film was already complete, and the director Barot didn't want to add songs. But it was lyricist Javed Akhtar who insisted that the film had too much action and the song should be added for balance. Even Manoj Kumar, Barot's mentor, seconded the suggestion. Despite tight deadlines and no funds, the song was included, and it became a massive hit Even today, this film's iconic dialogue 'Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahi, namumkin hai' ('It's not just difficult to catch Don, it's impossible') resonates with the audience and has created a history
The Print
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Print
Sholay is 50. What scholars have written about it
Set in Thakur's (played by a sombre, greying Sanjeev Kumar) house, it shows his daughter-in-law Radha (Jaya Bachchan) slowly turning down the lamps in the balcony, bringing the day to a close. Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) plays a soulful melody on harmonica as he watches her. One scene in the Ramesh Sippy movie even inspired an academic paper in the 1990s. New Delhi: The blockbuster Bollywood movie Sholay has been referenced in a thousand memes over the years. Its dialogues, songs, dances, and trademark moves are all part of Indian vocabulary. It is also a movie that university scholars love to sink their teeth into. University of Delhi professor Nellickal Jacob called it 'dialectics of desire and its repression'. Sholay is 50 today. But the movie is a gift that keeps teaching. Between memes and research papers, it has seen it all. Jacob's paper is one of the many academic reflections on Ramesh Sippy's film. The fascination with the so-called 'curry western' has even crossed borders, drawing interest from international scholars. The moniker was bestowed on the film for its desi avatar, inspired by the cowboy movies, and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954). 'The film was on the radar of every cinema studies scholar and a popular text to research and write books and scholarly pieces,' said Professor Karen Gabriel, whose research areas include sexuality, visual cultures, and social theory. When he presented his paper in the 1990s, Jacob focused on the lamp-and-the-balcony scene as an interplay between desire and social taboos around a widow's silence. 'Hers is a muted and unspeakable desire that, for the most part, is revealed through minimal gestures and facial expressions,' said Nellickal Jacob about Radha 'Her encounter with Jai clearly awakens in her a desire that Sippy realises can only be obliquely referenced. Hers is a muted and unspeakable desire that, for the most part, is revealed through minimal gestures and facial expressions,' said Jacob. He argues that it is one of the best scenes in the entire film. Radha's slow, laboured movement shows how her repression is a reiterated ritual, and how Jai's gaze is not voyeuristic but a mix of melancholy and longing. He doesn't articulate his desire with words, but plays the harmonica. Emergency and Sholay 'The audience derived vicarious pleasure from playing the avenging angel, playing out their fantasies of securing justice against evil moneylenders, corrupt policemen, and rapist,' said Meenakshi Shedde. Released in a few months after the Emergency was imposed by Indira Gandhi, Sholay has been read in context with the making of the nation, and its political preoccupations. It was a time when the young democracy was gripped with all kinds of existential questions. In her paper 'Bollywood Cinema: Making Elephants Fly', Meenakshi Shedde explains that the 1970s were a watershed moment, as cinema became the 'conscience keeper' of the nation, both mainstream and parallel. 'In the mainstream, it definitely shaped the early success of Bollywood's superstar Amitabh Bachchan, now in his sixties. His protagonists broke the law to deliver justice and equity. The audience derived vicarious pleasure from playing the avenging angel, playing out their fantasies of securing justice against evil moneylenders, corrupt policemen, and rapists,' writes Shedde. Outside, political opponents of Indira Gandhi were being jailed, and underground protest movements were being mapped. Sholay marks the subaltern hero—a figure that was also synonymous with the growth of Bachchan's career. Such a hero was either an orphan or of ambiguous lineage, an affiliation with the masses, and capable of mobilising them. As film scholar M Madhava Prasad puts it, he offers 'a pleasurable 'subversion' without undermining the supremacy of the law'. 'The 'villainy' of Gabbar Singh is established through the gaze he casts on women too,' said Karen Gabriel Thakur is the only character who is referred to by his upper caste surname and class status in the village. He represents the feudal system, a status quo that the film establishes.'Thakur's plight elicits sympathy and by sharing in his desire for vengeance, we are also seduced into participating in a reaffirmation of the feudal order,' writes Prasad in his book Ideology of the Hindi film: A historical construction. Even Thakur's dismemberment serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, it represents the disabling of the apparatus of law and order, especially through its confrontation with criminality, represented by Gabbar (Amjad Khan). On the other hand, it also signifies a temporary breach of the coalition between the rural rich and the state. The film is also a nod to restoring the feudal system, which is equated with law, and the removal of all peripheral elements, represented by Gabbar. Though Jai and Veeru are petty criminals, they are employed by the state, rendering them 'infra-legal' but not irredeemably criminal, unlike Gabbar. 'They are figures with whom the new proletarian and other disaffected audiences could identify. One of the truly astonishing features of the developing cinema culture of this period is the success with which criminality could be deployed as a metaphor for all forms of rebellion and disidentification,' writes Prasad. It is also what separates them from the dacoit Gabbar, another subaltern figure, who challenges the feudal system. Thakur, who used to be a cop, temporarily sets aside legal protocols to deploy justice that the law cannot bring about. ' There is, of course, also the commentary that the legal and due processes in India are slow, by making the police arrive late in the movie, and the jailer, played by Asrani, a comical figure,' said Gabriel. In Sippy's film, there is a restoration of order rather than rebellion, through the figures of Jai and Veeru. Since Jai and Radha's love story is impossible in the society they live in, Jai is eliminated while Radha also goes back to her spectre-like existence. Veeru assimilates himself into the society by ending up with Basanti (Hema Malini), and most likely, marrying her. 'The 'villainy' of Gabbar Singh is established through the gaze he casts on women too—how he makes Basanti dance or how he looks while Helen is performing in front of his men,' said Gabriel. Sholay's 'ideal' men are shown as homosocial and transformed by the women into being pillars of the state. Veeru and Jai want to be better human beings, even refusing Thakur's money, to avenge Gabbar. They start caring about the people in the village and their plight due to the dacoits. The next few years, however, took a different route in scholarly ruminations over the movie. Homoeroticism in Sholay 'If Amitabh Bachchan can express undying love for other men on the screen, all in the name of yaari, why can't they too indulge in a little mischief?' asked R. Raj Rao. In the late 2000s, a wave of queer readings of Sholay began. Prominent Indian scholars focused on the camaraderie between Jay and Veeru, locating their interactions as one laden with sexual innuendo. Scholars R. Raj Rao and Ashok Raw Kavi, in particular, focused on the lyrics of the song 'Yeh Dosti', celebrated as one of the best songs of friendship in Hindi cinema. They interpret the text as a declaration of homoerotic desire. 'One verse, openly sexual, says: 'I will take anything from you'— 'Tere Liye Lelenge.' 'Lelenge' is Hindi street slang for the phrase, getting fu****', writes Kavi. In a similar vein, Rao calls the 350cc motorbike a phallic symbol in his essay, 'Memories Pierce The Heart.' According to Rao, Bachchan's popularity as a male brooding hero created a homoerotic bond with his young audience. 'The bond that Amitabh Bachchan formed with other male actors on the screen, complemented by the presence of an all-male audience that had gathered to watch him, engendered a sort of homoeroticism in the dark of the movie hall,' writes Rao. He does acknowledge that men in India are open about physical proximity, and even show affection among themselves through physical contact. But when an actor like Bachchan sings the song with lyrics ' People see us as two, but actually we are one, o God, bless us, so we never separate, never wound one another,' it opens up possibilities. 'If Amitabh Bachchan can express undying love for other men on the screen, all in the name of yaari, why can't they too indulge in a little mischief?' asked Rao. However, these readings have also been challenged as limited and inadequate and as a bit of academic retrofitting. Mausumi Bhattacharya, in her paper 'Bromance in Bollywood: Is it dismantling homohysteria and homophobia?', interprets the friendship between the two as bromance with a homosocial subtext instead of homosexual or homoerotic. She uses Kavi and Rao's works to highlight that reading the song as a homoerotic text dilutes the essence of 'bromance' that exists in the social fabric of India. 'Being brothers-in-crime underlines the aspect of shared interest, a key criterion of bromance. Though much is not revealed about the background and upbringing that they belong to, the identical socio-economic condition can be presumed. They partake in crime together, get arrested together, and serve jail sentences together is all too evident from the film's narrative,' writes Bhattacharya. Homoerotic or not, the song and the film established a definite career trajectory for Amitabh Bachchan. Also read: Feroze Khan's Dharmatma released the same year as Sholay and Deewar. It still stood out The Bachchan phenomenon 'As an actor, Amitabh's anger was never ugly. Other actors mix anger with arrogance. Amitabh's anger was mixed with hurt and tears,' said Javed Akhtar When the film was released in 1975, it was promoted as a significant multi-starrer, and the first poster had passport-size images of the entire cast. They were placed in a line at the bottom with the wild brushstrokes of smouldering orange flames and the title occupying the rest of the frame. 'The first week was difficult for Sholay, creating a minor stir among the producers and distributors. Subsequently, another set of posters with Bachchan and Dharmendra prominently in the frame, along with Amjad Khan (as Gabbar Singh), were printed,' writes Ranjani Mazumdar, who teaches cinema studies at Jawaharlal University. A few weeks later, Sholay was declared a success at the box office and Gabbar Singh its most popular character. A new set of posters was made with Amjad Khan as the dominant icon of the poster, clearly indicating the film industry's perception that Gabbar's persona had been successful with audiences. Khan, while continuing to do many hit films, was nowhere close to creating the brand of films that Bachchan eventually did. From the occasional drunk and gentleman of Hrishikesh Mukherjee films, he developed his brooding persona in a full-fledged brand with the Salim-Javed movies, especially with Zanjeer (1973), Sholay and Deewar releasing in quick succession. 'Amitabh doesn't tower over his strapping co-star Dharmendra in Ramesh Sippy's Sholay, the groundbreaking 'curry Western' that confirmed his arrival as a new kind of superstar, a disaffected Angry Young Man who takes the law into his own hands. But with his short-waisted, long-legged physique, he can look downright gangly, and when strategically photographed, he becomes an honorary giant,' writes David Chute in his 2005 essay, 'The BIG B: The Rise and Fall and Rebirth of Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan'. Javed Akhtar, one half of the writing duo Salim-Javed, gave his take on why Bachchan's portrayal of proletariat or subaltern characters became popular with the audiences. 'As an actor, Amitabh's anger was never ugly. Other actors mix anger with arrogance. Amitabh's anger was mixed with hurt and tears,' said the screenwriter and lyricist in Talking Films: Conversations on Hindi Cinema with Javed Akhtar. He does, however, note that the later Bachchan developed arrogance. But in the 1970s, he was very much the guy who won because he did not let the more privileged determine his worth. Scholars have continued to read Sholay through multiple lenses to understand its undying appeal. As Sholay enters its 50th year, its charm is far from over. Naman Kumar, a law student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, was fascinated by the movie. His term paper for the contract law course looks at the 'promise' made by Jai and Veeru to Thakur to get him Gabbar, under the ambit of the then prevailing definition of contracts in Indian law. Jai dies, but Veeru fulfills the promise. That, however, is not enough, under the laws of the times. 'In the contract scene between Thakur and Jai and Veeru, while Veeru completes the promise on behalf of Jai as well as himself after his death, due to the lack of consideration, it will only be a promise. Additionally, it can't be considered a contract because the object of the promise/contract is illegal, and renders it void,' writes Kumar. (Edited by Ratan Priya)
Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
As Sholay nears 50, Iran consulate pays a nostalgic tribute to film: 'We still remember'
As Sholay nears 50, Iran consulate pays a nostalgic tribute to film: 'We still remember' NEW DELHI: Reminiscing 'Sholay' in times of conflict, the Consulate General of Iran in Mumbai Tuesday took to X (formerly Twitter) to post about an Iranian newspaper's coverage on the iconic Bollywood film awaiting its 50th anniversary. The Iranian embassy joined in, posting "Sholay turns 50 and Iran still remembers." While this nostalgic tribute highlighted the film's timeless appeal and cross-cultural resonance transcending borders, the gesture was also pleasantly surprising at a time when the country is recovering from a war. 'Sholay' was released on Aug 15, 1975, when India was under the Emergency. The Consulate General's post recalled how an Iranian newspaper dedicated a full-page tribute to 'Sholay', noting that the film's unforgettable story of friendship has become a cornerstone of cinematic memory in Iran. Interestingly, the iconic villain Gabbar Singh is known as Jabbar Singh in Iran. The post also mentioned Iranian actor Navid Mamza, who drew inspiration from Gabbar Singh's looks and menacing mannerisms. This gesture is significant given the historical and cultural ties between India and Iran. The two countries enjoyed a long-standing relationship rooted in their shared border until India's partition in 1947. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 5 Books Warren Buffett Wants You To Read in 2025 Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo Indian cinema has been a common thread between the two nations, with films like 'Shree 420' and 'Sangam' gaining immense popularity in Iran. Raj Kapoor's visit to Iran for the premiere of Shree 420 was met with a grand welcome, with fans showering him with affection. A newsletter on the website of the Hinduja group - which played a role in the film's distribution in Tehran - quotes SP Hinduja saying that it was the eldest of Hinduja siblings, Girdhar, based in Iran in the 1950s, who came up with the idea of promoting Indian films in Iran. "As he (Kapoor) stepped on to the platform upon arrival in Tehran, the crowd - predominantly women - started screaming. The noise was incredible and then there was a surge as several women smothered him with kisses," it says.
