On 21 October, the twelfth day of the strike, a cavalcade of about 150 cars and trucks gathered in the Shivaji Park area. Producers, directors, distributors, actors, singers, songwriters and technicians crammed into them. Many preferred to walk.
The march was a multi-starrer. Prominent participants included V. Shantaram, Sunil Dutt, Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Rohini Hattangadi, Raj Babbar, Tina Munim, Anil Kapoor, Anil Dhawan, Suresh Oberoi, Govinda, Khushboo, Farah, Meenakshi Seshadri, Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Sanjay Khan, Akbar Khan, Yash Chopra, Mithun Chakraborty, Shashi Kapoor, and many more. Rajesh Khanna was the press convener of the action committee.
Wrestler-turned-actor Dara Singh said, rather sarcastically, ‘In the past we hit the streets to collect funds for wars, floods and famine. Lekin aaj sarkar ne humein sachmuch sadakon par khada kar diya (But today the government has forced us on to the streets).’
Around 9.30 a.m., the caravan rolled towards Dadar. The march was led by Congress MP and actor Sunil Dutt. Crowds gathered on both sides of the road to catch a glimpse of the stars. Some joined the march. At one point, the number of participants swelled to 40,000. Around 2 p.m., the procession reached Azad Maidan. Then the bandwagon moved towards Mantralaya but was stopped by the cops near Bombay University.
Under Dutt’s leadership, action committee president Ramraj Nahta, senior actor-director Chandrashekhar, producer N.N. Sippy and other industry bigwigs presented a memorandum to CM S.B. Chavan. The delegation included three MPs from the city and sixteen MLAs.
On returning, Dutt said that he had received an unfavourable response. He said, ‘The Chief Minister says that you shouldn’t indulge in morchas and that until the high-level committee submits its report, he cannot do anything.’
In the days that followed, there were more marches, and at least two actors went on hunger strike: character actor Jankidas and comic actor Ravi Baswani. The latter, who played a stellar role in the comedy classic Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983), fasted at New Delhi’s Boat Club, the preferred location for protesters in those days.
Jankidas, then seventy-five, called off his three-day ‘fast unto death’ following an assurance from Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray that a statewide bandh would be called in support of the film industry’s demands. Jankidas, who acted in over 300 films, was also a cyclist of repute.
Several stars freely expressed their dissent during the strike. Dharmendra said, ‘I’ve seen the film industry being slapped and bullied by the political bosses. Still, it has the capacity to survive. I can’t believe why they want to kill us. After all, we are no terrorists.’
Shabana Azmi was more directly critical of the government. She said, ‘I have always wanted to believe in my government but time and again I have been disappointed. Rajiv Gandhi has been my hero but I feel let down by his government.’
Initially, production units were permitted to shoot films outside Maharashtra. Film laboratories also remained functional. But as the campaign generated steam, the industry came to a near standstill.
Director Rahul Rawail stopped shooting for Dacait when it was just ten days short of being completed. He said, ‘I had to leave my set standing at Chandivali Studios. It doesn’t matter, of course, because we have to leave our personal problems aside. The strike hasn’t [just] affected me, it has affected everyone. And like all other producers and directors, I’ll start where I left off once the strike is called off.’
That was the general mood in the industry. Cinemas stopped screening films in Maharashtra. Foreign news agency UPI reported that ‘work on about 200 films was halted paralysing about fifty-four million rupees in investments… About 1,50,000 people went out of work.’
The movement struck a chord with the film fraternity countrywide. The South Indian film chamber of commerce expressed full support to the agitation. On 29 October, cinemas, laboratories, music recording studios and distribution offices were shut across India to express solidarity with the Bombay film industry.
On 7 November, the New Bombay Taximen’s Union appealed to CM Chavan to bring an early end to the strike. A union press note said about 35 per cent of the city’s taxis had been affected by the closure of cinema halls.12 To ease film workers’ economic woes, about Rs 20 lakh was raised. Every card-carrying member of each association was given Rs 100 every week.
Lyricist and industry honcho Amit Khanna, who was closely involved with the action committee, recalled that the strike was highlighted by national and foreign media. He remarked, ‘The government got rattled.’
The proposed tax affected distributors and producers who began to look for alternative channels of survival. ‘Undoubtedly, most of the film industry’s units would have shifted their head offices out of Bombay and Maharashtra so that they could escape paying a sales tax on the sale of the completed film’s distribution rights,’ wrote Saari, adding that the industry also toyed with the idea of making films in Hyderabad-Secunderabad, Gujarat, even West Bengal.
Excerpted with permission from When Ardh Satya Met Himmatwala: The Many Lives of 1980s’ Bombay Cinema, Avijit Ghosh, Speaking Tiger.