“Mithun Ko Dadasaheb Phalke!”
A 75-year-old man exclaimed while reading the newspaper at the famous Pappu ki Chai ki Dukaan in Varanasi’s Mohalla Assi, a hotspot for all sorts of debates. Pavan Jha, a film historian who prefers to be called a cinephile, happened to be present. You know it’s a matter of national interest if something is being discussed at Pappu ki Dukaan. The announcement about “Gareebon ka Amitabh” receiving India’s highest film award on October 8 was suffixed with instant reactions, which were an interesting gradient from ‘Bahut Badhiya!’ to ‘Terrible’. Jha, while relishing the conversation, pondered on the debate that came in its wake: Does Mithun Chakraborty deserve the Dadasaheb Phalke Award at this point? And, of late, why is the Dadasaheb Award being given only to actors?
The award to Mithun Chakraborty has raised fingers at the political undertones of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award being given to him following the Padma Bhushan earlier this year. Mithun’s political arc has been as varied and contrasting as his cinematic one. Ideologically, he tailed the zeitgeist of the respective decades. Was Mithun the OG Urban Naxal? Mithun has swung from ultra-Left, Communist, to centrist (Trinamool Congress) and, now, to Right-wing politics (Bharatiya Janata Party). The Naxalite movement, riding on the wheels of poverty and unemployment, radicalised the Bengali youth in the late ’60s-’70s. Mithun came of age on the streets of north Calcutta and became a Naxal leader. In 1969, his father Basant Kumar Chakraborty, fear-struck, sent his son away, far from the madding crowd. Mithun, however, had to wait for another decade to taste star success.
Few actors have had a career trajectory like that of Mithun Chakraborty. From The Naxalites (1980) to The Kashmir Files (2022), his cinematic choice reflected his shape-shifting politics. From low-brow to high-brow to low-brow, from the revered to the ridiculous, art films to commercial potboilers to becoming King of B-grade (low-budget), he did films in every register. In his own words, he did three kinds of movies: ‘for money [to secure his children’s future, so that they didn’t suffer like him], for my fans and for myself.’ Veteran film critic Shoma A. Chatterji says, “For whatever his lifestyle or ever-shifting political ideologies, there is no question whether he deserves the [Dadasaheb Phalke] Award. A durability of more than four decades in an industry dominated by the likes of Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, etc., he proved his worth many, many times, in contrasting films like Jallaad and as (the mystic saint) Ramakrishna Paramahamsa in Swami Vivekananda in the ’90s.”
It was at the convocation of 1973 at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), where auteur Mrinal Sen, seated between Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Ebraham Alkazi, caught a glimpse of a boy, from the acting department, teasing the girls. Sen was mighty impressed by his insouciant attitude of being playful, or rather shameless, in spite of the dignitaries in attendance. A couple of years later, when Sen was making Mrigayaa, his mid-career shift to colour film, a story shot in Odisha about the Santhal tribes with echoes of the Santhal revolt of the 1850s in the backdrop. For the lead, he sent a telegram to his cameraman KK Mahajan asking him to find the “FTII graduate of 1972 batch, tall, dark, well-built, Bengali, name starts probably with ‘M’. Catch hold of him and send a recent photo immediately.” In his interviews, Sen reasoned why he wanted the nobody Mithun Chakraborty for the role. Male actors in India, at the time, he said, were very effeminate-looking. He was looking for a man, a he-man, rugged and rustic, with great physique. And, most importantly, he said, “a good actor must be shameless.” Sen had caught a glimpse of Chakraborty’s shamelessness and had a hunch that he’d do very well.
The arthouse Mrigayaa (1976) won Mithun Chakraborty the National Award for his debut film — a singular feat. But for two years after that, he had no films. Nobody wanted to cast a dark-complexioned hero.
The industry came down heavily on producer Rajkumar Barjatya for picking the swarthy boy for Taraana (1979), whose voice was husky and Hindi dialogue delivery not the best in business. Mithun earnestly lugged around Amitabh Bachchan’s bags on the sets of Do Anjaane (1976), in which the “poor man’s Amitabh Bachchan” played a bit part. He struck gold with romantic family drama Pyar Jhukta Nahin (1985), which Rishi Kapoor had turned down. His Shankar Dada from Umesh Mehra’s Ashanti (1982), who joins forces with cop Rajesh Khanna, was crucial in Mithun’s filmography.
He could act. Alkazi told Sen, that boy is a good actor. Mithun clawed his way in and went on to show that he can fight and dance, too. When the audiences forgot that he could act, he showed them how well he is at it, yet again, flitting between high-brow and low-brow. But the name remained unwelcome in the fair-skinned, north Indian alpha-male led Hindi film industry. At the zenith of stardom, he would feel the most lonely. But he’s been a lone ranger through the ups and down, finding more space in gossip columns of magazines than in the corridors of Bollywood.
“After his debut (Mrigayaa, 1976) and the National Award, nobody was willing to give him the time of the day. He just didn’t get any work, and it is understandable if it embittered him a little. Over the years, bit by bit, he established himself as a bankable mainstream hero. Unfathomable as it may seem, achieving that kind of proficiency in popular cinema also required a certain set of skills. Back in the 1980s, to invoke whistles from the ‘frontbenchers’, one needed to project oneself in a certain way. And these frontbenchers never left him, so he catered to them as best as he could. But while he did these inane, physically demanding roles, he also went back and immersed himself in the more nuanced complexity of a Shibnath (Tahader Katha, 1992) or Rohit Roy (Titli, 2002). Rituparno Ghosh’s Titli (co-starring the mother-daughter duo Aparna Sen and Konkona Sen Sharma) was to Mithun what Satyajit Ray’s Nayak (1966) was to Uttam Kumar,” says Amborish Roychoudhury, author of In a Cult of Their Own: Bollywood Beyond Box Office (2018). In 1981, Bengal’s matinee idol Uttam Kumar would cast Mithun as his screen son in Kumar’s directorial Kalankini Kankabati, on moral decay of Bengali Zamindari, co-starring Sharmila Tagore and Supriya Choudhury.
The year 1979 was Mithun’s breakthrough year with Surakksha, where he played the hyper-sexual spy, Gunmaster G-9, and Taraana. “Mithun Chakraborty wasn’t just a hero; he was an idea whose time had come. He emerged when theatres were facing a video piracy crisis and the gentry had abandoned them,” writes Avijit Ghosh in the chapter ‘Stars Who Defined the Decade’; from his book When Ardh Satya Met Himmatwala: The Many Lives of 1980s’ Bombay Cinema (2023). Mithun was the representative idol of the non-gentry cinemagoers. “His entry marks an important break from the older darlings of the underclass. Dara Singh was the ultimate macho man whom the frontbenchers revered. Amitabh Bachchan had fanatical following among all classes. But his screen persona as a rebel did not tally with his public-school background. In Mithun’s case, the frontbenchers both loved and identified with him. Unlike Bachchan, he seemed to be one of them. Watching him was self-fantasy fulfilment.” And, pirated VHS tapes spread Mithun’s popularity far and wide.
“Mithun is possibly the only Indian male actor (and, perhaps, the only Indian actor) to win the [National] Award for their debut film. No other actor has been able to match that feat in all these years. He followed it up with two other National Awards: as Best Actor for a spectacular role as an old freedom fighter in [Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s] Tahader Katha (1992), and Best Supporting Actor as the legendary mystic Ramakrishna Paramahamsa in [GV Iyer’s] Swami Vivekananda (1994). Till 1996, Mithun had won three National Awards against Amitabh Bachchan’s one. Even the great Naseeruddin Shah hadn’t won as many National Awards till then: he had two awards for Sparsh (1980) and Paar (1984),” says Roychoudhury.
Mithun is an “exceptional physical actor who began his journey with powerful films like [Mrinal Sen’s] Mrigayaa and [KA Abbas’] The Naxalites (1980), made blink-and-miss appearances in the early ’70s films, and rose to superstardom without any godfather in the industry in the ’80s, solely through his hard work and talent. In him, the actor, you see the blend of ordinary and extraordinary. His career has been prolific and relentless, with one film after another, breaking unusual records. While some of these films may not have appealed to the intellectual elite, they were undeniably entertaining for the masses. His cult following has been stronger and more impactful than that of his peers. Three National Awards for his acting talent speaks volumes,” says Jha.
In an era when star sons were launched with fanfare, the National Award-winning actor had to carve out his space inch by inch. Ghosh writes, “A careful perusal of Mithun’s filmography shows a slow upward curve [in that ’80s], from bit roles to big parts, from B-minus to B and A grade ventures. Dancing and fighting were the twin bedrocks of Mithun’s stardom, which came with Babbar Subhash’s Disco Dancer (1982). Subhash told him that he’d make him into ‘a big star’. Disco Dancer cost Rs 42 lakh. Mithun’s fees was Rs 3 lakh.” Disco Dancer was the first Bollywood film to gross Rs 100 crore worldwide.
The disco era of Bollywood gave wings to Kishore Kumar’s nephew music director Bappi Lahiri, and he soared high with Mithun, with his Elvis Presley moves, as his lodestar. “Like Naushad and Dilip Kumar, Shankar-Jaikishan and Shammi Kapoor, RD Burman and Rajesh Khanna — you can’t deny how crucial a music director’s role is in an actor reaching that level of stardom and success. Another such pair that dominated the 1980s entirely was Mithun Chakraborty and Bappi Lahiri. While Pancham (RD Burman), too, created songs in the early ’80s for Mithun, in Hindi (Sitara, Ashanti) and Bengali films (Kalankini Kankabati, Troyee), and despite Mithun’s sleeper musical hit Taraana, scored by Raamlaxman, Mithun wasn’t yet taken seriously among the top-tier actors. Until Bappi Lahiri elevated him to stardom. Bappi’s music for Mithun wasn’t traditional or in line with the trends of the time; instead, he created a trend with Disco Dancer. And made the unconventional choice of making newcomer Vijay Benedict playback for Mithun. What followed was a journey that saw Mithun become one of the top stars of that era,” says Jha.
What was just an item song until then had become the subject of a movie with Disco Dancer. The other actor to disco-dance his way to fan’s hearts in the ’80s was Govinda, who became a target of an unfortunate joke this week, as he accidentally ‘shot himself in the leg’ after Mithun’s award announcement. Decades before Salman Khan, audiences would go berserk and blast bombs in single-screen theatres for repeat reruns of Mithun’s films and their title tracks.
Mithun is, perhaps, the only hero who could have used a cycle as a shield against gunfire in a fight sequence (Gunda). From Tokyo to Egypt, Georgia and Belarus to Mongolia, the Maoists of Dantewada to the ladies in Moscow, the miracle movie-dance machine Mithun stole hearts with his moves. In Russia (erstwhile USSR), after Raj Kapoor’s Awaara, if the women would swoon to another Indian name, that belonged to Disco Dancer Mithun Chakraborty, whose Dance Dance popularity could have rivalled that of Boney M. In 2010, Mithun had said, “When I went to Russia recently, I was expecting my fans to be 40-45 years of age. But the girls who surrounded me were 19-20 years old. Obviously, the mothers had passed on the movie’s legacy.”
He witnessed bigger successes with melodramatic southern socials in the 1980s: Ghar Ek Mandir, Swarag Se Sundar (in which Mithun’s dialogues earned more claps than Jeetendra’s), Parivaar, Pyar Ka Mandir. Action dramas like Ghulami, Jaal, Watan Ke Rakhwale, Daata were his other hits from the decade, writes Ghosh in his book.
Just like how this outsider came as a whirlwind and pulled a veni vidi vici in the Bombay industry, he also left it in the early 1990s for Ooty, to set up Hotel Monarch and his film studio Mithun’s Dream Factory; and acted in films which were shot in and around Ooty. These movies were categorised as B movies or low-budget films whose then reigning king was Mithun. With over 350 films to his name, 120 of which were released in a single decade: 1980s, and the next decade saw him both acting in high-brow art films and making low-brow money spinners, the latter came to be called his Ootysploitation films, Mithun made people’s cinema. With such films as Kasam Paida Karne Wale Ki, Ustadi Ustad Se, Hisaab Khoon Ka, Gareebon Ka Daata, Janta Ki Adalat, Sikandar Sadak Ka, the force of nature Mithun owned the ‘sadak chhaap’ label and it was from the streets that this people’s star found his greatest love. Mithun, who holds the record of highest number of Hindi films as a hero (over 250), was the highest tax payer in Bollywood in mid-to-late ’90s. Spy films, romance films, family dramas, political films, historical films, dance films, fight films, films across linguistic barriers (Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Odia, Bhojpuri, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada), and acted opposite top actresses from Sharmila Tagore, Sridevi, to Madhuri Dixit (Prem Pratigyaa), he has done it all.
“Mithun’s contribution to cinema cannot be ignored,” Jha adds, but at age 74, since he is still acting in films, “perhaps, it’s still too early to honour him with India’s most prestigious award for contribution to cinema, especially when there are others more senior [film personnel] and with even greater contributions. For instance, I would have loved to see Lakshmikant-Pyarelal being honoured, as Pyarelal ji is still alive.” And there are so many more, from film directors like Aribam Syam Sharma, to actors like Jaya Bachchan, Sharmila Tagore, Mammootty, Kamal Haasan, or Shabana Azmi who completes 50 years of acting this year. But that does not discount the fact that Mithun is deserving of the award.
“Forget about awards. His career is littered with award-worthy performances: in Goutam Ghose’s Gudia (1997), Rituparno Ghosh’s Titli (2002), Utpal Dutt’s Ferari Fauj (2002), Buddhadev Dasgupta’s Kaalpurush (2005), a film called Chaka (2000), Shukno Lanka (2010), Nobel Chor (2011) and Mani Ratnam’s Guru (2007),” says Roychoudhury, adding, “In a career spanning almost half a century, Mithun has done a diverse array of roles, from the sublime to the ridiculous — the latter includes films like Surakksha, Gunda, Loha, Hitler, Chandaal. But those films don’t define his body of work. Nor should they. Irrespective of what his current (or previous) political stand may be, it has no bearing on whether he deserves the honour of a Dadasaheb Phalke Award or not. In my opinion, it was long overdue,” says Roychoudhury.
Neither his variegated politics nor his B-movies can shadow the worth of a deserving Star whose contribution to Indian cinema, across languages, has been considerable. Let veteran actress Simi Garewal’s words lay to rest this ‘worth’ debate. Garewal, who directed Mithun in Rukhsat (1988), says, as Ghosh quotes her in his book: Mithun’s strength lay in his sheer physicality, “a lean but powerful presence. This physicality manifested in his action scenes as well as his dances.” He was “an all-round good actor with a star presence” who “has no ‘weaknesses’.”
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