Sunil Dutt

Sunil Dutt (born June 6, 1929, Khurd village, Jhelum district, British India [now in Pakistan]—died May 25, 2005, Mumbai) was an Indian actor, producer, director, social activist, and politician, known especially for his several acting roles as a dacoit (member of an armed gang of bandits) in Bollywood films. In a career spanning over four decades, Dutt acted in about 100 films, produced 7, and directed 6. He was awarded the Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian award, in 1968.

Early career

Balraj Dutt was born to Diwan Raghunath Dutt and Kulwanti Devi in Punjab’s Jhelum district (now in Pakistan). Dutt lost his father at a young age. After the partition of India, he and his family moved to what is now the Indian state Haryana. Dutt graduated from Jai Hind College, in Bombay (now Mumbai), and took a job with a leading British advertising agency. His interest in the performing arts was stoked by his work as an announcer on Radio Ceylon’s Hindi service. There, as the host of a show, he met and interviewed a number of celebrities, including his future wife and costar, the actress then known simply as Nargis.

Film career

Dutt debuted in Hindi cinema with the romantic drama Railway Platform (1955). He was credited as Sunil Dutt, the screen name he chose to distinguish himself from another contemporary actor, Balraj Sahni. His breakthrough came a few movies later with the social drama Mother India (1957), which also starred Nargis, Rajendra Kumar, and Raaj Kumar. He played Birju, the wayward son of the protagonist, Radha (played by Nargis), who becomes a dacoit and is eventually killed by Radha after he abducts a young woman. It is regarded as one of his most memorable performances. About this time Dutt began a romantic relationship with Nargis, whom he saved from a fire on set. The couple married in 1958. His other notable roles from the 1950s were in the women-centric social dramas Sadhna (1958), in which he was cast as a professor who enters a sham marriage with a sex worker, and Sujata (1959), in which he played an upper-caste man in love with a Dalit woman.

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Dutt appeared in a variety of roles in several hit films in the 1960s. He portrayed an artist and the former lover of the female lead (played by Mala Sinha) in Gumrah (1963; “Astray”); a dreaded dacoit in Mujhe Jeene Do (1963; “Let Me Live”); a lawyer who had become separated from his family as a child in Waqt (1965; “Time”); a man navigating familial disputes in Khandan (1965; “Family”); a lawyer who navigates the death and the mysterious reappearance of his wife in the supernatural thriller Mera Saaya (1966; “My Shadow”); Ajatashatru, the ruler of the ancient kingdom of Magadha, in the historical romance Amrapali (1966); an actor who finds himself at the center of a murder case in the suspense thriller Hamraaz (1967; “Confidant”); and a guileless young man in love with his neighbor in the romantic comedy Padosan (1968; “Neighbor”). Dutt made his directorial debut in 1964 with the daring, experimental one-man film Yaadein (“Memories”).

Dutt appeared in and directed several films across genres through the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Some of his notable credits from those decades include Reshma Aur Shera (1971), which Dutt also directed and produced; Pran Jaye Par Vachan Na Jaye (1974; “Life May Be Lost, but a Promise Must Be Kept”); Nagin (1976; “Female Serpent”); Jaani Dushman (1979; “Archnemesis”); Rocky (1981), which was directed by Dutt and marked the first major role of his son, Sanjay Dutt; Watan Ke Rakhwale (1987; “Nation’s Protectors”); and Parampara (1993; “Heritage”). His last film was Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003), in which he was cast as the father of the eponymous protagonist, a crime boss who goes to medical school, played by Dutt’s son. In 2007 video clips of Dutt as Ajatashatru from Amrapali were digitally incorporated in the song “Dhoom Tana” in Om Shanti Om, which starred Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone; movie clips of two other legendary Bollywood actors, Rajesh Khanna and Jeetendra, were also included in the song.

Political career and other ventures

Dutt became the sheriff of Mumbai in 1981. In 1984 he joined the Indian National Congress party. He was elected a member of the Lok Sabha (the lower chamber of Indian Parliament) from northwest Mumbai for five terms (1984, 1989, 1991 [resigned in January 1993 in protest over religious violence], 1999, and 2004). In April 1993 Sanjay Dutt was arrested for illegally possessing firearms—an AK-56 rifle and a 9-mm pistol—connected to 12 bomb blasts that had occurred in Mumbai the previous month. In 2007 he was given a six-year prison sentence. He was acquitted in 2016 after having served part of his jail time.

As a political leader, Sunil Dutt was known for working to improve the living conditions of residents of urban areas in Mumbai marked by squalor and overcrowding. In 2004, during his last term in the Lok Sabha, he was appointed India’s minister for youth affairs and sports, a post he held until his death in 2005.

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In 1981 he founded the Nargis Dutt Foundation, a philanthropic organization offering health care and educational initiatives, in memory of his wife, who had succumbed to cancer that year. In 1987 Dutt led a 1,250-mile (2,000-km) peace march from Mumbai to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, to pray for peace when Sikh militancy was at its height in Punjab. In 1988, to appeal for global disarmament, he went to Japan and walked from Nagasaki to Hiroshima (both cities were targets of U.S. atomic bombs during World War II).