Key Points
Magazines censored Bachchan's name during post-Emergency period
Actor strategically posed in group photos to ease editing
Congress connections triggered media boycott
Film critics exposed hidden censorship tactics
Film critic and author Bharathi S. Pradhan spoke about the incident in an interview with ANI and explained that after the Emergency was lifted, a few film magazines believed Bachchan was involved in the censorship of their content and accused him of being responsible for "blue-penciling all copy," including articles in well-known magazines.
"Just after the Emergency was lifted, a few magazines got together and banned Amitabh Bachchan because they felt that he and VC Shukla... were all one gang of Congress people and they had been blue-penciling all copy," she said.
Pradhan also revealed that the boycott led to strange situations where magazines started avoiding mentioning his name.
"If there was a filmography of, say, Hema Malini, and Amitabh Bachchan was her co-star, they would just put a comma instead of his name because Amitabh Bachchan was banned, so you can't put his name in the magazine," Pradhan added.
Pradhan further stated that the 'Sholay' actor was well aware of the situation and, to make it easier for editors to remove his image from group photos, he used to adjust his position.
"If they were doing a group picture somewhere, once he got to know that this is what they were up to, when there would be a group picture, he'd go stand on the extreme right or extreme left," she said.
"He told me, 'Just to facilitate their cutting, I would stand on the extreme right or extreme left,'" Pradhan recalled.
