Read on to which superstar of Hindi cinema founded his own political party after being harassed during the Emergency period.
Cinema and politics have been associated with each other since time immemorial. Several actors including Jaya Bachchan, Paresh Rawal, Kirron Kher, Hema Malini, and many Bollywood actors are currently members of political parties in India. Even the actress Parineeti Chopra married the politician Raghav Chadha recently.
But do you know that a legendary Bollywood actor had launched his own political party in 1979? This supestar was none other than Dev Anand, whose 100th birth anniversary is being celebrated today on September 26, 2023. Having worked in over hundred films, Dharamdev Pishorimal Anand was one of the most celebrated and successful actors in the history of Indian cinema.
In 1975, when the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi had announced Emergency, the Bollywood actors were forced to heap praises on the Govenment. Dev Anand was among the stars, along with Kishore Kumar and Manoj Kumar and others, who refused to follow the orders and had to face the consequences. Their songs and films were banned on All India Radio and Doordarshan and their film shoots were constantly disturbed.
After the Emergency was lifted and elections were announced, Bollywood showed its support to Morarji Desai’s Janata Party, which came to power but fell through in August 1979. On September 14, 1979, Dev Anand launched his own political party called National Party of India at the Taj Palace Hotel in Bombay. He called his political party, “a crusade against poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and corruption. A party to promote a prosperous and growth-oriented society.”
As Dev Anand had writen in his autobiography Romancing With Life released in 2007, he and his assocaited wanted to “teach a lesson to a pack of greedy fools, a motley crowd of self-seeking opportunists.” The superstar even famously said, “If MGR could spell magic in Tamil Nadu, why not me in the whole country.”
But it was only a few months when Dev Anand dissolved his own political party as they could not find the right candidates to field for the 1980 general elections. The actor, who starred in multiple critically and commercially acclaimed films such as Guide, Jewel Thief, Johny Mera Naam, Hum Dono, Taxi Driver, and others, had said at the Jaipur Literature Fest in 2008, “I tried my best to run a political party christened National Party of India after Indira Gandhi’s emergency, but I am glad I gave it up because we could not find right candidates to contest the polls then.”
Dev Anand breathed his last at the age of 88 as he suffered a cardiac arrest in December 2011 in London. The actor was honoured with Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honour in the nation, in 2001 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest honour in Indian cinema, in 2002.
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