Sunil Dutt (Filed: 27/05/2005)
Sunil Dutt, the Indian film star turned politician, who died in Bombay on Tuesday aged 75, was one of the best loved figures of the Indian cinema; he also enjoyed a career in politics, and last year was appointed sports minister.
The story of Sunil Dutt - or "Duttsaab" as he was respectfully called - began in 1957 when Mehboob Khan's Mother India was released. The black and white film, a four-hankie weepie with a well-crafted storyline, reflected the utopian ideals of Nehru's Socialist India and the struggles of the masses.
Dutt was perfect as Birju, the angry rebel, while the role of his single mother was played by Nargis, one of the most hauntingly beautiful of India's actresses, whom Dutt was to marry. The film, in which the mother is forced to kill her son, who has chosen a path of violence, has become one of the great classics of Indian cinema, and is sometimes ranked with Gone with the Wind. It was screened at the Cannes Film Festival last year as part of its season of classic films, and then went on general release in French cinemas. In Britain, it is shown regularly at the National Film Theatre and on television.
Dutt is said to have rescued Nargis from a burning set. Although he was a Hindu and she a Muslim, their romance soon became the talk of India. After their relationship blossomed into marriage, they became an iconic Bollywood couple, able to claim the friendship of such figures as Jimmy Carter, who obligingly responded by calling Dutt "the Robert Redford of India".
The Dutts had two daughters and a son, Sanjay, who followed his father into films with Rocky (1981), and has since played the tough guy in numerous Bollywood movies. But he was an endless worry to his father. After bombs rocked Bombay in 1992, when some Muslim groups were apparently retaliating for the destruction by Hindu militants of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, a gun was found in Sanjay's home, and he was arrested. Dutt stepped down as an MP and put his professional career on hold for several years to campaign for Sanjay's release.
Nargis died of cancer in 1981, and just before her death she made her husband promise to campaign on behalf of victims of the disease. Although devastated by her death, he kept the promise, reduced his film commitments and worked tirelessly for the Nargis Dutt Cancer Foundation. At one stage, when the Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan wanted his help for his cancer hospital in Lahore, Dutt flew to Birmingham for a fund-raising function. Although he was an Indian and Imran a Pakistani, Dutt summed up his view of life: "Disease and suffering have no religion and no nationality. My work encompasses mankind."