Scandals, some of them are too torrid for any acceptance, have always been a part of Bollywood as much as the glitz and glamour. Surprisingly, these scandals didn’t mar the Hindi film industry but contributed to its growth in their own way.
Way back in 1935, a contemporary top actress set the ball of scandal rolling in Bollywood. Actress Devika Rani eloped with her co-star of ‘Jeevan Naya’, Najmal Hasan. Devika was then married and was the co-founder of Bombay Talkies with her husband Harivansh Rai. The entire real-life episode shocked the Indian middle-class as much as Bollywood.
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Since the elopement of Devika Rani, India's Tinseltown has been rocked, swayed, stirred and moved in various degrees by controversies and scandals.
In fact, there has not been any big name of this industry that remained free of any scandal and controversy. Shiney Ahuja, a rising talent of the industry in 2009, was accused of raping a teenage domestic help of his home, while claims of sexual conversations between actress Bipasha Basu and politician Amar Singh became the talk of the town.
Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar's and aspiring actor Preeti Jain's sex scandal, Aamir Khan’s rumoured secret child, and the MMS scandal of Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor were only a few among hoards of them.
The lady of the industry who is in news perpetually for all the wrong reasons, Kangana Ranaut, stirred the tinsel town and the nation in 2016 with her dirty and salacious feud with Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan. The saga was much more than filthy as both the celebrity actors washed their dirty linens in public.
No less juicy were all the scandals Parveen Babi was associated with. When her relationship with director Mahesh Bhatt was roaring and tumultuous, she was reported to have ran naked chasing him. And in doing so, she became the second lady from Bollywood to parade naked in public after Kabir Bedi’s wife Protima Bedi.
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MMS scandals have rocked Bollywood often and with alarming regularity involving some top actors, both male and female -- including Katrina Kaif, Soha Ali Khan, Prashant Narayanan and Vedita Pratap Singh, Mallika Sherawat, Preity Zinta, Mika and Rakhi Sawant, Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor and Sherlyn Chopra.
It will be unfair if we call it a scandal because strictly speaking it wasn’t. The Big B, Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha's affair was more of a soft, adorable and touching story of love and affection that didn’t find a fulfilment. It was believed to have started rolling in the sets of 'Do Anjaane' in 1976 and he was then already a married man.
Their relationship blossomed and very secretly beyond the glares of media and people. It is believed that the director of Silsila, Yash Chopra, spilled the beans and he confirmed the relationship during an interview. But by then, the murmurs of relationship was getting louder sans any confirmation.
“Not to mention that the Amitabh-Rekha affair wasn’t really a scandal. It never shocked or stirred either the cine lovers or the industry,” said Reena Chauhan, a Delhi-based film critic. “But it did dent Big B’s image as he was looked upon as the ideal husband and the ideal father in traditional Indian values."