[As
his popularity grew, he took on starring roles. In “Achanak” (1973), he played
an army major on the run after killing his wife and lover. In the 1979 film
“Lahu Ke Do Rang” (“Two Shades of Blood”), he played two roles: a soldier in
the rebel army of an Indian freedom fighter and the soldier’s son, who tries to
avenge his father’s murder.]
By Nida Najar
 |
|
Vinod
Khanna in 1988. For four years during the 1980s, he lived in a commune
in
Oregon before returning to Mumbai to resume his movie career.
Credit
Dinodia Photos/Getty Images
|
NEW
DELHI — Vinod Khanna, a
celebrated Indian actor who made his name in Bollywood in the 1970s playing
first villains and then leading men, spent a long interlude at a notorious
cult’s commune in Oregon and later went into politics, died on Thursday in a
hospital in Mumbai. He was 70.
The cause was advanced bladder cancer, a
hospital spokesman said.
For a time Mr. Khanna was one of India’s most
recognizable stars, a darkly handsome screen idol who appeared in more than 100
films, many of them runaway successes.
By his own account, the film that established
him in Bollywood was “Mera Gaon Mera Desh” (“My Village, My Country”). In that
movie, released in 1971, he played a dacoit — an armed bandit — who abducts the
lead character’s love interest.
He played villains with great flair, recalled
Priya Dutt, the daughter of Sunil Dutt, an actor and producer who often worked
with Mr. Khanna. “He had the whole swagger in his work,” she said.
As his popularity grew, he took on starring
roles. In “Achanak” (1973), he played an army major on the run after killing
his wife and lover. In the 1979 film “Lahu Ke Do Rang” (“Two Shades of Blood”),
he played two roles: a soldier in the rebel army of an Indian freedom fighter
and the soldier’s son, who tries to avenge his father’s murder.
Commentary and remembrances after Mr.
Khanna’s death conveyed a sense that he had never reached his full potential as
an actor, certainly not the great heights attained by another leading Indian
star, Amitabh Bachchan, with whom Mr. Khanna appeared frequently.
That might have been in part because Mr.
Khanna had shifted his focus away from acting for a time during his prime
years. In 1975, he became a follower of the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later
known as Osho, who, borrowing from Eastern religions and focusing on
meditation, espoused free love as a path to a higher consciousness.
After Osho established a lavish compound in
Oregon, Mr. Khanna moved there in the 1980s.
“I spent four years with Osho,” Mr. Khanna
told The Times of India. “I was his gardener, I cleaned the toilets, I did the
dishes, and his clothes were tried out on me because we were, physically, of
the same stature.”
After four years in Oregon, Osho was arrested
and deported in 1985 for immigration violations. Mr. Khanna returned to Mumbai
and resumed his movie career. He was eagerly accepted back, he said.
He was born on Oct. 6, 1946, in Peshawar, now
a part of Pakistan, one of five children. His father was in the textile and dye
business, and his mother was a homemaker. The family fled to Mumbai during the
subcontinent’s bloody partition, and Mr. Khanna attended school there.
He was inspired to act, he said in The Times
of India interview, when he saw the 1960 film “Mughal-e-Azam,” about the
illicit love between a Mughal prince and a court dancer.
“I was swept away,” he said.
His first film was “Man Ka Meet” (1969),
produced by Mr. Dutt, who was to become a regular collaborator. Mr. Khanna
played a villain who plots to marry the heroine, the granddaughter of a wealthy
businessman.
He entered politics in the late 1990s,
joining the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and winning a seat in
Parliament from the Gurdaspur district in Punjab in 1998. He was re-elected
three times and held the seat at his death.
He also served as a junior minister for
external affairs under the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in
2003.
He is survived by two sons from his first
marriage, Rahul and Akshaye, who are both Bollywood actors; his wife, Kavita,
whom he married in 1990; and their two children, a son, Sakshi, and a daughter,
Shraddha.
Kavita Khanna said her husband’s legacy lay
not just in his acting but in his public service and his spirituality.
“He was a seeker who saw that there was much
more than the material world, and fame and success,” she said. “And he went in
search of that.”