Dharmendra dies at 89: From rural Punjab to India’s most loved action hero

HIndi shoot ikon and former fellow member of Parliament (MP) Dharmendra died at his place in bombay on Monday. The actor, widely considered to be one of the most successful stars in commercial Hindi cinema, had been ailing for the last several weeks. He would have been 90 on December 8.Born to a government school teacher in rural Punjab, the actor, who went by his mononym, starred in some of Hindi cinema’s most memorable films, including ‘Sholay’, ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh’, ‘Haqueeqat’, ‘Bandini’, ‘Anupama’, ‘Mamta’, ‘Chupke Chupke’, to name but a few. No other actor in the Mumbai film industry has had a career spanning six decades in which they delivered commercial hits in every successive decade.One of Dharmendra’s first hits was ‘Aayi Milan Ki Bela’ in 1964, while his last successful film was ‘Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani’ in 2023. ‘Ikkis’, the last film he worked on, is slated for release on December 25.“The end of an era…a massive mega star…the embodiment of a hero in mainstream cinema…incredibly handsome and the most enigmatic screen presence…he is, and will always be a bona fide Legend of Indian Cinema,” posted film director and producer Karan Johar on social media.Dharmendra first hit the limelight when he won a talent search competition organised by Filmfare magazine in the late 50s and where he was spotted by Bimal Roy. The actor would go on to deliver one of his subtlest performances in Roy’s ‘Bandini’ in 1963. But it would not be through his nuanced acting in films like ‘Bandini’, ‘Anupama’, or ‘Satyakam’ that Dharmendra became the mega-star that he was.Rather, he would use his smashing good looks, brawny physique, and broad brush-stroked acting to play the quintessential Hindi film hero who could beat up baddies, prefaced with that dialogue that became synonymous with him: “Kutte, mein tera khoon pi jaaoonga,” before walking into the sunset with the girl.Soon, the Bombay film press was showering him with sobriquets like He-Man and Garam Dharam. Columnist Devyani Chaubal, the Hedda Hopper of India, chronicled his love life in such microscopic detail that he once chased her at a film function, threatening to beat her up.But what made him India’s first mainstream action hero, and separated him from someone like wrestler Dara Singh, who, too, acted in action films, was a certain charm and gentleness that he personified in real life. He was a closet poet; it was this love for Urdu poetry that led to his relationship with Meena Kumari, the reigning star of her time. Writer Shobhaa De, who saw Dharmendra’s rise close when she edited ‘Stardust’ magazine in the 70s, describes him as possessing a certain simplicity and lack of worldliness. “He was a rustic folk hero,” she says.Unlike some of his younger contemporaries like Vinod Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra shunned the swish set, preferring to spend his evenings with fight masters like Mohan Baggad, Gurbachan Singh, and his own brother Ajit over Patiala pegs, reciting Urdu couplets and playing endless rounds of Rummy.Storied career Dharmendra worked in over 300 films, many of them double-handers with Amitabh Bachchan, Jeetendra, and Vinod Khanna. Throughout his career, unlike other male superstars of the time, he worked in numerous women-centric films, happy to play the supporting role. To cite a few: ‘Mamta’ with Suchitra Sen, ‘Anupama’ with Sharmila Tagore, ‘Khamoshi’ with Waheeda Rehman, ‘Guddi’ with Jaya Bhaduri, and most notably, ‘Sita Aur Geeta’, ‘Dream Girl’, and ‘Razia Sultan’ with Hema Malini.Dharmendra, who had been married at 19 to Prakash Kaur, a woman of his parents’ choice, before he moved to Bombay, famously fell in love on a film set with Hema Malini when her star was still on the ascendant. Over multiple film shoots, the two deepened their relationship and created a public furore when they decided to get married in 1980. Dharmendra had two daughters with Hema Malini, Esha and Ahana Deol, in addition to his four children from his first wife, sons Sunny and Bobby Deol, and daughters Vijayeta and Ajeeta.But through all the ups and downs of his personal and professional life, the star kept expanding his oeuvre, including films that showcased his great comedic timing like ‘Sholay’, ‘Chupke Chupke’, and ‘Pratiggya’. In the 1990s, after his son Sunny Deol had become an established star, an ageing Dharmendra continued to work in a slew of B-grade action films, sometimes working even three shifts a day.A story from this time, only partly apocryphal, is that one day Sunny Deol got a call from Punjab asking if the family was in financial straits or else why was Dharam paa-ji working in smutty films? Turned out that Dharmendra, innocent of his reputation, had agreed to do a film with Kanti Shah, then the single largest producer of smut in Bollywood.In a testament to what Shobhaa De calls his unworldliness, Dharmendra was convinced to essay a scene in which he had to writhe and moan in the throes of a heart attack, but which was later spliced and extrapolated to convey something else entirely on screen. The possibly apocryphal bit is that Sunny Deol subsequently called Shah home, bought off the film’s negative and prints, but not before giving him a taste of the “dhai kilo ka haath”.For the Deol family, it was important that Dharmendra’s reputation remained spotless, especially back home in Punjab among the legions of his admirers. Well before fans thronging outside homes of Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, and Salman Khan became a Mumbai thing, villagers from Punjab would line up outside Dharmendra’s bungalow at Juhu. In the 1980s, the joke went that there was a perennial shortage of cylinders at JVPD, where the actor lived, because so many of them were used up by the Deol family to feed the villagers who came to meet the star.In fact, the only time ‘Garam Dharam’ lost his cool by his own admission was when he slapped his Man Friday Bhanwar Singh for drinking up a whole pateela of milk which had been set aside to make tea for fans. “But within a few minutes I was so filled with remorse that I apologised to Bhanwar, and gave him a gold chain to atone for my bad behaviour,” he told this reporter during an interview.In 2004, Dharmendra, who always looked to connect to people and remain relevant in public life, represented Bikaner as a MP. However, politics did not interest him in the long run, and he refused to contest again. His wife, Hema Malini, remains in active politics as an MP from Mathura, while his eldest son, Sunny Deol, was an MP from Gurdaspur (2019-2024).In his last few years, Dharmendra retreated to the family farm at Lonavala only to become an unlikely social media star with 2.6 million followers on Instagram, where he posted about his simple farm life. Stardom followed him right to the end.