Kaala Patthar is not remembered for its portrayal of workers’ woes. More than 45 years after its release, it’s the rivalry between the stars—Amitabh Bachchan and Shatrughan Sinha—that people recall. It was the last time two actors shared a screen.
Directed by Yash Chopra and written by Salim-Javed, Kaala Patthar (1979) is set in the coal mines of central India where workers are fighting for their rights. The 1970s in Bollywood was the decade of the angry young man, disillusioned by Emergency, political turmoil and apathy toward the working class. And a young Bachchan as Vijay Pal Singh, a former merchant navy captain looking for redemption, has never been more angry on screen.
What stands out in Kaala Patthar is the gallery of working women in the cast. This was at a time when most commercial movies had their female leads abducted by the villain and saved by the hero. Rakhee plays Doctor Sudha at the coal mine dispensary, while Parveen Babi plays a journalist Anita, and Neetu Singh is a bangle seller, Channo.
Scriptwriting duo Salim-Javed had already delivered hits like Zanjeer (1973) Deewaar (1975), Sholay (1975) and Don (1978) where they had perfected the trope of the angry young man challenging working conditions. Kaala Patthar takes it one step further by casting women in these professions.
Sudha fights on in the dispensary where there is a dearth of medicines. She refuses to be disheartened by the state of the dispensary and instead tries to help miners with whatever is possible, even making house visits, come rain or the hot sun. Channo, on the other hand, tries every trick in the book to sell her trinkets, relentlessly trying to make a sale, and not giving up when Vijay refuses to buy the ring she tries to sell. Anita, who is the daughter of Seth Dhanraj (Prem Chopra), refuses to back down from reporting on the precarious lives of the miners in his mill.
Story of coal miners
Kaala Patthar is among the finer pieces of works in Hindi cinema that look at the lives of coal miners. It’s based on the Chasnala mining disaster in Jharkhand where an explosion and the subsequent flooding killed 375 miners on 27 December 1975.
Decades later in Diptakirti Chaudhari’s book, Written by Salim-Javed: The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters (2015), Javed Akhtar was critical of the lack of reality in the script he and Salim Khan wrote.
“I learned from Kaala Patthar that instead of sitting in a hotel room writing about a coal mine, if we had treated the script a little more realistically, it would have worked better,” he said.
The movie is more than just a redemption arc for Vijay, a captain who abandoned his ship leading to the deaths of his crew, and tries to redeem himself by working in the mine. It’s a commentary on working conditions where profit is valued more than the wellbeing of the labourers. When the engineer Ravi Malhotra (Shashi Kapoor) discovers that one of the tunnels is in danger of flooding, the owner Dhanraj (Prem Chopra) doesn’t care. Sinha plays Mangal, an escaped convict, who clashes with Vijay frequently.
Vijay spouts some of the most famous lines from the film, including, “Aadmi Himalaya ki choti se girke uth sakta hai, lekin ek baar khud apni nazron se gir jaye toh phir woh girta hi chala jaata hai (A man can fall off the peak of Himalaya and get up again. But it is over when he cannot meet his own eyes).”
Incidentally, before he became a superstar, Bachchan worked for a Kolkata company that oversaw some of the work in the coal mines of Dhanbad and Asansol in West Bengal. “It’s perhaps surprising for many, but my initial work years in the early ’60s were spent in Bengal’s coal mines, spanning almost a decade,” Bachchan said in 2016. This was also mentioned by a contestant, who also works for a coal mine in Dhanbad, in the 106th episode of the popular game show Kaun Banega Crorepati hosted by Bachchan. The contestant also mentioned how he had read about Bachchan refusing to pause filming even when he accidentally got sprayed with contaminated water when a dam burst.
When the movie completed 42 years, Bachchan shared a post on Instagram. “42 years of KAALA PATTHAR.. !!! phew !!! Been a while .. and so many incidents in the film from my personal experiences when I worked in the Coal Dept of my Calcutta Company, my first job before joining the movies .. actually working in the coal mines in Dhanbad and Asansol,” read the caption.
In recent years, Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) used the mining industry as a backdrop to show gang violence while Mission Raniganj: The Great Bharat Rescue (2023) by Tinu Suresh Desai was based on a real-life engineer who rescued 69 coal miners trapped in Raniganj coal mines in 1989.
Also read: A courtesan without shame or guilt—1966 film ‘Amrapali’ gave us a proud, powerful heroine
Old fights, new bonds
Today, Kaala Patthar is famous for all the behind-the-scenes drama, especially the rivalry between Sinha and Bachchan.
The scripted fight between Mangal and Vijay escalated beyond the bounds of acting. Although Yash Chopra called for a cut, Amitabh, still in character, continued hitting Shatrughan. The scene quickly turned from an on-screen brawl to a real altercation.
According to Bharathi S. Pradhan’s biography of Sinha, Anything But Khamosh (2016), it was only after Shashi Kapoor intervened that Amitabh Bachchan finally stopped. While Amitabh Bachchan is known for his professionalism, this episode was seen as an unintended consequence of his intense immersion in the role of the “angry young man.”
The two actors had earlier worked together in Dostana (1980), Shaan (1980), and Naseeb (1981), which were commercial hits. The two actors had signed multiple films together but Sinha left them.
However, Sinha claims that they have buried the hatchet and are now friends. In an episode of the Zee TV show Yaaron Ki Baat in 2018, the duo engaged in a banter together. When one of the hosts, Riteish Deshmukh, asks why they did not work together after 1981, they tell him to let go of old stuff, and focus on the now. They even call each other the better actor. In the movie as well, Vijay and Mangal reconcile after the fight to find common ground.
In a scene when Mangal and Vijay go to rescue the trapped workers, they have to take separate routes to work faster. Before taking different routes, Mangal tells Vijay, “Maine zindagi mein kabhi apne aap ke alawa kisi aur ko tareef ke kaabil nai samjha, Par tumhe manta hu, dost.” (I have never considered anyone else worthy of praise except for myself. But I think you deserve all the praise, my friend). It is almost how the two eventually reconcile and speak of each other in the TV show decades later.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
It is not the last time, Amitabh Bachchan and Shatrughan Sinha worked together. They worked again in Dostana (1980), Shaan(1980) and Naseeb (1981) after Kala Pathar (1979).