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Namak Haram
aka Traitor aka The Ungrateful 1973 146’ col Hindi d/st Hrishikesh Mukherjee p Raja Ram, Satish Wagle, Jayendra Pandya pc RSJ Prod. co-sc/dial Gulzar co-sc D.N. Mukherjee lyr Anand Bakshi c Jaywant Pathare m R.D. Burman lp Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Rekha, Simi Garewal, Asrani, A.K. Hangal, Jayashree T, Om Shivpuri, Durga Khote, Raza Murad
Mukherjee repeats his successful pairing of Khanna and Bachchan in Anand (1970) with this buddy melodrama in an industrial working-class setting. When his father (Shivpuri) falls ill, the rich playboy Vikram (Bachchan) has to manage the Bombay factory. He insults a union leader (Hangal) and triggers a strike which he can end only by publicly apologising. Vikram asks his friend Somu (Khanna) to help avenge this humiliation and Somu joins the workforce. Somu becomes involved with a female union activist (Rekha) and changes his views about the conflict and sides with the workers. Vikram’s father exposes him as a management stooge and Somu is killed. Vikram takes the blame, is jailed and, when released, decides to champion workers’ rights to honour Somu’s memory. Based loosely on Peter Glenville’s Becket (1964) with a contemporary plot, it attempted a hard-edged realism in its dialogue, with several references to debates and political action from the Left in the late 60s.