Do we like Amitabh Bachchan?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A long record of giving back and no campaigning against anyone, marked down for one racially clumsy post and some contested old claims.
Bachchan is one of the biggest names in Indian film, and he is still working as a host and actor. The most telling chapter in his life may be the one outside cinema. In 1984 he left acting for politics at the urging of his family friend Rajiv Gandhi, won the Allahabad seat by a big margin, and quit about three years later.
His exit came under a cloud. His name was dragged into the Bofors arms-deal affair after a Swedish newspaper reported links, which he has always rejected. Reporting in 2012 said he was finally cleared. He has said he left politics because he was not good at it, and he still talks about the promises to Allahabad voters that he couldn't keep. That is a rare thing for a politician to admit.
Money questions have followed him. In 2016 his name surfaced in the Panama Papers reporting, and Congress demanded he be dropped as a state tiger ambassador. He denied being a director of the four companies named, called himself law-abiding, and said he welcomed an inquiry. In 2021 he ended a pan masala ad deal after an anti-tobacco group complained, returned the fee, and said he hadn't realised it counted as surrogate advertising.
The heaviest allegation is old and unproven. Sikh leaders, including the Akal Takht's acting jathedar in 2025, say the claims linking him to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots were never properly investigated and that he is still unexonerated. Bachchan once wrote to the Akal Takht claiming innocence. No finding against him turned up, and the live dispute is one of reputation, so we sit on the fence about it.
The newest stoush is smaller. On 6 July 2026 he posted about the French World Cup squad and the 'POWER of BLACK', and critics called it racist because it reduced the players to skin colour. Coverage also dug up a 2018 tweet that was seen the same way. He reportedly called the July post a mistake, which beats doubling down.
On the harm test we found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and no conspiracy theories or culture-war grift. We also found little on climate or trans rights from him either way, so the record here is thin. What we do have is the pan masala backflip and the tweet, and one clumsy post is not a pattern.