New Delhi: Sanjay Dutt didn’t plan to start a political argument on a Gandhi Jayanti special. Then again, he did put on the Munna Bhai voice.
Dutt appeared on Shekhar Suman’s talk show, Shekhar Tonite, to mark Gandhi Jayanti, and said he no longer feels peace in the country. His wording was gentle. He praised Indians as warm, large-hearted hosts and said he prayed to Shivji that those days would return. He never said what had changed. That’s worth noticing, because the clip spread online as if he had.
The part that got people talking came next. Suman asked him to imagine being India’s Prime Minister for five minutes and address the country, and Dutt did it as Munna Bhai. That’s the Mumbai gangster from Rajkumar Hirani’s Munna Bhai MBBS and Lage Raho Munna Bhai, a character who has been delivering Gandhi-flavoured pep talks since 2006.
मैं यह स्पष्ट करना चाहता हूँ कि किसी भी व्यक्ति, समुदाय या संस्था की भावनाओं को ठेस पहुँचाना, उनका अपमान करना या उनका अनादर करना मेरा उद्देश्य कभी नहीं रहा है।
मेरी टिप्पणियाँ एक स्क्रिप्टेड बातचीत के संदर्भ में की गई थीं, जिसका उद्देश्य हल्का-फुल्का और हास्यपूर्ण संवाद करना था। इसके पीछे की भावना मुन्ना भाई जैसी फिल्मों में दिखाई गई हास्य और व्यंग्य की शैली के समान थी, विशेष रूप से ‘गांधीगिरी’ की उस सोच से प्रेरित थी, जिसका उद्देश्य प्रेम, एकजुटता और सद्भावना का संदेश देना था। दुर्भाग्यवश, मेरी बातों को उस मूल संदर्भ से अलग तरीके से समझा गया।
— Sanjay Dutt (@duttsanjay) October 4, 2026
He worked in Gandhi’s three monkeys, asking who would fix a wrong if everyone looks away. Then came the lines that sent the clip around. Several outlets read his fictional speech as a dig at Narendra Modi’s foreign trips, with Dutt saying that without a connection, the PM and the public wouldn’t be close. Entertainment sites also pointed to jokes about foreign travel and the display of political photographs, and to a mention of Donald Trump.
So was it a swipe? Honestly, it depends on who’s watching. Munna Bhai has always been a safe way to say slightly uncomfortable things. It’s a comic persona, and Dutt can always say it was only a bit. The overlap between “peace” and the satire is also messy. His comments about peace came before the sketch, in his own voice, while the jokes came afterward, in character. Headlines tend to fuse the two.
Dutt seems to have noticed. He has since said the “digs at PM” reading took a light-hearted bit out of context. That’s a reasonable answer, although it’s also the answer nearly every performer gives once a clip starts trending.
I would like to clarify that it was never my intention to hurt, offend, or disrespect the sentiments of any individual, community, or institution.
My remarks were made in the context of a scripted conversation intended to be light-hearted and humorous. The spirit behind them was similar to the humour and satire seen in films like Munna Bhai, particularly the concept of ‘Gandhigiri,’ which was intended to convey a message of love, warmth, togetherness, and goodwill. Unfortunately, my words were interpreted outside of that intended context.
— Sanjay Dutt (@duttsanjay) October 4, 2026
There’s a history here that makes the reaction less surprising. Munna Bhai’s Gandhigiri was a pop-culture phenomenon, and Hirani’s films treated gentle moral pressure as a joke and a serious idea at once. Bringing the character back on October 2 invites the audience to connect it to the present, intended or not.
On the work side, Dutt was last seen in the political drama Aakhri Sawal in May. A Munna Bhai sequel was announced by producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra in 2016, but production hasn’t started. The character keeps resurfacing anyway, apparently without a film to carry it.
I’m not sure there’s more to this than a veteran actor, a talk-show host and a beloved character colliding on a symbolic date. But the line about peace was said straight, with no costume on. It’s a quiet, slightly sad thing for him to say, and it will probably stay in people’s minds longer than the jokes.
