Why Amitabh Bachchan's 1991 Cairo visit became a national crisis in Egypt

Amitabh Bachchan was so popular in Egypt that Bollywood films were restricted in 1987; when Big B arrived in Cairo in 1991, it triggered a ‘national crisis’ in the countryLong before the current social media driven world, Amitabh Bachchan had built a devoted following thousands of kilometres away from India. In Egypt, the popularity of his films became so striking that Indian cinema faced restrictions, while Big B himself later recalled that his arrival in Cairo in 1991 created a situation so chaotic that he described it as a “national crisis”.When Indian films became a problem for Egypt’s film industryIndian films had found an audience in Egypt well before Bachchan became the face of Hindi cinema there. By the 1980s, however, the popularity of Hindi films had become a concern for Egypt’s domestic film industry.