On 30 October 1996, a private jet touched down at Sahar International Airport in Mumbai, and a country that had spent months arguing about whether it would actually happen finally had its answer. Michael Jackson had come to India. He stayed three days, played one concert, and left behind a set of stories that Indians still tell each other three decades later — including one about a toilet.
The welcome was pure Mumbai. Waiting for him on the tarmac was the actress Sonali Bendre, wearing a traditional Maharashtrian sari, who greeted him with an aarti and applied a tilak to his forehead. The King of Pop was blessed at the airport gate in the traditional style.
Then came the moment people who were there will never forget. Jackson was being driven into the city in a twenty-car motorcade, moving fast down the highway. Along the roadside, poor children had gathered just to catch a glimpse of the car as it passed. He made them stop. He got out of his Toyota in the middle of the motorcade and went over to meet the children waiting by the road.
Sonali Bendre and Raj Thackeray receive Michael Jackson in India
The concert itself was at the Andheri Sports Complex on 1 November 1996, part of the HIStory World Tour, and it remains the only time Michael Jackson ever performed in the Indian subcontinent. A group led by Raj Thackeray organized the show, and the stated purpose was to raise money for a charitable scheme aimed at unemployed young people in Maharashtra — reportedly 2.7 million of them. Jackson agreed to donate the bulk of the proceeds. The state government waived the entertainment tax, worth around 3.36 crore rupees, because the money was going to charity.
That decision turned into one of the longest-running legal sagas in Indian entertainment. A consumer group challenged the waiver in the Bombay High Court. The money sat in a court treasury. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and back. And it was not finally resolved until January 2021 — twenty-five years after the concert.
Michael Jackson | Mumbai | 1st November 1996
Before the show, he paid a courtesy visit to Bal Thackeray at his home in Bandra, where he was presented with two traditional Indian instruments — a silver tabla and a tanpura.
And this is where the most famous Indian Michael Jackson story comes from. According to widely reported accounts, while he was at that house, Jackson used the toilet — and then autographed it. It has been retold in Indian media for decades. Whether it happened exactly as described is impossible to verify now, but the fact that an entire nation has passed the story down for thirty years tells you how big that visit was.
The thing his hosts at the Oberoi Hotel remember, though, is not the politics or the money. Fans crowded outside the hotel for days hoping for a glimpse. And rather than stay upstairs, Jackson came down and mixed with them — smiling, blowing kisses, and shaking as many hands as he could.
One concert. Three days. And a country that has never quite got over it.