How Emergency forced a change in Sholay climax

The original climax had Thakur killing Gabbar Singh with his feet since his hands had been cut off, instead of handing him over to the police.

The Sholay we all have seen is not the version that was intended by Sippy, according to an article in The Indian Express. In the last scene of the version we know, just as Thakur Baldev Singh is about to kill Gabbar, the police arrive, reminding him that punishing criminals is the responsibility of the law, and as a former police officer he should respect this authority. After a moment's hesitation, Thakur hands over Gabber to the police, thereby reinstating the sovereign authority of the law and preventing a climax which would have depicted an act of personal revenge as redemptive justice.
"A little-known fact about the film is that what we see in the bowdlerised version is the result of just such an act of sovereign intervention off screen," the report said.
"Sippy's original shows the Thakur killing Gabbar by kicking him into a nail stuck on the same pillars that Gabbar had tied him to when he chopped his hands off. After he kills Gabbar, he falls down with a vacant look and Veeru slowly walks up to him and drapes his shawl on him. The music reaches a melodramatic crescendo as Veeru and Thakur hug each other and cry," the paper said.
"The release of Sholay coincided with the declaration of Emergency, a period marked by extreme censorship. The censor board was worried that depicting a former police officer as a vigilante would be dangerous in the context of the Emergency and demanded a change in the climax in the interests of the rule of law."
The report said the Sippys tried everything to retain the original ending but finally had to succumb to pressure and reshoot it to arrive at the one that we now know. Ramesh Sippy described his unhappiness with the changes he had to make. He felt it was not just a legal imposition but also one with aesthetic and philosophical consequences.
The original climax, Sippy says, had Thakur killing Gabbar Singh with his feet since his hands had been cut off and it "was poetic justice, but the censors didn't allow that and unfortunately I had to accept it, there was too much pressure".

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