He started his career working as a hero through the 1940s-50s. His first film was Door Chalen, which was released in 1946 . He played the lead in the movie Door Chalen. He started playing the role of a villain in the 1960s-70s. Some of his popular roles are those of the father of Raj Kapoor in Aag and Narang in Don.
The Chhimba are a Sikh clan. Their traditional occupation in the Samba district of India was dying and hand-printing calico fabric. It was probably some of these people who moved to areas of Himachal Pradesh, where they created a somewhat different style of printing cloth that was much favoured by the Gaddi people of the region.