Amitabh Bachchan: fighting smoke and shadows
Among the many stories in Vir Sanghvi’s memoir is one about the actor’s foray into politics
Iam still not sure why Bachchan agreed to join politics, something he had often assured me he would never do. When he did become an MP he offered two reasons, both of which may have been part of the story. The first was that not only was Rajiv his childhood friend but that the Bachchan and Gandhi families had always been close... When Mrs Gandhi was assassinated the Bachchan family was swept up in the wave of grief that followed... So when Rajiv asked him to join politics..., he found it hard to refuse.
The second was what Bachgested chan called the ‘1982 episode’. That was the year when a fight scene in a movie went wrong and Amitabh was punched hard in the stomach. The blow caused internal ruptures and Bachchan remained in hospital for weeks, hovering between life and death... The whole country came to a standstill and millions prayed for his recovery... the public response to his injury stunned him and made him rethink his relationship with the Indian people... Perhaps he owed something to the people who had prayed for him. Perhaps he should look beyond acting. And he did. He joined politics. He found that something happened to him after the Allahabad campaign. Most MPs win their elections, periodically visit their constituencies and get involved only when there are major issues to be discussed. The rest of them depute MLAs and municipal representatives to handle the situation on the ground. But Bachchan decided that he would adopt Allahabad. Every conversation I had with him in 1985 was about how hard it was for the poor in Allahabad or about how he would do something new each month to help his constituents.
Such attention to a constituency is unusual among MPs. And when the MP in question is not just India’s most famous man, a hero to the masses, but also the prime minister’s best friend, his interest in the city worries local politicians. In Bachchan’s case it was VP Singh, Rajiv’s finance minister, who was troubled by Bachchan’s obsession with Allahabad... Though VP Singh was now nationally famous, he never forgot that Allahabad was his base. No Congress leader of note was allowed to emerge in that city. And the local party unit acted as though the Congress in Allahabad was VP Singh’s personal property... Almost every initiative
A Rude Life; The Memoir
Vir Sanghvi 400pp, Rs 699; Penguin Bachchan launched in Allahabad unravelled and he could never figure out why, so subtle and skillful was the manipulation. To his face, VP Singh would be uniformly friendly and respectful and when Bachchan went to him to look for help with the initiatives that had unravelled, VP Singh would be sympathetic and say things like ‘unfortunately, the toothpaste cannot be put back into the tube’.
I had known Bachchan as an actor who ruled the industry from a distance. He rarely socialized, had very few film friends and yet, because he was such a box office draw, the producers kept knocking at his door. He had faced his share of down moments but especially after his ‘1982 episode’ there had never been any doubt that he had the love of the people of India.
Now, he seemed less sure. In Allahabad, they arranged stunt after stunt to shake his hold on the city... I can’t remember when the negative stories about Bachchan started but I think they began around the time that his brother Ajitabh moved with his family to Switzerland... it was soon put about that Ajitabh (Bunty) had become a Swiss resident only so he could look after the Bachchan family’s illegal money. (In some versions, Bunty was looking after Rajiv’s money too.)
These rumours would have faded if they had been based on mere guesswork but they survived because VP Singh’s finance ministry always sug
— off the record, of course — to journalists that officials were prevented from probing the financial affairs of the Bachchan brothers. Who knew what an independent probe might reveal?
It was during this period that
I got to know Bachchan well. In private, he can often be a silent, brooding presence, quite unlike the characters he plays on the screen. But now, I thought, it had gone even further: he was becoming a depressive presence.