Raj Babbar returns to poll stage; can he be Gurgaon’s aaj ki awaaz?

The year was 1994. Raj Babbar was shooting for a film in Ooty when he received a ‘lightning call’, a super-expensive, superquick version of the trunk call. In those pre-mobile days, such calls generally aroused a mix of curiosity and anxiety because, it was assumed, the caller had something euphoric or dreadful to say. It was Mulayam Singh Yadav on the other side. “Arre bhai kahan ho (where are you)? Come over immediately to Lucknow,” he said. A year earlier, Babbar was a ‘star’ campaigner for Mulayam’s Samajwadi Party.

He had an idea of what was in the offing. When he reached the city of nawabs and kebabs after taking a few days’ leave from producer Pahlaj Nihalani (film: Ilzaam), he was asked to file his nomination for Rajya Sabha. “I was elected nirvirodh (unopposed). The credit for bringing me into active politics goes to Mulayam Singh-ji,” said Babbar, recounting the conversation to this reporter during a phone interview in 2020.

Mulayam Singh is no more, but the veteran actor’s long association with parliamentary politics — two terms in the Upper House and three in the Lower House — received fresh impetus earlier this week when Congress declared him its candidate from Gurgaon, Haryana. Many actors have been one-hit wonders in politics, but Babbar, now 72, has had more than a silver jubilee in the game, answering tricky political questions with ease and elan. In his debut Lok Sabha run in 1996, he was pitted against the charismatic Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Luck now. “Vajpayee faces stiff challenge from Babbar,” went a TOI headline. Babbar lost by about 1.2 lakh votes, not a bad performance against the BJP veteran.

The actor-politician, who once claimed to be inspired by the philosophy of socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia, was rewarded with an SP ticket again in 1999; this time from his birthplace Agra. He won, then retained the seat in 2004. After becoming a ‘rebel’ within the party for some time, Babbar quit SP and joined Congress in 2009. Vanquishing Mulayam’s daughter-in-law Dimple Yadav by over 85,000 votes in Firozabad — the SP supremo’s backyard — was perhaps his most shining moment in electoral politics.

But Babbar flopped against Gen VK Singh of BJP in Ghaziabad in 2014, losing by about 5.7 lakh votes. Many professional politicians would have hung up their boots after a defeat at that stage of their career, but Babbar returned to Rajya Sabha two years later, a nominee from Uttarakhand, and spoke passionately against inflammatory speeches. “Yeh baat Agra ki nahi hai, yeh us mohabbat ke shahr ki hai jise nafrat ki prayogshala ki tarah istemaal kiya ja raha hai. (The issue isn’t about Agra. It is about the city of love that is being used as a laboratory of hate),” he said in Parliament.

Actor who sold his scooter

Raised in a middle-class family of railway employees, Babbar became a familiar name on the Delhi theatre scene in the 1970s. He acted in plays such as Mitti Ki Gaadi. In 1977, he won the coveted United Producers Talent Contest organised by a caucus of top Hindi cinema producers, including B R Chopra and Shakti Samanta. Rajesh Khanna, another star-turned-politician, had won the contest in the 1960s.

But none of the producers immediately announced a film with Babbar. He even auditioned for the Sippys but nothing came of it. “When I went back for theatre work in Delhi, people would make fun. ‘Haan bhai star (hey, star!),’ they would say. I was broken inside.

But I kept silent,” he said. In 1979, Babbar moved to Mumbai for a year, hoping to find film work. “I sold my Bajaj scooter for Rs 6,000 in the black market and gave the money to my wife, Nadira, telling her to use Rs 500 every month,” he said. Babbar struck bull’s eye as a suave, sexual psychopath in B R Chopra’s Insaf Ka Tarazu (1980). He remained in demand right through the 80s, though his flops vastly outnumbered hits.

The three blockbusters of his career — Insaf Ka Tarazu, Nikaah (1982) and Aaj Ki Aawaz (1984, inspired by Charles Bronson’s Death Wish) — were all produced and directed by the Chopras; the first two by BR, the third by BR’s son Ravi Chopra.

Schooled in Bofors-Babri Era Babbar’s first brush with national politics happened in the late 1980s when he campaigned for V P Singh, seeking ‘Bofors-ed’ spotlight, in the momentous Lok Sabha by-election from Allahabad in the summer of 1988.

But it was his work during the postBabri Masjid riots that perhaps caught Mulayam’s attention. “Dutt sahib (Sunil Dutt) and I worked among the riot victims, both Hindus and Muslims, in Bombay. One day I received a call from Mulayam Singh. He said he wanted to visit the camps. We organised it. He came to my home, had food. He said, “Yeh jo bhi ho raha hai iski Gangotri Uttar Pradesh mein hai (the point of origin of what’s happening here lies in UP). I need your help. I campaigned for him for almost a month during the polls,” he said.

Three decades later, when the political climate has again grown communal, Babbar will be canvassing in the sadistic summer heat. And in a season of political realignments, he will have both Congress and SP (only a nominal presence in Haryana) rooting for him this time.