Falling Star

FOR the politically hardboiled, the just suspended Samajwadi Party8217;s Agra MP, Raj Babbar8217;s sudden burst for ideological purity may...

FOR the politically hardboiled, the just suspended Samajwadi Party8217;s Agra MP, Raj Babbar8217;s sudden burst for ideological purity may look like a crackpot scheme. Imagine getting together all the former socialists together once again when all they did in the last few decades was to get into bitter fights and squabbles, to split and mutate into a dozen and more cliques. So, it was with barely unconcealed scorn the world looked at Bollywood8217;s ageing, once B-Grade movie star, when he declared he was going to float a 8216;8216;Samajwadi Manch.8217;8217;

It was to bring together 8216;8216;my old socialist mentors once again,8217;8217; Babbar proclaimed last week, from, god forbid, George Fernandes to VP Singh, Mohan Prakash to Sharad Yadav to Satyadev Tripathi et al.

But in a crazy way, Babbar is actually following in the footsteps of the person responsible for this ideological rush. Just as party colleague and now fiercest rival, Amar Singh, ran around the countryside soliciting the support of friends and allies after getting embroiled in the telephone tapping case, Babbar is seeking solace in the company of his ideologically chaste friends.

Not surprisingly, his first visit after his unceremonious suspension from the Samajwadi Party parliamentary board a few days ago, was to the CPI-M8217;s all-powerful general-secretary, Prakash Karat. Babbar was suspended for publicly calling Amar Singh, a broker and fixer and demanding his party be rid of the 8216;dalali8217; culture.

Naturally, it was a startled Karat who gave a sympathetic hearing to Babbar. He beseeched the Supreme Comrade that his intentions were not to destroy secular unity but to expose the shady wheeler-dealers and rid the polity of the evil menace.

It was an equally flabbergasted George Fernandes who ushered Babbar into his house, though he took a non-committal stand saying it was the SP8217;s internal party matter. But CPI leaders AB Bardhan and D Raja acknowledged Babbar8217;s grief and supported his mission for clean politics.

So far, so good. But is Babbar, like always, tempting fate? He8217;s had his streak of good luck in the past, but it did not last long. Consider his not so glittering career. After an earnest start on Delhi8217;s theatre scene in the last 70s with his former wife, Nadira, he was picked up by none other than Bollywood producer Prakash Mehra. Now Mehra would have liked to have cast him in blockbusters Namak Halal and Shakti, but it did not happen.

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But Babbar soon got a hit in 1980, with BR Chopra8217;s Insaaf Ka Tarazu, in a negative role as a rapist. He was fortunate not to be typecast as the eternal villain and went on to become a hero in B-Grade movies. His fortunes swung high again when he married Smita Patil, but the films they did together are best forgotten.

After Patil8217;s untimely death, Babbar plunged into politics with VP Singh, rode the Janata Dal wave, and joined the SP in the mid-Nineties.

SO why did Babbar wait so long to attack Amar Singh? Perhaps it has finally dawned on him that he has no future in a party that has reduced him to a B-Grade player in politics too. The twice-elected MP from Agra has barely managed to lobby for any development schemes for the town. But he now blames the SP-led state government in UP for failing to forward any of his proposals8212;construction of a declared international airport between Agra and Mathura, an international stadium in Agra, not even the multi-crore water scheme announced by the Prime Minister himself.

Where will he go from here? He may not jump into the Congress as yet but use his 8216;manch8217; to expose the nefarious Yadav-Singh duo and their 8216;8216;phoney socialism-secularism8217;8217; as he calls it. Pretty useful for the SP8217;s political rivals in an election year in Uttar Pradesh.