The late politician was once so close to the Bachchans that he was considered part of the family. Then came the rift, which never healed
Rasheed Kidwai (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 3, 2020)

Up above, if Amar Singh gets to hear the many who are waxing lyrical about him, he would let out a rich, throaty chuckle.

During his chequered political and social life, spread over decades, Amar courted the high and mighty – Madhavrao Scindia, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Adi and Parmeshwar Godrej, Tina and Anil Ambani, Sanjay and Manyata Dutt, Sridevi and Boney Kapoor – and, most famously, the Bachchans. Yet virtually no one was with him in the end.

His close relationship with the Bachchans and their eventual falling out perhaps most drew the attention of the public. In February this year, he sought forgiveness from Amitabh and was said to have sent an emotional video. There are some friends of Amar who feel the gesture was unilateral and perhaps unwarranted. According to them, the Bachchans had dropped him long ago. Amar could not get over the fact that he was not invited for Big B’s 70th birthday bash a few years ago. “Even his [Amitabh’s] spot boys were called, but not me,” he told one interviewer.

Like many mortals, Amar had a weakness for wealth, power and celebrity. A manipulator par excellence, he loved flaunting his extraordinary skill in performing dubious arts. Early in his career, he was considered close to a ‘lottery king’ in the Northeast named Iqbal Chand Khurana. Amar used to say “paploo fit ho gaya” whenever he fixed something using dirty tricks.

Amar had been accused of many gory deeds – from preventing Sonia Gandhi from becoming prime minister in 1999 to mustering crucial support for the Manmohan Singh government in 2008, when the UPA regime appeared to be in danger over the India-US nuclear deal. He took great pride in owning up to them. But he always denied creating a wedge between Amitabh and Sonia. That was one charge he was wholly innocent of, he insisted. He would passionately argue that the Bachchan-Gandhi relationship dated back to a time before his birth. At one point he said: “I have no authority or competence to comment on the ties of two great families. Only they are competent to comment on each other. All I know about Amit ji is that he is a man of great dignity, depth and emotion, and he’s convinced that there’s respect only for utility and no place for emotion.” In private conversations, he would say the Gandhi-Bachchan fallout had been the result of human failings, ego clashes and one-upmanship.

EYES AND EARS
Amar appeared in Amitabh’s life after Rajiv Gandhi’s death in 1991, and soon became the star’s “brother” and virtual eyes and ears. For years Amar acted as a shadow of the actor and his family. When Amitabh was issued a flurry of tax notices during the UPA I tenure, he issued a veiled warning: The Samajwadi Party general secretary warned the Congress that his party could use the actor in the 2007 Uttar Pradesh assembly election. Amitabh distanced himself from Amar’s statement that the actor could stage a political comeback. Amar clarified: “I did not say he will enter politics. I said if you continuously keep humiliating someone, he could be compelled to join politics.”

Amar was able to prevail upon Amitabh to let Jaya join politics, despite Amitabh’s deep misgivings, and even campaign for the Samajwadi Party. For many years he hovered around the family with Hanuman-like devotion.

Between 2010 and 2012, the Bachchans fell out with Amar. Delhi and Mumbai’s social circuits claimed that the fallout coincided with the politician’s own banishment from the capital’s durbar. The bitter spat began when Jaya Bachchan insisted on keeping her Rajya Sabha seat after Amar was shunted out of the Samajwadi Party. Jaya’s decision to ignore Amar’s advice reportedly had the support of Aishwarya. (Incidentally, Aradhya, Aishwarya and Abhishek’s daughter, called him ‘Dada Chacha’, which is actually Ajitabh Bachchan’s right.) It was then that Amitabh forced the two sides to retreat into dignified silence; he himself vowed never to speak anything about Amar in public or in private.

During that two-year period another controversy from the past – the 2008 cash-for-vote allegations made following the trust vote in Parliament – returned to haunt Amar, and he was arrested and sent to Tihar Jail. Although he was eventually acquitted, Amar remained bitter about the fact that none of his influential friends visited him in prison. He should have known better.

‘DON’T EXPECT ANYTHING’
Jaya once told Amar: “You will be very disappointed, as you are more giving than any one of us [the Bachchans]. If you expect any reciprocity, you will be a very sad person.” Amar may have understood the full import of Jaya’s remark in his last days. Had he pondered some more, he would have remembered another, older gem from Jaya, pronounced at Sidhaur in Barabanki District way back in October 2004. The occasion was an assembly by-election and Jaya was seeking votes for the Samajwadis. She said: “Mere devar Amar Singh sach mein Thakur hai. Jo kehte hain woh karte hain. Aap Samajwadi Party ko vote dijiye. Yeh log vaade aur rishte nibhana jaante hain.” (My brother-in-law is a real Thakur. He does what he says. Please vote for the Samajwadi Party because these people know how to keep promises and relations.) When she said this, Jaya had the Gandhis – once close friends of the Bachchans – in mind. Speaking bitterly of the past, Jaya remembered Rajiv and Sonia thusly: “Jin logon ne humko rajniti mein aage badhaya, unhone beech mein hi hamara saath chhod diya. Saath tab chhoda jab hum taqleef mein the. Yeh log hamesha dhokha dete hain.” (Those who brought us into politics left us midway. They left us when we were in a crisis. They are known to betray people.)

NO REGRETS
In May 2015, Amar had to vacate his 27, Lodhi Estate bungalow, once the hottest address in New Delhi, visited by the rich and the powerful, including the Bachchans. (In fact, Amitabh and a newly-engaged Abhishek and Aishwarya were said to have stayed there once.) “Mr Bachchan, according to me, is contrary to baghban (gardener), the role he played onscreen. Off-screen, he is bagh-ujar (someone who uproots a garden), at least emotionally. I am saying this on record,” Amar later complained.

There was more to follow. He told a newspaper: “Remorse is for human beings, not for the house. Families like the Bachchans, if there was a death in the house, they would have my and my wife’s names on the cards as family members. For the wedding of their sons and daughters, they used to print cards referring to us as family. I also treated them as family. I don’t regret doing anything for them. Whatever you do for the family, you don’t regret. I regret the way they treated me opportunistically. But I maintain that a good human being can be a bad actor and a good actor may not necessarily be a good human being.”

Towards the end, the man who had once been a king had been reduced to a pawn on the chessboard of life.