So much has been written about him already but I have to write something, for he was someone, I always had that strange admiration for. I hardly ever met him or saw in person. All my information about him is gathered through years of media reporting, but still, whatever I read or heard, made me believe that he was an example of a human being, we in India should all aspire to become.
A misfit in politics? No!! Unlike many would like to call him that way, but he was there probably so that he can make a difference. Vir Shanghvi in one of his recent columns in Mid Day, sums up his life as a 'triumph', and I wholeheartedly agree.
Back in 1962-63 when he and his wife had set up the Ajanta Arts troupe and took parties of dancers and singers to the borders of India, to NEFA and to Ladakh to entertain our jawans, it would always be the high point of the values that he cherished. This feat often prevented the pseudo-patriots from branding him as a pseudo-secular. They would love to do that for his innumerable services done toward those who suffered during the riots and other onslaughts in the hands of our ingrown terrorists amongst the majority community.
Then again, during the Rajiv Gandhi government, Dutt strived towards communal harmony and peace, walking around Punjab at a time when tensions between Sikhs and Hindus were at an all time high.
His anti-climax, (as was bound to happen, for doing all this service to the nation) would have definitely come during the Narasimha Rao congress government. Then, he had come to believe that the party had lost its secular moorings and went public with these thoughts. He resigned from the Congress because of its shameful failure to prevent babri demolition and keep the peace during the ghastly Bombay riots of 1993, only to culminate by the infamous Bomb Blasts engineered by D-company 3 months later .
Though he was persuaded to withdraw that resignation, further trauma was in store when his son Sanjay was arrested under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA). The police had charged Sanjay with possession of an unlicensed rifle (he had arms licenses, but not for this particular weapon).
Dutt had then said, in Sanjay’s defence, that he had procured the weapon because of the many threats the family had received in the aftermath of Sunil Dutt’s stand on the riots where he, along with other bigwigs like, Ratan tata, called for the arrest of Shiv Sena chief, Thackery.
Sena chief was then persumably convinced, and so were/still are many Hindus of Bombay and abroad, that in the critical months of December, 1992 and January 1993, Muslim mobs armed to the teeth with hi-tech weapons provided by Pakistan (who else?) would have butchered Hindus in the city had he not ordered his Sainiks to "pre-empt" and "retaliate" and thus eventually "teach the Muslims a lesson", they would have killed all Hindus.
Bal tackery had written highly inflammatory articles in his mouthpiece and created this illusion amongst his Shiv Sainiks which culminated in the slaughter of the minority community while the police simply stood by.
So, Sunil Dutt always believed that while the police could have tried Sanjay under the Arms Act (which would have attracted a possible jail sentence of six months), the decision to charge him under a terrorism law was taken by Narasimha Rao and Sharad Pawar (then Chief Minister of Maharashtra) to punish his father for his stand during the Bombay riots.
Imagine, the apathy and humiliation of a father, when he was forced by law enforcers/law makers, to go and seek mercy from the same criminal for the life of his son, whom he detested and expected the lawmakers to punish. It would have been a filmy story, played out in real life when Dutt went seeking thackery's mercy for the release of his son. Thackery happily obliged. Sunil Dutt has been shown his place and learnt his lessons.
Unusually for a man who had little bitterness about most things, he did not forgive either man(Narasimha,Sharad and Chavan) for the trauma his son suffered, (the case is still under trial a decade later) though of course, both men claimed that they had no ulterior motives but that's hard to believe since
Narasimha Rao was a student of old RSS school and regularly attended shakhas when young and considering vajpayee to be his mentor. Narasimha Rao and Chavan (the then home Minister) have since died. Sharad Pawar was recently seen sharing the same stage with Thackery for the launch of a book written by this don. They are all brothers in arms and Sunil Dutt realised it late.
Even recently, when the Shiv Sena 'threw' out Nirupam (they always play this game to have their people in all the boats) and AICC welcomed him into the party, inspite of Dutt’s objections, the veteran star and activist refused to be downcast.Yes!! he said, it was a disgrace that somebody like Nirupam should be in the Congress. But in politics, you took the rough with smooth.
In the final analysis, India had what he regarded as its first fully-functioning secular government for 15 years - and that was a result worth fighting for.
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