The real-life Munnabhai

Sanjay Dutt?s price may not be a small one. But not a big one either, I should think, writes Sujata Anandan.

I have said this before, though not in this column: I fell in love with Sunil Dutt more than 20 years ago when I first met him for an interview in the wake of the Congress centenary celebrations in Bombay. A gentleman with a clear heart was the first thought that had crossed my mind then. Soon I found myself on his walkathon to Amritsar (I did not cover the full distance undertaken at the height of terrorist activity in Punjab, though) and a couple of years later I was walking alongside his team from Nagasaki to Hiroshima in the interest of world peace.

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Those months, spent in close proximity with 14 of his closest friends, loyalists and daughter Priya, only deepened the affection I had developed for a man who, like Rajiv Gandhi (who had given him a ticket to Parliament), brought such a breath of fresh air to the jaded and cynical tribe of politicians. It was during this Japanese sojourn that I discovered how like his father was his son Sanjay.

Dutt sa’ab had wanted his son to join him midway through the padyatra and would make daily appeals to him on the phone. But the moment his spell of outdoor shooting was done, Sanjay came up with a query, “Will they give me FTA to travel? Because I have already been abroad thrice this year.’’

“My children are so stupid,’’ Dutt sa’ab then told me. “They do not even know that there are ways of getting around this.’’

“It is good that your children do not know about these ways,’’ commented one of his friends standing close by. But Sanjay never made it to Japan then — perhaps he was too afraid of going to a havala dealer for foreign exchange and chose to stay put rather than violate the law on this score.

So from a situation of such ignorance in 1988, I refused to believe that an entire lifetime’s upbringing as good and patriotic citizens could be overturned in a matter of months and Sanjay could turn into a terrorist or traitor in a couple of years.

Sunil Dutt’s biggest cause of pain at that time was the general campaign against the family that cast aspersions on their patriotism. Sanjay was in Mauritius at the time his name first figured in the blasts case. I recall speaking to him then. “I am not the only one who took a gun like that for protection, ma’am,’’ he said in a little-boy voice. “There were other film stars, too. But what should I do now?’’

I had no answer to that but I soon agreed with Sunil Dutt that his son was utterly stupid when, some weeks later, he confessed to having had the gun destroyed. The kind of film stars who owned AK-56s at the time are still respectable citizens today. But in the wake of Sanjay’s trouble with the law, many of these guns washed up on beaches across Bombay or were quietly left by the roadside in the back-lanes of the city. The argument given to me at the time was that it had become a fad with film stars to own AK-56s, after the time when the then Punjab police chief KPS Gill presented one seized from a terrorist to Sridevi and Sawan Kumar Tak when they came for a shoot to Chandigarh. “If such a top cop as Gill can make a present of an AK-56 to a film star, how are we to know it is illegal to possess one?’’ one Bollywood bigwig had asked me at the time.

So I have all along completely believed in Sanjay Dutt’s innocence, so far as conspiracy and terrorism are concerned. It has been my oft-stated position that he was naïve and stupid but never evil or malafide and that the son of Sunil and Nargis Dutt could never have been a traitor or hatched plots against his own country.

Nearly 14 years ago, I remember that many of Dutt sa’ab’s detractors were quick to condemn him and his family. But even then I was equally convinced that Sanjay was a victim of his father’s politics — if Dutt sa’ab had not been so committed, so idealistic, so clean and such a darling of the masses, Sanjay would never have gone to jail under the Tada. At best, the Arms Act would have been invoked against him, as it was against Madhukar Sarpotdar, the Shiv Sena’s ex-MP, who was caught with arms and ammunition during the riots that preceded the blasts and as Gopinath Munde’s former secretary was, when he was found travelling with a gun during that period of trouble.

Sunil Dutt needed no one to win elections and it was this goodwill of the people that was his greatest disadvantage so far as the Congress’s bigwigs in Maharashtra and some at the Centre were concerned. But he also made the mistake of resigning his Parliament seat during the riots. He was persuaded to withdraw that resignation but it brought to the fore not just Dutt sa’ab’s comparative innocence in matters of state but also the ire of two governments, in Maharashtra and at the Centre. Both were ruled by the Congress and perhaps no one informed Sunil Dutt that you do not resign against your own government.

So Sanjay, macho on the outside but actually a bit of a namby-pamby in such matters, set himself up as a sitting duck when he received calls threatening to (I hate to even say this but it has to be said) rape his sisters and kidnap his nieces. He succumbed and got himself some protection but also a vanvaas in the form of 14 years of trial for being on the wrong side of the law. However, what his critics forgot was that, at the time he was dealing with the underworld, neither Dawood nor Abu Salem were declared terrorists. These goons were all over Bollywood financing films and making bread-and-butter decisions for the film stars. Moreover, practically every one of these film stars, including Raj Kapoor, had been to a cricket match in Sharjah and been photographed with Dawood and his cohorts.

But what reinforced my own belief in the Dutt family’s goodness and patriotism was this: that it was Sunil Dutt himself who, inadvertently or otherwise, brought about his son’s arrest. Sanjay at the time was in Mauritius and, similar to music director Nadeem Khan (charged with conspiracy in the Gulshan Kumar murder case), need never have returned to India. But the senior Dutt urged his son to speed up his return and called then Chief Minister Sharad Pawar to give him the time and date of his arrival. What the family did not expect was the blanket of policemen at the airport as though Dawood Ibrahim or Osama bin Laden were being deported from somewhere. Obviously, even the so-called friends were at work destroying the Dutt charisma.

“If he had been guilty, could I not have run a battery of lawyers to Mauritius and sought every remedy to keep him out of jail?’’ Sunil Dutt once asked me. “Why would I have asked him to come back?’’

I still remember the pain in Dutt sa’ab’s eyes as he related his leaders’ betrayal of trust at one of the infrequent lunches he invited me to whenever he was in town. Wherever he may be today, I think he would be satisfied that his faith in the Indian judiciary, at least, was not betrayed even after his passing.

Sanjay, certainly, has been guilty of possessing an army category weapon for which he neither had a licence, nor could he have got one. Even Munnabhai cannot escape from this fact.

The Tada court, I thought, has been very just and fair by charging him under the Arms Act but making it clear to the world, lest there be any doubt, that Sanjay Dutt is no terrorist. Like I have always said, naïve but not evil. All of us are naïve at times. But we always end up paying for our stupidity in ways, small or big.

Sanjay Dutt’s price may not be a small one. But not a big one either, I should think.