Birthday Special: Raj Babbar — The outsider who made it big in Bollywood

If Khushwant Singh ’s book Not A Nice Man To Know would have a counter-view called Such A Nice Man To Know, its hero would have to be Raj Babbar . Every festive occasion during the year, whether it is Eid or Diwali or the other less popular ones, Raj unfailingly sends a greetings message to his friends.

He is a man who has always meant well even when he made a monumental mess of his domestic life by marrying Smita Patil . It was his second marriage, and it almost destroyed his first marriage.

Raj explained to me, “I felt it was the right thing to do. I knew it would hurt my wife (theatre and film actress Nadira Babbar ) immensely. But I had to stand by Smita. She was going to be the mother of my child.”

That says a lot about a man who owns up to his mistakes and does some serious damage control no matter what the cost. I don’t know why a gentleman like Raj Babbar began his career playing a rapist in Insaaf Ka Tarazu. It was actually not his first film. Raj was first seen in Kissa Kursi Ka in 1977, a film that was burnt and destroyed.

“For three years after Kissa Kursi Ka I had to sit at home. Nothing happened. My career too would have gone up in flames was it not for B R Chopra who came forward to offer me Insaaf Ka Tarazu. When he said it was the role of a rapist I hesitated. The film proved godsent to my career. Later I did some of my most successful films with B R Chopra Saab including Nikaah and Aaj Ki Awaaz (my most successful film with Smita). If I had one godfather in the film industry it was B R Chopra.”

Playing a sleazy rapist in Insaaf Ka Tarazu was not easy for Raj. In real life, he says he can’t even raise his voice at a woman. In the film, he had to command Zeenat Aman and Padmini Kolhapure to do the most unspeakable things. After the film released and became a hit women’s organizations pulled up Raj for playing a role that exploited women.

This was way back in the 1980s when the concept of women’s empowerment and feminism were just emerging in the media. The aggression regarding women’s rights was peaking, Raj had to take the full brunt of it.

After Insaaf Ka Tarazu, Raj became typecast as a villain, an image he fought against. His stints as a leading man like Prem Geet and Aaj Ki Awaaz (rehashed from Charles Bronson’s vigilante film Death Wish) were successful. Prem Geet gave Raj Babbar a chance to play a sensitive poet. It also gave him his most memorable song: Hothon se chu lo tum mera geet amar kar do sung by Jagjit Singh .

Interestingly Raj Babbar’s two most accomplished performances in a negative role were in the company of Dimple Kapadia . In Mukul Anand ’s Aitbaar (a not-bad unofficial adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock ’s Dial M For Murder) Raj was a suspicious husband trying to get his beautiful wife killed. In Lava, Raj Babbar snatched Dimple away from Rajiv Kapoor to marry her. Years later Raj and Dimple came together again to create some magic in Kalpana Lajmi ’s Rudaali .

The most debilitating career move for Babbar was to pair himself with Smita Patil in film after film in the 1980s just so that they could spend time together. Not the best creative stimuli. But then the heart listens to no reason. If it did Raj wouldn’t have gone into politics. He genuinely believed he could bring a change by entering politics. It almost changed him instead.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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