It may or may not be true but Amar Singh, who passed away today at 64, was one of those Delhi political fixers who always seemed either on the verge of striking a deal or seemed to have already struck one. The quality of that deal was another matter altogether.
During my stint in Delhi for about a decade in the 1990s I peripherally met him a few times and was every time struck by a certain slickness to the man that only the capital’s toxic yet fertile air gave birth to. I don’t know if Amar Singh was more sinned against than sinning but he seemed to be in midst of everything that happened at the heart of India’s power elite. And as you know what happens in the midst of power elites is not always uplifting.
Whether he was a poseur or really someone who made things happen for the larger good was a matter of which side of his posing one found himself on. As a journalist, I always put myself well outside the splash zone. I heard stories about him all the time and much of them in the realm of not particularly edifying.
I am not sure what I make of his contribution to India’s polity and politics but going by some sanguine tributes he has got in his passing it seems he might have been of some good consequence after all. He had been ailing for a long time and he was in Singapore in the aftermath of a second kidney transplant. Figures like Amar Singh, who was a member of the upper house of India’s parliament, the Rajya Sabha, towards the end of his life enjoyed power directly or indirectly for the better part of his adult life. He had a certain political panache that endeared him across party lines. I was told by at least one top Congress Party leader, who is no more, once that he was always wary of Amar Singh’s friendship and enmity. This was someone who needed neither given his own enormous standing within the country’s public life in the 1980s and 1990s.
It is clear that India’s increasingly fractious politics men like Amar Singh have a special place of influence which cuts both ways. In his mind though he was certain that everything he did was for the larger good, even when he was doing it for himself.
For quite some time, one of his biggest calling cards was his weirdly assertive and brotherly relations with the superstar Amitabh Bachchan. There was a time when they could not be separated and then came a time when they would not be caught together at any cost.
In his passing, Delhi has lost a colorful inhabitant at the heart of the world’s most fluid democracy.