The minister may have missed his true calling. Picture him in a floral bush shirt in a director’s chair, with a bullhorn in his hand, and you can imagine Priya Ranjan Das Munshi saying “Cut!” with some flourish. The minister for information and broadcasting may be sitting in his spacious office in Central Delhi, but his heart lies some 1,400 kilometres to the west, reaching out to the arc lights of the Mumbai film industry.

It’s a gray day — and by all indications a busy one. There is a high-level ministerial conclave set for the evening. And the media is lined up outside, hoping that he’d throw some light on his recent remarks defending Sanjay Dutt. Just before the actor was carted away to a Pune jail earlier this month, Das Munshi surprised the nation somewhat — and the Congress greatly — by voicing concern over Dutt’s six-year-long incarceration.

“No one can say Sanjay is a terrorist or an anti-national. If we don’t express solidarity with the family, people will ask, just what is the Congress doing,” he says.

Let’s hear it for Das Munshi: the man truly likes to rush in where others fear to tread. When the rest of the Congress was trying to ignore a special TADA court’s sentencing of an actor whose father, and now sister, represented the party in Parliament, Das Munshi had no qualms speaking up for Sanjay, in jail for illegally possessing arms. Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi hastened to clarify that those were the minister’s private thoughts. An irate Das Munshi called Singhvi up. “I pointed out to him that whatever I had said about Sanjay Dutt was not in my personal capacity but in my official capacity,” he says. “You have to take a stand at such times.”

Das Munshi, clearly, feels for the orphan who, like many little boys, merely wanted a gun. “It was not Sanjay’s intentional plan to kill anyone, but when his father’s life was jeopardised he needed something for protection,” the minister asserts. If the family of Ehsan Jaffri — a former Congress MP who was killed in the 2002 anti-Muslim violence of Gujarat — had arms, Das Munshi reasons, Jaffri may have lived.

For a minister, the 61-year-old MP from Raiganj in West Bengal is surprisingly outspoken. Some, in fact, would say that he is much too candid — and a bit too active. In recent times, he has been in the news for a variety of reasons. Apart from the Sanjay Dutt episode, he has been vocal on Shilpa Shetty. He has blacked out advertisements on television — particularly riled by spots on underwear — and banned channels for showing what his ministry believes is obscenity.

In some quarters, he is described as a man caught in a time warp, harping on state control when efforts are on to lighten the government’s role in the private arena. Censor Board chief Sharmila Tagore was openly critical of the minister’s decision to vet the Tom Hanks-starrer, The Da Vinci Code, though the Board had cleared it.

Das Munshi has his answers ready. “As a minister, my duty is like that of a cultural ombudsman. Omissions and commissions should be objectively assessed,” he says, adding that it was a section of the Christian community that wanted a ban on the film — and, after he had seen the film with some senior bishops, it was released with a disclaimer.

He is also an avowed supporter of the controversial broadcasting bill of 2007 which is being viewed with concern by the industry and the media. Among other things, it is feared that a proposed regulatory body, under the provisions of the bill, may end up shackling the media. Das Munshi doesn’t think so. The bill, he holds, is being discussed at various levels and will only be finalised keeping varying concerns in mind. But a bill is necessary, he believes, in countering obscenity.

“Talking of obscenity, please see ITV (a private Hindi channel) after 10 pm. Which Indian will say what they’re showing is good? Let them (television channels) apply for a pornographic channel instead of sneaking in things in the name of entertainment.”

That was one reason Das Munshi had a few things to say about channels that got their day’s eyeballs by airing, and re-airing, Shilpa Shetty’s famous liplock with Richard Gere. “This is no way to increase your TRP ratings,” he says. “I had to react, because she is an Indian, and I also remember the work she has done in the campaign against AIDS.”

That, and the fact that she belongs to an industry Das Munshi has old links with. He remembers watching Mother India “many, many times” and then getting to know its star actors — Nargis and Sunil Dutt. But he met their son, Sanjay, only at his father’s funeral two years ago. “I had seen Munnabhai, of course” he says, referring to a series of popular Hindi films starring the junior Dutt.

He had heard a lot about him, though. During the 2004 Athens Olympics, when Sunil Dutt was the sports minister, and Das Munshi the Chef de Mission of the Indian team, Dutt would spend hours in his hotel room, sharing thoughts about Sanjay. “He used to worry about him all the time and cry. He would say, what will happen to Sanjay after I am gone? He would leave my room at 1 am, but come right back again.”

It’s an emotion that Das Munshi understands — for he has a young son too. The minister, who was drawn into the Congress as a student in Calcutta, got married when he was nearly 50, and his only child attends a public school in Delhi. “Naturally, it makes you understand the bond,” he says. “In Indian society, sons and daughters bond with their mothers and fathers. If a son or a daughter felt their father was under threat, it would be their duty to protect him.”

Das Munshi’s father was, he says, a freedom fighter. His mother wanted to see her son married — but young ‘Priya,’ for long years considered a confirmed bachelor, refused to fall in line. Then, he met Deepa, a stage actress. “My mother never saw me get married in her lifetime. But she watched Deepa act in a Bahurupi play in 1987 during the Pujas, and approved of her,” he says.

The minister’s jet-black hair and a Peter Pan-like visage belie his age. But Das Munshi has had quite an innings — starting right as the president of the Youth Congress in West Bengal in the early Seventies to the time that he became a minister of state in Rajiv Gandhi’s government. Back home in Bengal, P.R. Das Munshi is often referred to as Public Relations Das Munshi — he is, after all, everybody’s ‘Priya-da,’ though he has his share of detractors in his own party. His nemesis, however, are the Communists — opponents at home, and troublesome supporters at the Centre.

Das Munshi, a soccer lover, takes refuge in a football analogy to explain how he deals with the dichotomy. “East Bengal and Mohun Bagan will never compromise when they are playing against each other in the state. But at the national field, they will play together to defeat their common enemy,” he says. “Likewise, politics is not static.”

Nor is governance, though Das Munshi would have none of that. Of all the Prime Minister’s colleagues, it is quite possibly Das Munshi who gives him the most sleepless nights, unearthing old norms and rules to dictate the turns of modern times.

But the minister believes that the state has its role. When Amitabh Bachchan was in hospital two years ago, Das Munshi instructed state-run Doordarshan to make sure that it outdid private news channel in covering his illness. “I gave directions to DD: if private channels telecast the news twice, you will have to do it thrice,” he says.

The minister, no doubt, is a closet director. Who else would revel in “Cut!”?