On 3 April, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the BJP’s ambitious campaign to capture West Bengal from under ‘Didi’ Mamata Banerjee’s nose, Union minister of state and Asansol MP Babul Supriyo was everywhere on social media.
He was shooting pictures of the crowd with his phone, encouraging the audience to roar their approval of the BJP and retweeting visuals of people dancing to his song: Ei Trinamool Ar Na.
In a Lok Sabha election campaign marked by Mamata Banerjee’s high-pitched parochialism and PM Modi’s divisive nationalism, West Bengal will go to the polls in seven phases beginning 11 April.
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Bengal is the glittering jewel that the BJP would like in its crown, but first, they will have to wrest it from Didi’s iron grasp. In a state where the BJP’s organisation is weak and its leadership somewhat lacking in energy, Babul Supriyo’s willingness to go toe-to-toe with Trinamool Congress has set him apart from the others.
Recommended as a candidate by Baba Ramdev, whom he met while on a flight, the singer-turned-actor-turned minister of state has evolved into a provocative speaker on TV debates and a pugnacious opponent on the streets, sometimes chasing down ‘hecklers’ in North Kolkata while voting, and at other times threatening to “break a man’s leg” during an event for people with disabilities.
Most recently the anthem he composed to take on Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal – ‘Phutbe ebar padma phool, Bangla chado Trinamool’ (This time the lotus will bloom, leave Bengal Trinamool)— has been put on hold by the Election Commission after a complaint from the Trinamool Congress.
No one can accuse Babul Supriyo of being short of words, or confidence or indeed controversy. When he was shifted in 2016 and made the minister of state from the high profile Ministry of Urban Development to Heavy Industries, he said it was a bolt from the blue, although blue is “certainly a pretty colour for me”.
When he was asked by Rajat Sharma on India TV’s Aap Ki Adalat about beating those who had put in years of struggle and becoming a minister (in colloquial Hindi, it’s called “papad belna”), he replied that not only was he good at making papads but also at selling them quickly.
In an interview with Anuradha Prasad on News 24’s Aamne Saamne with second wife, former air hostess Rachna Sharma, he called himself good “housewife material” because he was good at everything domestic, from cooking to decorating the home.
And when up against CPI’s Atul Anjan in a TV panel discussion, he said nothing was left of the Red except the red carpet.
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In a somewhat colourless, odourless, and spineless Narendra Modi ministry where most ministers are scared of their own shadow, Babul Supriyo was a journalistic delight, as free with his witticisms as he was with his singing, even if they were cover versions of old Kishore Kumar songs. Here he was singing a duet with fellow MP Hema Malini, there he was serenading Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal at an NDMC function.
Add to that his penchant for riding his Royal Enfield Bullet at night, singing loudly in his car while driving down Rajpath, and sharing jhalmuri and phuchka with Mamata Banerjee at Victoria Memorial in Kolkata, and what you have a is a politician who is unafraid to be himself. Direct and unvarnished, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Babul Supriyo, 48, is fortunate in that he is a rare species – a BJP MP from West Bengal, one of only two, in a state that sends 42 members to the Lok Sabha. And he is also fortunate in that he came into politics after earning success as a singer. Starting off his music career as an accompanying music director on Amitabh Bachchan’s world tour in 1993 and ending with singing some iconic Bollywood songs from Kaho Naa…Pyaar Hai and Hum Tum, before being edged out by the arrival of Honey Singh, Badshah and then Arijit Singh. Supriyo’s real popularity lies in his Bengali songs, many of which he is requested to perform on stage shows, especially during the lucrative Durga Puja season.
Supriyo is perhaps the party’s most recognisable face, more amenable to counsel than the other entertainment celebrity, sometime Draupadi Roopa Ganguly. Supriyo is as pugnacious as he is provocative, but his habit of leavening his cringe-worthy attacks with humour make him a little bit of a misfit in the prevailing culture of toxic name-calling.
But he has a habit of putting his foot in his mouth, whether while accusing Trinamool MLA Mahua Moitra of being drunk or tweeting a picture of a bus stand yet to be built in Gujarat.
The former Standard Chartered banker from Bengaluru, who gave it all up to become a singer in Mumbai, is quite content to be BJP’s battering ram against the “messiah of the minorities” as he describes Banerjee.
To that end, he toes the party line on attacking Trinamool on BJP’s favourite talking points: Mamata Banerjee has made appeasement of Muslims part of her official agenda, that she is ruling the state through a pliable police force, that the BJP voters fear to cast their ballot and that his party is fighting half-truths about Hinduism in Bengal
In Asansol this time, he is up against the glamorous Moon Moon Sen, who is contesting the Lok Sabha elections for the second time – she fought and won the first time from Bankura in 2014. He calls her an elegant lady but one with an abysmal attendance record in the Lok Sabha of 17 per cent. His own record in the Lok Sabha is not particularly brilliant – his attendance was 45 per cent against a national average of 80 per cent and he participated in no debates.
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The contest with Moon Moon Sen is bringing out the best in Babul Supriyo, and it’s all reserved for himself –from giving himself 11 out of 10 as an MP to praising his own work – be it receiving relief from the prime minister’s fund, getting a hospital built, getting a bridge constructed, opening an airport in Durgapur, or opening Asansol’s first passport office and Aadhaar office. But he was in trouble in his constituency when riots broke out after BJP’s Ram Navami celebrations in 2018. In a series of tweets, Supriyo offered to resign but claims he was counselled against it by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
So, what of his future as a politician? Jayanta Ghosal, political editor of India TV and close observer of West Bengal politics, says Babul Supriyo has multiple identities –a singer, a stage performer, a great communicator and a politician. As he says: “He has a good image in Bengal and has excellent media relations, but because of his uneven relationship with the BJP leadership in West Bengal, he is not used effectively.”
If this is Babul Supriyo at less than maximum, if used effectively, the boy from Uttarpara may finally go from Kishore Kumar clone to Babul Supriyo original. In music and politics.
The author is a senior journalist.