At the inauguration ceremony of the Kolkata International Film Festival, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was sharing the stage with Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor, and Sonakshi Sinha. The stars did a little dance and persuaded the chief minister to shake a leg as well. And she did.
It was an innocuous, oft-repeated stage gesture, great for photos and tweets that usually draw praise for politicians as being sporting and indulging in a ‘light-hearted’ moment. But what followed in Banerjee’s case?
BJP MP and minister of rural development Giriraj Singh swung his hip around on camera during an interview while repeatedly mocking the CM: “Jashn mana rahi hain, thumke laga rahi hain.”
It was not a pleasant sight.
Banerjee dismissed Singh’s comment with the contempt it deserved. Her party Trinamool Congress (TMC) jumped to the defence of Bengal’s woman chief minister—rather, the country’s only woman chief minister.
BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari compared her to Nero. He fiddled, he said, and she danced.
But what flashed in my mind was that moment from April 2021 in Hooghly, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi pronounced those three words that must still haunt him as it cost his party many seats in the Bengal assembly: “Didi, O Didi”.
What will thumka cost?
The 2024 Lok Sabha election is now less than six months away. The semi-finals—the recently concluded assembly elections in five states—have foretold the outcome of 2024, according to none other than the prime minister. Objectively, you can’t blame the BJP for taking that as gospel truth. For the Congress, the results are a miserable setback and for the nascent INDIA, a blow so bad it couldn’t even come together for a scheduled meeting on 6 December to conduct a post-mortem and plan ahead.
Banerjee said she did not get an invite. Akhilesh Yadav said he was not available. Nitish Kumar had a fever. And MK Stalin had a cyclone’s aftermath to deal with.
By Sunday, Banerjee was much more gracious about the Congress rout in three north Indian states than her party, which accused the Congress of suffering with a ‘zamindari’ hangover. Yadav took potshots at Congress’ ‘arrogance’. But Banerjee said while the Congress may have lost the elections, the people haven’t and INDIA could still swing things around in 2024.
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TMC laurels have a sell-by date
Mamata Banerjee is nobody’s fool and her words were possibly not mere platitudes. Numerous analysts have pointed out that the difference in vote share between the Congress and the BJP in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh was between 2 and 4 per cent. In Madhya Pradesh, it widened to 8 per cent. Clearly, something happened in that state to the Congress. Shivraj Singh Chouhan had some aces up his sleeve and the most uncharitable have started predictably pointing fingers at EVMs.
Be that as it may, what could make Banerjee the best bet for INDIA?
Her experience at confronting the BJP and her success after every such confrontation, said The Call of the Times. That was the title of the editorial in the TMC mouthpiece Jago Bangla on 4 December, the day after the election results. It recalled Banerjee’s valiant wheel-chair bound battle against the BJP and read the Congress the riot act: stop behaving as if the country was its ‘zamindari’ or fiefdom, it said; shed those blinkers.
The TMC appears to have divested itself of some of its own blinkers that prompted grandiose slogans in the recent past like ‘Dilli Chalo’ and ‘Ekla Chalo Re’ to oust the BJP nationally on its own. The editorial recognises that INDIA is the country’s best bet, its future.
But more messages to the Congress and other members of INDIA were embedded in that editorial. “Congress must remember Trinamool Congress has taken on the BJP head on. It has won repeatedly. The Prime Minister and Home Minister and dozens of other leaders could not dethrone the Mamata Banerjee government. So, they have deployed the agencies and unleashed a Goebbelsian politics of lies. The party or the leader who has fought successfully against the BJP and has the experience of should be at the forefront (in 2024). That is the call of the time,” the editorial concludes.
Which is all very well but TMC cannot rest on its laurels. Its 2021 election victory will be three years in the past by the time the 2024 election comes around and the interim has not exactly been a period of unadulterated success for the party and its government. A dozen TMC leaders, including ministers, are undertrial prisoners, there are rampant allegations of corruption and, by design, the BJP is targeting Banerjee’s biggest political asset—her personal honesty and probity in office. Last week, the Bengal assembly saw a vigorous if crude T-shirt campaign with ‘Mamata Chor’ stencilled on them.
Given that post-Bofors ‘Rajiv Gandhi chor hai’ cost the former prime minister his job, and the alleged ‘coal scam’ and ‘2G scam’ felled Manmohan Singh, the mud of corruption does tend to stick—though not always, like in case of Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ didn’t work against Modi. So, Mamata may not be invulnerable.
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Thanks to Giriraj, TMC now has a card
BJP seems set on spending the run-up to 2024 using her for target practice: witness Dharmendra Pradhan’s outburst in Parliament to TMC’s call for a discussion on denial of due funds to Bengal. He hurled the charge of a Rs 4000-crore midday meal scam at the TMC government and demanded a CBI probe. His outburst seemed disproportionate and possibly not un-orchestrated.
Then, 48 hours later, Giriraj Singh happened.
His thumka jibe will divide the people of Bengal into three groups: those who are indifferent, those who consider the remark despicable, and those who love the barb. I will not hazard a guess as to which group will score how much in a straw poll. If the TMC plays its card well and keeps the issue alive for the next three or four months, then much like ‘Didi O Didi’, ‘thumka’ could pay rich dividends. If the ‘indifferent’ camp is overwhelming, then thumka will sink without a trace. But if thumka lovers prevail, then 2024 will certainly reflect that. As would 2026.
Unwittingly, Giriraj Singh may be remembered forever for his contribution to a popular Bengali proverb that is about Bengal’s women and their numerous talents. “Je randhe shey chul o bandhe.” The one who cooks also combs her hair.
Now, thanks to Giriraj Singh, the proverb has acquired an embellishment. It may just go down in history as, Je randhe she chul o bandhe ebong thumka o lagaye. The one who cooks also combs her hair and even does a dance.
More power to her.
The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)