After INDIA’s Bengaluru Conclave in July, West Bengal chief minister and All India Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee had sent out word to party workers not to do a song and dance about her being a contender for the post of prime minister. And they did not. A few leaders who did were quickly shut down.
But it’s the social media supporters, not funded by the party and not TMC workers, who are getting impatient. One such group, eponymously called the Trinamool Party Supporters aka FAM4TMC (FAM is Fearless AITC Members), which has been around online since 2014, held a large offline conclave in Kolkata last Sunday where it raised the slogan, ‘Bolche Banglar Janata, Pradhan Mantri hok Mamata’ or ‘Bengal’s people want Mamata for PM’. Several TMC leaders attended the event, indicating that the slogan has the party’s blessings despite official denial.
FAM4TMC, Khela Hobe
“No, this is not the official party stand,” says Debangshu Bhattacharya, TMC’s IT cell chief. “But if supporters say they want Didi to become PM, we can’t stop them. Officially, we are very much with the INDIA stand, but we can’t control fans.” Bhattacharya coined the slogan “Khela Hobe”, which, incidentally, is the name of one of the newest TMC support groups online. There are at least two dozen such groups that are very active on social media, besides hundreds others. The oldest group is the TMC Supporters Community, set up in 2006 by two IT engineers when the happening social media platform was Orkut.
The FAM4TMC group that held the conclave flooded Kalighat near Mamata’s home with bright yellow standees. They adorned Hazra More, a favoured spot from where she has launched many political campaigns, in yellow hoardings. All this would have taken civic and police permission, but then the mayor himself was at the conclave. Inside the hall, FAM4TMC members – 2.6 lakh on Twitter, 1.1 million on Facebook, they claim – came dressed in yellow. The street outside the hall looked like a ‘sarson ka khet’, a TMC leader was quoted as saying by an FAM member.
The event did not escape the notice of Bhartiya Janata Party leader Suvendu Adhikari. “The first contender of the PM Post from the ‘Special 26’ I.N.D.I Alliance has thrown her hat in the ring…,” he tweeted. “Wonder how the other PM aspirants of their Alliance would gulp it down! With a pinch of salt maybe…Or…The action starts. Hold on to your popcorn guys, the knives & daggers are about to be out…” he further wrote. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah were also tagged in the tweet.
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Not the first attempt
This is not the first time this particular online group has called for Mamata as PM. In 2018, it had launched a Facebook campaign with the slogan, “Come let’s make a change. Let’s get a Bengali Prime Minister this time”. Mamata was not named, but huge photos of her left no one in any doubt who the group was talking about.
Back then, it was perhaps wishful thinking. But now that INDIA has emerged, hopes are higher. Mamata’s support groups understand enough politics to figure she cannot become PM on her own steam even if she wins all the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. They know if their leader is to make it to the top job, she will need INDIA. So, their best bet would be to lie low and not make the fragile alliance jittery.
Already, there is considerable unease within INDIA over Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar’s meeting his nephew Ajit Pawar four times since the latter rebelled and split the party to join hands with the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis-led government in Maharashtra, and over Arvind Kejriwal launching the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s campaign for Assembly elections in Congress-run Chhattisgarh. This may not be the best time for Mamata’s supporters to stir the who-will-be-PM pot and run the risk of upsetting the finely balanced apple cart that is INDIA.
There are so many loose ends to tie up in West Bengal alone. What kind of arrangement can TMC and Congress come to in the 2024 elections? How many seats will TMC part with for Congress to contest? What about the Communist Party of India (Marxist)? Will TMC give it even one single seat? The two parties are at loggerheads every day, even over the tragic death of a first-year student at Jadavpur University earlier this month. Meanwhile, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has fired a cryptic simile to explain his position. The state is a pond, he said, the nation is a river, and the greater concern at present is the river.
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Supporters better pipe down
No denying the TMC supporters hit a very Bengali button when they raise the demand for Mamata as PM. In Bengal, there is an unfulfilled hankering to see a Bengali at the top of the high table, something that possibly began with Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. A section certainly believes he could have got the top job or should have. The next son-of-the soil who came close to becoming prime minister was Jyoti Basu in 1996. Even TMC supporters freely lament how he was not allowed to take the job by his very own party. In 2004, hopes again ran high for Pranab Mukherjee when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was being formed. That, too, came to nought, though Mukherjee did redeem things by becoming the first Bengali President of the country in 2012.
Now Mamata has a chance. Or does she? That is a limitless debate. But if her supporters truly want her to make it, they had better pipe down. If TMC is encouraging its supporters to beat the PM drum, it feels monumentally ill-advised at this moment. Yes, the 2024 Lok Sabha elections are just months away, and yes, the TMC wants to whip up the tempo for Mamata as PM. But INDIA is just two meetings old, with the third due in a dozen or so days. The best thing Mamata, TMC and its supporters can do is hold their horses.
Or they may run the risk of Bengal’s luckless history with the PM’s chair repeating itself.
The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)