In the aftermath of Sandeshkhali, the call for ‘paribartan’ or change that Mamata Banerjee had issued back in 2011 against the Left Front government has resurfaced in West Bengal. Only this time, it’s the BJP that’s using it.
The BJP is calling for ‘ashol paribartan’ (real change) in the state ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Nothing original about it. Modi used the same slogan in 2021 and had come a cropper. That the BJP is ready to risk a second-hand slogan for the second time in three years is a sign, it would seem, of its confidence that change is in the air.
Could some of this confidence stem from the fact that Bengal’s intellectual giants, who threw their weight behind Mamata during the Singur and Nandigram agitations, are not very visible these days? On 14 November 2007, hundreds of poets, actors, filmmakers, theatre artistes, singers and writers led a massive march in Kolkata against the violence unleashed by the CPI-M in Nandigram. By 2011, many of these celebrated intellectuals had become part of Mamata’s paribartan movement. Their faces dotted Kolkata in huge paribartan hoardings, and they rooted for Mamata at every major event of the Trinamool Congress.
Today, most are conspicuous by their absence and silence.
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The end of barbarian?
Some of the best-known paribartan personalities have died. One of them was Mahasweta Devi, the Magsaysay Award-winning author who backed Mamata in the run-up to the elections of 2011, then periodically blew hot and cold at the chief minister until her death in July 2016.
Another literary giant, the poet Shankha Ghosh, was dragged into an ugly war of words with one of Mamata’s closest aides, Anubrata Mondal, who is currently lodged at Tihar jail. Ghosh died in April 2021. Educationist Sunanda Sanyal had fallen out with Mamata long before he died in 2022.
Some members of the paribartan brigade joined the TMC full-time: Theatre actor-director Bratya Basu is a minister in the state government. Theatre actor-director Arpita Ghosh and painter Jogen Chowdhury were members of Parliament in the past and continue to head key state-run cultural bodies.
Still seen on TMC platforms – although much less frequently – is Subhaprasanna, the painter whose house was the venue for paribartan meetings in the run-up to Mamata’s 2011 victory. After the panchayat polls last July, he had reportedly said it was time to hit the streets again to stop the political violence in West Bengal. He altered his position after some time, arguing that the poll-violence death toll was “being hyped”.
The panchayat poll violence brought filmmaker-activist Aparna Sen out of silent mode. In July of last year, she wrote an open letter to the chief minister, holding her responsible for the death of 52 people in panchayat election-related violence. This is not the change we wanted, she is reported to have said.
Neither Subhaprasanna nor Aparna responded to calls and text messages regarding changes in their stance. And they haven’t spoken out on Sandeshkhali either.
Dwindling support
Some others, though, have been outspoken. In June 2022, Mamata crossed swords with former West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar on university appointments. She had declared that the chief minister would replace the governor as the chancellor of state universities – a move that 40 eminent citizens condemned. Among them were many who had backed paribartan; thespians Kaushik Sen and Bibhash Chakraborty, social activist Miratun Nahar, and painter Samir Aich.
Aich often challenges the Mamata government in TV debates. He turned from a fan to a critic, he recalls, soon after the infamous Park Street rape case and the rape and murder of a student at Kamduni. In early 2013, Aich quit half a dozen government bodies he was heading. “We had condemned the wrongs of the CPI-M government. But when the Trinamool started doing the same things, how could I stay silent?” he says.
Activist-writer Bolan Gangopadhyay is kinder to paribartan panthis who took posts offered by the Mamata government. “Many of the poets and artists felt they were challenging the system but not doing anything to fix it. ‘If I don’t take responsibility and try to fix things, do I have the right to criticise,’ they thought. So, they joined Mamata. They wanted to change things for the better,” she says. “Shudhu petey jaini (they didn’t go just to get benefits).”
Suman Mukhopadhyay – a theatre director and filmmaker who had marched on 14 November 2007 and whose face was on the paribartan hoardings – is not seen on TMC platforms anymore. But the call for paribartan back in 2011, he says, was historic, and he had no option but to join the movement.
Was there paribartan, though? Yes and no, says Mukhopadhyay. “Yes, today there is corruption, yes there is lumpenisation,” he says, “but I still feel…the way Mamata Banerjee has kept a most dangerous force like the BJP out of Bengal is important.”
This sentiment is strong in Bengal – the desire to keep the BJP out of the state – and it drives a lot of support Mamata’s way despite blots like Sandeshkhali. Remember the ‘No Vote to BJP’ ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections? That campaign, driven by fairly ordinary folk, began six months before the polls. Then, days before the vote, ideologically diverse celebrities, those who had backed paribartan and those who had not, united to sing a song that did not exactly support Mamata but decisively opposed the BJP. The song was a hit.
But that was the last public show of support for Mamata by the state’s celebrities – people held in high esteem not just because they are stars but also because they are thought leaders. If these buddhijibis don’t rally behind her ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP might find a chink in Mamata’s armour and intensify its efforts for ‘ashol paribartan’.
The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)