Tollygunge, the hub of the Bengal film industry, is now caught in a political whirlwind. The actors and artists are badly divided due to ‘professional reasons’, and consequentially have thronged the political parties. So, it is not surprising that about twenty actors are in the fray this time, fielded both by the TMC and the BJP almost equally.
Mamata Banerjee has fielded actors in the past even for Lok Sabha seats, and they have won. The list included Moon Moon Sen, Shatabdi Roy, late Tapas Paul, Nusrat Jahan and Mimi Chakraborty.
Moon Moon, who in 2014 defeated a CPI(M) heavyweight Basudeb Acharya in Bankura, was defeated By Babul Supriya in 2019 when she contested from the Asansol constituency. Subrata Mukherjee, a veteran politician and a minister in the state, was sent to her earlier constituency wherefrom a strong pro-BJP current was being reported, and even Mukherjee lost the election.
So why the political parties have fallen for the present-day hero and heroines? TMC list includes veterans like Chiranjeet Chakraborty (an MLA at present), and present-day stars like Soham Chakroborty (Chandipur), Saayoni Ghosh (Asansol Dakshin), Raj Chakraborty (Berrackpore) Sayantika Banerjee (Bankura), and Koushani Mukherjee (Krishnanagar Uttar). The BJP list includes Union Minister Babul Supriyo (Tollygunge), Rudranil Ghosh (Bhawanipur, the constituency represented by Mamata Banerjee for the last 10 years), Shrabanti Chatterjee (Behala West), Yash Dasgupta (Chanditala) and Paayel Sarkar (Behala Purba).
None of them is as popular as Mithun Chakraborty, or even Moon Moon Sen. A senior actor who does not want to be named says, “They are all tiny stars. Forget Uttam Kumar, none of them can go close to the level of popularity enjoyed by Prasenjit (who dominated Bengali filmdom in the first decade of the present century). The urge to contest came from the people of my fraternity. In the last 10 years, those who were against TMC have been pushed out of work. Some of them have joined the BJP. But I can’t comment on why BJP has made them candidates.”
Well, Dilip Ghosh, the president of state BJP, has an answer. “They help us to pull crowd,” he says. He feels, when they move around, those who are not BJP supports come to see them, and it gives the party an opportunity to preach their ideology before the uninitiated.
In fact, no one in the BJP feels they can add a significant number of votes in the highly politicised society of Bengal. But they can add glamour, and the party bosses feel it helps.
TMC insiders too believe these stars cannot sway the people. Mamata Banerjee started fielding them in some seats to neutralise groupism within the party. By denying tickets to expectants from the rival groups, she maintained equilibrium. The TMC insiders claim, after getting reports from Prashant Kishor about the ground situation, this time she has mostly fielded the stars in seats where a political candidate had little chance to win.
So they are crowd-pullers, but not vote-catchers. But in hard times, all the sides need them to try their luck.
Perhaps the Tollygunge assembly seat symbolises this factor. The TMC minister Arup Biswas is quite popular here. But he has become infamous too for his strong-arm control of the film industry through his brother Swarup Biswas. BJP has fielded their MP cum minister Babul Supriya against him. But neither Babul nor any other actor in the fray is sure of his or her win.
(The author Diptendra Raychaudhuri is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. He has a wide range of experience in covering West Bengal politics and has authored several books)