Although the actor lost the election, this intertwining of glamour and politics has continued unabated since, with the party roping in popular actors Mimi Chakraborty, Nusrat Jahan, and Deepak ‘Dev’ Adhikari in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and even bringing in cricketer Yusuf Pathan this election.
According to political commentators, there are two major reasons why the TMC banks on celebrities — attracting voters and minimising infighting.
It was Mamata Banerjee who first started the trend of bringing celebrities into politics, political observer Snigdhendu Bhattacharya told ThePrint.
“Mamata Banerjee has introduced a new politics in Bengal by using the glamour quotient,” Bhattacharya, who has authored the 2020 book ‘Mission Bengal: A Saffron Experiment’, said. “When TMC’s upward mobility started in 2009, more actors, singers, and glamor joined the fray. Mamata always trusted celebrities in difficult seats where she couldn’t find a suitable candidate.”
In 2009, TMC fielded actor and now three-time MP Satabdi Roy from Birbhum constituency, late actor Tapas Paul from Krishnanagar, and acclaimed Bengali singer-songwriter Kabir Suman from Jadavpur. Suman has since fallen out with the TMC.
Likewise, in the 2014 parliamentary polls, TMC’s actor-politician Moonmoon Sen defeated nine-time CPI (M) MP and senior trade unionist Basudeb Acharia in Bankura.
But it’s not only the TMC that has tried to glamorise politics. From MP Locket Chatterjee and actors Yash Dasgupta and Rudranil Ghosh to singer Babul Supriyo, who’s now with the TMC, the BJP, too, has its share of celebrities.
However, according to BJP leader and former member of Rajya Sabha Swapan Dasgupta, his party hasn’t been able to get many celebrities on board.
“This is because the TMC government comes down heavily on the actors and ensures that they don’t get work,” said Dasgupta.
However, TMC leader and Dum Dum MP Saugata Roy sees nothing wrong in using a celebrity to garner support. Inducting a celebrity face helps gather support for the party, he says. “It’s a celebrity face that is easily recognisable and strikes instantly with the people. A celebrity face doesn’t need an introduction, and if it’s helping the party, there is nothing wrong with it.”
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Glamour quotient and TMC’s politics
This time, too, the TMC has roped in celebrities, even persuading actor and Ghatal MP Dev Adhikari to retract his resignation from the panels of three state-run bodies and fielding him once again from the seat.
According to sources in the TMC, although Adhikari was keen to contest the elections, local party leaders were upset with his infrequent visits to the constituency.
“There was a strong resistance from the TMC grassroots leadership from Ghatal. They have also raised their concerns with Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek (the CM’s nephew and TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee). That’s when he tendered resignation — to earn sympathy from the people,” one source said.
Currently, the actor is campaigning for the party not only in Ghatal but also in the north Bengal seats of Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri — both of which the BJP wrested from the TMC in 2019.
But Adhikari isn’t the only one criticised for being absent from the constituency. In the middle of the Sandeshkhali row in February, Basirhat MP Nusrat Jahan, under whose constituency the area falls, faced backlash for not visiting it.
According to former TMC MP Moonmoon Sen, whose mother Suchitra Sen was one of Bengal’s most revered actors, celebrities are “vote-catchers” for political parties. While campaigning for the Bakura election in 2014, Sen banked not only on her celebrity status but also on her mother’s reputation as one of the state’s most iconic actors. However, she lost the 2019 polls to singer and former Union minister Babul Supriyo.
“From Rajesh Khanna and Shatrughan Sinha, we celebrities are vote-catchers. Very few of us have time to attend Parliament, to go to constituencies and check the work done by BDOs,” Sen, now retired from politics, told ThePrint, adding that she was proud of her attendance in Lok Sabha and that Mamata had appreciated her for it.
According to political analyst Bhattacharya, quoted earlier, there’s another reason that the TMC banks on celebrities — to prevent infighting. The party tends to parachute a celebrity in seats where with more than one claimant, he said.
For instance, in Hooghly, where the TMC has fielded Rachana Banerjee, there were three claimants — former West Bengal agriculture marketing minister Tapan Dasgupta, Haripal MLA Becharam Manna, and former state minister for technical education Asima Patra.
“All three of them had been ministers at one point. And the party didn’t trust them to come together and support a local candidate,” the political analyst said.
With Rachana Banerjee, the party hopes to swing the election even in a close contest. “Rachana has her own celebrity value and in a close contest, even 2-3 percent vote swing makes a big difference. Mamata Banerjee knows that,” Snigdhendu said.
Likewise, in Berhampore, TMC has fielded former Indian cricketer Yusuf Pathan against five-time Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
But Dasgupta sees the TMC’s trend of fielding celebrities as the party’s “contempt for the electorate”.
“They (TMC) think that they (people) are fools. You can give them anything and they will swallow,” he said.
Lack of ‘organic’ grassroots leaders
Despite Dasgupta’s criticism, his own party is not far behind when it comes to roping in celebrities.
For instance, during the 2014 general election, the late music director and then BJP candidate Bappi Lahiri not only tried to woo voters with his hit songs but also promised a music academy in Serampore, where he was contesting the polls against TMC’s Kalyan Banerjee and Communist Party of India (Marxist) Tirthankar Roy.
Kalyan Banerjee won that election.
According to psephologist Biswanath Chakraborty there’s one more reason for parties like the TMC and BJP to fall back on celebrities — their perceived tractability.
“Both BJP and TMC know that if they put a candidate from the glamour world, they will remain very obedient and it will be easy for the party to control them. These celebrities rarely question the party leadership and follow their directions,” he said.
But a major flipside of this trend is that it results in a lack of “organic” grassroots leaders, potentially causing a major leadership crisis within the party.
“The TMC has discontinued student (union) elections in colleges and universities, so there are no young leaders,” Chakraborty said, adding that “there are more actors than politicians” in the TMC.
The Left, too, had its share of popular icons in politics, such as legendary filmmaker Mirnal Sen. However, according to CPI(M)’s Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya, unlike the TMC and the BJP, the Left brought in “candidates from the cultural and intellectual circles”.
“All our candidates from the cultural world who were aligned to our ideology and were part of a cultural movement. The Left always wanted to bring good material in politics for the future of the masses,” he said.
He also accuses the BJP and the Congress of “trivialising” politics. “Neither party cares about people or their problems. They are only worried about floating a popular face to win votes. People have a mystic idea about the glamour world and they are exploiting that. These celebrities don’t have a political consciousness,” the Left leader said.
Supriyo, meanwhile, believes that celebrities should view politics as a “responsibility”. The singer and former Asansol MP was formerly part of the Narendra Modi cabinet but switched over to the TMC in September 2021.
“The thought of leaving politics behind does cross my mind once in a while, but I remind myself that it is a chance to serve the very people who have loved me,” he told ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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