Tel-Muri-Theatrics: How Bengal Election Became A Spectacle Of Jhaalmuri Stunts To Hilsa Props

In a five-minute news flash, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was shown walking into Kolkata’s Thanthania Kali Bari with a bouquet of flowers in his hand, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was captured shopping for vegetables during her campaign trail, Arvind Kejriwal was heard endearingly speaking in broken Bengali, and Home Minister Amit Shah shooing off Bengal Police during one of his speeches. Cut to advertisements.

Seema, who works at a local confectionary shop in Bengal’s Hooghly, stares at the television perched atop a shelf and asks what is, in all probability, the most pertinent question in today’s Bengal: “What is going on?”

For everybody following the Bengal elections, the last month has been nothing less than visual overload. Despite television news media trying their fair bit to capture all of it, from a leader having watermelon for breakfast dressed in his vest with half-shut eyes to another being chased by locals during polling, it has been a loaded month. Shuttling between FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and ROMO (Relief of Missing Out), people of Bengal, tired and bored on the surface, are drawn to the proscenium that is election in the state. More than witnessing the drama, for Bongs, it is a gravely terrifying thought of not being able to pitch into a conversation the next day on the bus or the train. Imagine having no answer to ‘Did you see what happened yesterday?’

The land is no stranger to political theatrics. However, Seema feels, it is the quantum of things happening at the exact same time that is an issue this time. “The moment you are off social media for five minutes, something or the other has happened. Someone ends up singing a song, or breaking into a dance,” Seema says, continuing with her work. With Bengal being the only state to vote in two phases, the poll season has been heavy and stretched. As Mamata Banerjee-led TMC looks to cling on to the fort, BJP comes all guns blazing to seize control. With streets and buildings wrapped in the banners, festoons, and flags, and speakers blaring from every street corner, the state hosts what is being described as the most high-voltage contest this poll season.

However, beyond the electoral arithmetic and extrapolation, the ruling dispensation in the state has consistently tried to push forward the ‘us versus them’ at the very fore of issues. While pitching herself as the custodian of Bengali culture, identity and language, Banerjee has repeatedly termed the BJP to be an ‘outsider’ mercenary party incapable of grasping the nuances of the state’s culture. In an AI-animated video recently released by the TMC’s official social media handle, the Modi-Shah duo is portrayed as demons who are against a Muslim man visiting a Durga Puja Pandal or people consuming non-vegetarian food during the festival. They are, thus, chased away by the people of Bengal led by Banerjee with a god-like halo. The BJP, in its attempts to counter this, has tried to project itself as a party well-acquainted with cultural, gustatory and historical elements of the state by engaging political theatre in its full bloom.

After claiming "he was born in Bengal in my previous birth or will take birth from the womb of a mother in Bengal" in his next birth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to social media to post pictures of his early-morning visit to Kolkata’s Princep Ghaat and customary boat-ride on the Ganges against the backdrop of the iconic Howrah Bridge and Vidyasagar Setu. Social media blew up instantly with people panning Modi’s move, pointing at his choice to wear a shawl in summer, with Kolkata recording temperatures nearing 40 degrees. The videos circulated also capture Modi’s water entourage making way for a water ambulance. “Of all things, there had to be a water-ambulance,” says Raj, an e-commerce delivery rider.

"There are always cameras swarming him. Be it during yoga or mediating in cave. He is seen everywhere except places where he actually needs to be seen, like in Manipur, Kashmir or at a press conference. It is baffling how the educated and posh people in the city are falling for this spectacle," Raj adds, pursing a sardonic smile.

Previously, in another wildly viral episode, the Prime Minister’s encounter with a jhaalmuri-seller in Bengal’s Jhargram, was subject to heavy dissection. Modi, who walks up to the seller, and asks him to make him a ten-rupee cone, is surrounded by a swelling crowd cordoned off by the SPGs. TMC tore into the video, establishing it as a staged one, with a pre-meditated script and planted cameras. While numerous comments question if protocols would ever allow him to do this on an impromptu note, others question why Modi, the face of a UPI-forward payment economy, would suddenly carry a 10-rupee note in his pocket to pay for jhaalmuri.

“Why do they constantly need to prove their connection to Bengal? Does it not defeat their claim that they are also equally Bengali,” asks Seema, only to be interjected by an aged customer who had walked in.

“Mamata Banerjee, of all people, should not complain about political theatrics, when she has built a career out of that,” he says, referring to instances of a young Mamata Banerjee dancing atop the bonnet of Jayprakash Narayan’s car in the 70s and sustaining a leg injury leading to her campaigning from a wheelchair in 2021. “If all of us counted the number of days, office-going people have had to return because she had called for a random bandh, staged a protest somewhere, fell, turned, toppled. We would run out of fingers,” he adds, jogging down memory lane. However, critics have pointed out that BJP’ use of political theatrics feeds reasons beyond politics on the ground, where the evolution of political theatrics has been mediated by algorithms in the recent past.

BJP leader and convener of its cultural cell, Rudranil Ghosh feels that the BJP's actions are just a direct consequence of Trinamool's 'outsider' rhetoric. "They have constantly tried to convince people that BJP is an outsider party and that we would ban meat and impose vegetarianism across the state. The crowd out there is impressionable. So, to counter the TMC's rhetorical barrage, we had to do it." Ghosh adds that the campaigns with fish are rather to convey that only if the BJP comes to power in the state, will people of Bengal be able to afford fish.

Ghosh, an acclaimed actor, has employed irony, rhyme and mimicry, to talk about political issues in the state. Even during his campaigns, he tickled the jocular when he was seen hugging a man shouting out TMC slogans in front of Ghosh's rallies or making a limerick out of overflowing drains. "I do not think these should be branded as political theatrics. It's a rather parallel language to engage the voter and reach out to them. I think what is more theatrical is the TMC's attempt to shift focus and move away from burning issues. And people have now begun to see through the sham," Ghosh adds.

In a recent interview, actor Ravi Kishan asked why should people have a problem with the Prime Minister visiting West Bengal, having jhaalmuri or taking a boat ride down Ganga. Echoing Kishan's words, Ghosh says, "He is the Prime Minister of the entire county. It is insensible to term these as theatrics. It is a shame."

TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee believes BJP's entire electoral premise stands on theatrics. "People are extremely annoyed with the BJP. To have police control elections in West Bengal, delete voters through SIR, and then campaign with fish and have a boat-ride is a sham. Is this what they think of Bengal's voters?"

Referring to BJP candidate Rakesh Singh taking out a Poila Boisakh (Bengali New Year) rally with fish in his hands, Banerjee asks," Have you ever seen a Bengali walk around the town with fish on the occasion of Poila Boisakh (Bengali New Year)? Their theatrics offend Bengali culture. To portray identity this way, it is beyond exaggeration. It is a betrayal."

In this regard, essayist and author, Sayandeb Chowdhury identifies the contemporary rise of BJP with social media as coincidental and serendipitous. “The optics of political theatre would have been completely different if the rise started a decade before 2014 or a decade after. The BJP has been successful in harnessing social media to a great extent where the language of visuality supersedes that of textuality. To use social media to further political theatrics, one has to prioritise visuals, which travel faster than text. And for visuals to travel faster, one has to largely incorporate theatrics,” he says.

Chowdhury further highlights the importance of contemporary political theatrics in creating ‘talking points’ on social media and maintaining “circularity of content”, which is vastly different from the idea of the political spectacle as witnessed in the past. “In Southern India, especially in the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the political spectacle has been intrinsically linked to the larger-than-life cinema and hero-worship, which was not the case in the other parts of the country,” he says, linking the usage of cut-outs of major political figures to the need for an ‘extra-cinematic spectacle’. “Be it Stalin burning a copy of the delimitation bill or NTR Sr. Canvassing for votes dressed as Raam, political theatrics or optics in these states have always been shaped by cinematic style and grammar. But, the current usage of political theatrics as a mode of visual communication is more calculated and designed to feed social media.”

Onto The EVM, Into The Heart, Through The Gut?

As Banerjee continued to attack the BJP over its moral and ideological stand of vegetarianism, the saffron party upped its game by carrying fish to electoral ground zero. Banerjee, at one of her rallies, claimed that if the BJP came to power in the state, they would not allow consumption of fish, meat and eggs. However, BJP’s attempt to counter the claim has seen more manifestations than one could have imagined. From BJP candidate Sharadwat Mukherjee campaigning with Catla fish in his hand to polystyrene cut-outs of Hilsa stuck to rally trucks, the ‘fishy’ conundrum, despite being discarded by the BJP top brass as unnecessary controversy, has been a primary plank for the BJP in the state.

Chowdhury associates BJP’s attempts at appealing to the gustatory as its foremost strategy to shed its ‘anti-Bengal’ image. “BJP does not have an organisation in the state, and neither does it have solid vote banks here. This is where the essentially Bengali element of a fish or a Jhaalmuri comes in. Politically speaking, when you do not have a historic vote base, a serious poll issue, or even a Chief Ministerial face, what remains is spectacle. Spectacle shaped by a range of theatrics, which would give it some sort of legitimacy and entry into the political soil of Bengal,” he says.

Threading to a fundamental decree of acting, he says that if an act reveals that one is staging it as a stunt or a spectacle, they are not doing a good job. “Going by the reaction on social media, these recent episodes have been perceived as comical. Instead of producing local faces, if the BJP feels that a candidate running around with fish would make it a Bengali household factor, they are gravely mistaken,” he adds.

Chowdhury also believes that political theatrics, which have usually played a consistent role in swaying rural and sub-urban crowds, need to arrive with ground-level political discourse. “In Bengal’s rural areas, I do not think they care if BJP leaders are eating fish or meat. And for the urban crowd who want the BJP in power, they want to vote for them to actively participate in the pan-Indian Hindutva concern, and not for the fact that they consume fish or not. So, either way, this brand of political theatrics falls flat on its face.”

For voters like Seema, the political theatre that Bengal has witnessed over the last couple of months has been overwhelming, ridiculous and yet inescapable. Fish, an almost umbilical tether, has become an irritating earworm. The jhaalmuri shop in question finds itself in quite a pickle after the PM’s visit, manned by CAPF personnel throughout the day. Alcohol finds itself banned across ten days in the state. Amidst all of this, the voter awaits the entr'acte. And question the person seated next with equal shock, fatigue and curiosity; “What is going on?”