How Roopa Ganguly or Sharbari Mukherjee expose Bengal BJP's dearth of leaders

By SNM Abdi Narendra Modi and Amit Shah may be salivating at the thought of capturing West Bengal in 2016. But the BJP’s choice of mayoral candidate for next month’s Kolkata Munipal Corporation elections -– a key battle ahead of crucial assembly polls – shows the duo are living in a fool’s paradise and their hopes are bound to come crashing down.[caption id=“attachment_2175457” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Roopa Ganguly. [/caption] Let’s overlook the technical glitch which ultimately prevented Roopa Ganguly - who played Draupadi in the Mahabharata TV serial – from filing her nomination despite being declared the BJP’s mayoral contender. That the BJP even considered Roopa its best bet reveals how ill-equipped Modi’s party is to take on a formidable adversary like the Trinamool Congress in April or next year. Celebrities from the world of films, music or sports usually play a secondary role in any self-respecting party with career politicians calling the shots. But there are only a handful of career, or conventional BJP politicians in West Bengal, which explains the over-dependence on the glamour brigade. The mayor’s post in any state capital is rightly reserved for a party heavyweight. But West Bengal BJP evidently has no heavyweights to pit against the Trinamool’s nominee – sitting mayor Sovan Chatterjee. Hence the wild card - an admission of a party in disarray! Roopa’s replacement is another actress – Sharbari Mukherjee – who overcame a crippling illness before facing the camera. Yet her electoral debut hasn’t caused ripples in the Tollygunje film industry, leave alone Kolkata or West Bengal because the well-oiled Trinamool is a clear favourite tipped to win around 100 out of 144 KMC wards. The BJP’s most well known face in West Bengal today is Babul Supriyo – a Bollywood singer who got elected from the Asansole Lok Sabha seat and is now a Central minister. He is a bundle of energy and Modi seems to be fond of him. But he was recently ticked off for bunking Parliament during a crucial vote. The BJP has been trying to rope in Saurav Ganguly for months but he is proving smarter than the saffron party. He has met Modi twice but is as elusive as ever. He hasn’t said “no”. And he hasn’t said “yes” compelling the BJP to keep wooing him. There will be more serenading after the World Cup because Saurav will be a big ‘catch’ if and when it materialises. To be sure, West Bengal BJP has a full-time president - Rahul Sinha – who loves talking to the print and electronic media day in and day out. But the central leadership doesn’t seem to have much faith in his capabilities. Hence Siddhartha Nath Singh, national general secretary, is a regular fixture in the BJP’s Kolkata office. Who really controls the West Bengal BJP is a big mystery, though. Recently, Mamata Banerjee identified a Tagorean Bengali gentleman as the “boss of the BJP in West Bengal”. But I will recuse myself from naming him because my first Press identity card bore his signature and he paid my first salary too. The West Bengal BJP today has the media eating out of its hands. The party’s vote-share rose to almost 17 percent last year from a mere six percent in 2009. And it enjoys the huge added advantage of a dedicated RSS network in urban areas. But the BJP simply doesn’t have enough career politicians in its fold or a statewide party machinery to be realistically rated as a serious contender for power in a heavily politicized state like West Bengal. No party can have a cadre of dedicated leaders without mass mobilization-cum- acceptance. And that’s precisely the BJP’s failing – though ironically the Jan Sangh, which later became the BJP, was founded by a Bengali Brahmin, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, in 1951. It’s still a mystery to RSS bosses in Nagpur and Jhandewalan why Hindu refugees from East Pakistan who poured into West Bengal after partition never succumbed to the charms of Jan Sangh or BJP which specialized in Muslim and Pakistan-bashing. They fell for the communists instead because they fought for their rehabilitation in West Bengal bitterly opposing Congress chief minister BC Roy’s plans to pack them off to Dandakaranya or the Andamans. The communists stood for the displaced Hindus’ right to security and equality essential for restarting life afresh. The reds also gave them a world view, firing their imagination by telling them about revolutionary China, Russia, Cuba and Vietnam. In contrast, Jan Sangha and BJP advocated exclusionary religion-based politics which the external proletariat firmly rejected sealing the fate of the Hindu Right in West Bengal. The Jan Sangh-BJP never recovered from the initial setbacks. They failed to penetrate the Bengali middle class, which with all its strengths and weaknesses, has shaped politics in the state. And public intellectuals are the lynch pins of the influential middle class. Little wonder that even today, despite the Modi wave, BJP has failed to win over a single Bengali writer or actor of Sankho Ghosh’s or Soumitro Chatterjee’s stature. Unless intellectuals like them cross over in droves, BJP will lack legitimacy and grapple with an acute shortage of leaders without whom no party can grow beyond a point. Way back in 1991, BJP pulled off a coup by fielding Victor Banerjee of Satyajit Ray and David Lean fame from the Kolkata (North-West) Lok Sabha seat. But Victor lost his deposit. Roopa, who is known all over India because she once played Draupadi, is a good catch in that sense but hardly a substitute for honest-to-goodness career politicians who are the backbone of any party. There is something seriously wrong about any party which fails to nominate a career politician for a key post like the mayor’s in a state capital. That’s why Roopa’s or Sarbhari’s nomination is a bad omen not only for the BJP’s prospects in KMC polls but next year’s legislative assembly elections too. Luigi Pirandello, the Italian dramatist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934, penned a play called Six Characters in Search of an Author. Its Bengali adaptation – Natyokarer Sandhane Chati Choritro [Six Characters in Search of a Playwright] was staged by Nandikar, a Kolkata theatre group, to packed houses. Like the characters in the Pirandello play, West Bengal BJP is surely looking for a charismatic leader to make its dreams come true but can’t seem to find one due to historical reasons.