Dear Didi, Er, Pishi!

The BJP IT cell’s national head Amit Malviya tweeted, “Pishi has only cared for votebank, not real development!” That was on December 16 and two days later, the BJP Bengal unit’s Twitter handle said, “…TMC cadres have scant respect for Bengali culture. All they do is compete with each other to appease Pishi at the cost of dishonouring national heroes like Netaji or Kabiguru.” More was to come a day later. “The very motherland is again in the dictatorial clutches of Pishi,” twitted the BJP’s Bengal unit joint general secretary Kishor Barman.

Pishi, meaning paternal aunt, is the new moniker dominating the discourse in Bengal politics, being used to refer to Mamata Banerjee—affectionately called Didi in Bengal and beyond—by leaders of BJP and Left alike. Even her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, calls her Didi. “Those who built the TMC are unimportant in the party now. They are not in the party. The TMC has transformed into a party of the Pishi and her Bhaipo,” Sujan Chakraborty, the leader of Left parties in the state assembly, said on November 10, using the Bengali word for nephew to refer to Abhishek. To refer to her as Pishi aims to highlight her identity as the aunt of Abhishek, who has emerged as her heir apparent in the recent years.

Abhishek is at present the TMC’s youth wing chief, Lok Sabha MP and a member of the party’s highest decision-making body, the six-member steering committee. However, unofficially, he is considered the ‘number 2’ in the party. Over the past couple of years, the BJP and the CPI(M) leaders have repeatedly targeted Mamata Banerjee over the rise of her nephew and increase in his assets. They have acc­used the Bhaipo of corruption.

After they named Abhishek and got dragged to court a few times, the BJP leaders preferred to refer to him only as the Bhaipo. “No one needs to name. Ishara hi kaafi hain. Everybody understands who is the Bhaipo,” BJP state unit president Dilip Ghosh said.

Therefore, Bhaipo has become ano­ther name dominating in the discourse in the state politics.

“I dare them to name me. Even the prime minister refers to me as Bhatija or Bhaipo. He doesn’t have the courage to name me,” Abhishek Banerjee said in November. On December 19, while addressing a public meeting in West Midnapore district, Union home minister Amit Shah acc­used Mamata Banerjee of ‘Bhatijakaran’ and alleged that she was solely interested in securing the future of her nephew as the new chief minister.

“From Didi’s party, it has transformed into Pishi’s party,” alleged Kanishka Panda, the TMC’s expelled leader from East Midnapore district who is known as a Suvendu Adhikari loyalist.

Adhikari, a former heavyweight minister in Didi’s cabinet, gave the slogan of “Tolabaj Bhaipo-hathao”, or uproot the extortionist nephew, soon after joining the BJP.

Notably, Abhishek has not been accused in any scam yet, even though more than a dozen TMC leaders were acc­used in the Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund scams and the Narada sting operations.

The TMC alleged this was the BJP and the Left’s ‘concerted dirty ploy’ to make unsubstantiated claims. “They are masters of spreading fake news and lies. They are creating a fake narrative around Bhaipo. They never showed the courage of naming while making those absurd charges,” said TMC Lok Sabha MP and spokesperson Kalyan Banerjee.

Nevertheless, political observers felt, the election of 2021 will also be a battle between Mamata Banerjee’s image as the Didi and the Pishi.

By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya in Calcutta