Pens Against The Tide

Two of Bengal’s watershed political moments—that of the Left Front coming to power in 1977 and the fall of that regime after 34 years in 2011—had witnessed writers, actors, singers and artists helping create a pro-change wave. In 2021, as Bengal anxiously keeps watch over another possible significant change, one perhaps no less impactful than that of 1977, the role of these intellectuals, referred to in Bengali as Buddhijibi, stands in contrast.

The majority of prominent personalities from the world of literature, theatre, arts and music stand opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party—the principal force calling for a change of regime. This, perhaps, is a reason why the BJP’s Bengal unit chief, Dilip Ghosh, has made a series of incendiary, belittling statements about intellectuals. After having set new standards of anti-intellectualism, Ghosh’s latest tirade include such taunts as “intellectuals are a burden on society” and “actors and singers better stay focussed on acting and dancing. Don’t try politics. Otherwise, I will rub you the wrong way”. The response came during an interview with a Bengali daily, as  Ghosh responded to a question on a recently-released music video featuring prominent cultural personalities calling upon people to resist the BJP.

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Participating in the video were veteran theatre personalities Rudraprasad Sengupta, Arun Mukhopadhya, theatre and film actors Kaushik Sen, Sabyasachi Chakraborty and Shantilal Mukherjee, film director Suman Mukhopadhyay, singers Rupankar Bagchi and Anupam Roy, among others. Even though the song did not explicitly mention the BJP or the RSS, the composition carried an unmistakable anti-BJP overtone, criticising the Narendra Modi administration since 2014.   

“Where were these intellectuals when votes were being looted in the Panchayat elections and when our supporters across Bengal faced atrocities from TMC goons and their police cohorts?” Dilip Ghosh tells Outlook, defending his comments on intellectuals. “They are now talking big on democracy. Where were these lectures when the TMC throttled democratic space? Why should people listen to them?” asks Ghosh.

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According to senior journalist Subhasis Maitra, the majority of Bengal’s cultural personages have a rationalist bent of mind and are opposed to the mythology- and religion-oriented thinking that the RSS and the BJP promotes. “There is a kind of natural resistance towards the BJP among the members the intelligentsia,” Maitra says while explaining why the BJP failed to get prominent civil soc­iety members to endorse their call for change in spite of trying to woo them.

In 2011, a pro-change consolidation of artistes, intellectuals and cultural activists clustered around writer-activist Mahashweta Devi. Film-maker Aparna Sen, poet Joy Goswami, painters Jogen Chowdhury and Suvaprasanna, singers Kabir Suman and Pratul Mukhopadhyay, theatre personalities Bibhas Chakraborty, Saonli Mitra, Kaushik Sen, Bratya Basu, Arpita Ghosh, retired IAS officer Debabrata Bandyopadhyay, human rights activist Sujato Bhadra and rights activist Medha Patkar helped build a wave against the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government over a period of five years—since the beginning of the anti-displacement movement in Singur in 2006. Many shared the dais with the Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on numerous occasions. Of them, singer Kabir Suman later served as a Lok Sabha MP, Bratya Basu as a two-term minister and Jogen Chowdhury and Debabrata Bandyopadhyay as Rajya Sabha members.

Between 2006 and 2010, intellectuals were the driving force behind two of the biggest protest events against the government. On November 14, 2007, over 50,000 people gathered in Calcutta, res­ponding to an urgent call for protest from the likes of Mahashweta Devi, Aparna Sen and Joy Goswami against the CPI(M)’s alleged ‘armed recapture’ of Nandigram. The second, in Lalgarh on August 9, 2010, protested alleged atrocities on tribal agitators by CPI(M) and the state police in coordination with paramilitary forces deployed to check Maoism in the area. The meeting was convened by Debabrata Bandyo­pad­hyay and attended by Swami Agnivesh, Medha Patkar, Mahashweta Devi and Mamata Banerjee, among others.

Most of these intellectuals were ideologically Left-leaning, but were disillusioned by the CPI(M)’s coercive policy of land acquisition. Since coming to power, Mamata took care not to antagonise this section. But 2021 seems to be on a different plane altogether.

Explaining the difference in the role of civil society in these three elections, human rights activist Sujato Bhadro says that ahead of the 1977 Bengal elections civil society had consolidated around the movement for the release of political prisoners—detainees from the Naxalite movement and those arrested during the Emergency. “In 1977, even those who did not call for voting in favour of the CPI(M) urged people to defeat Indira’s Gandhi’s Congress. The Left parties and the Janata Party benefited from this. Both in 1977 and 2011, civil society members considered the main opposition force as a lesser evil. Now, the main Opposition in Bengal is being considered a greater evil and for obvious reasons. The way a top Opposition leader is carrying out an anti-intellectualism campaign is unprecedented,” Bhadra says.

In 2011, Bhadra was one of those who called for a change. In 2021, he is one of the convenors of the civil society initiative named Bengal Against Fascist BJP-RSS that carried out a campaign of “no vote to BJP”.

Tathagata Roy, who served as the BJP’s central executive member and Mohit Ray, chief of the party’s Bengal unit refugee cell, have been among the prominent right-wing intellectuals in Bengal over the past several years. Over the past four years, three more persons worked hard to create a base among intellectuals— journalist Swapan Dasgupta, the BJP’s national policy research wing member Anirban Ganguly and journalist Rantidev Sengupta, who edits the RSS’s Bengali mouthpiece, Swastika, and heads Bengal BJP’s intellectual cell.

Describing the role of Bengali intellectuals in the polls, Mohit Ray says the state’s intellectual sphere is dominated by Left-leaning people opposed to the BJP. “The TMC enjoyed their support as it did not attempt any change in the sphere of thought. But the BJP wants to change the thinking pattern. Among int­ellectuals in Bengal, a trend of opposing Indian culture and Hindu traditions is dominant. They never see any problem with Muslim radicalism. Therefore, most Bengali intellectuals are opposed to the BJP,” Ray says.

Elaborating on how intellectuals were working to stop the BJP’s growth, Ray cited the example of Kaushik Sen’s rec­ent statement in which he said he did not support the TMC but would call upon the people to resist the BJP, “a dangerous force”. Intellectual titans like poet Shankha Ghosh and thespian Bibhas Chakraborty have also issued statements in the past to criticise the Modi-led Centre on issues such as communalism.

Dilip Ghosh, however, cares a hoot. “Let them do whatever they want. It will all be over after this election,” he says defiantly. If the BJP manages to topple the TMC regime, this would probably be the first major political change in Bengal in defiance of the app­eal of the cultural establishment. That would be a tectonic shift.

By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya in Calcutta