Anita Katyal | Is BJP Rattled By Opp.’s Voter Rally? Big Fuss Over Film on Gopal Pantha

Clearly rattled by the enthusiastic response to the Opposition’s ongoing “Voter Adhikar Yatra” in Bihar, the Bharatiya Janata Party has dispatched a team of senior leaders to the state to take the INDIA bloc head on. Besides countering the Opposition charge that voter lists were being manipulated to help the BJP and its allies, attempts are also being made to create a division between Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal leaders Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav, who are leading the charge on what is being labelled as “vote chori”. In the course of their press conferences, BJP leaders have referred to the “growing rift” between the two, stating how Rahul Gandhi evaded giving a direct answer when recently asked if Tejashwi Yadav would be projected as the Opposition’s chief ministerial candidate. The RJD leader, on the other hand, had remarked that he would like to see Rahul Gandhi as the country’s Prime Minister. Though Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav have been working in tandem during the yatra, the story about differences has found many takers as the joint Opposition rally planned for September 1 at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan has been put off though the yatra will continue.

More on Ranjeet Ranjan, also known as Ranjeeta, who was constantly by Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s side during the recently concluded Parliament session. Ranjeet, wife of the famed Madhepura MP Pappu Yadav, is from Bihar and it would be expected that as a fiery speaker she would be an active participant in the Opposition’s ongoing “Voter Adhikar Yatra”. But strangely, she has not been seen or heard so far. Pappu Yadav, who is not known to have cordial relations with the Rashtriya Janata Dal leadership, has been spotted accompanying Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav during the yatra. On an earlier occasion, Pappu Yadav was not allowed on stage with Tejashwi Yadav and Rahul Gandhi. But this time, the Congress leader went up to him and the two were seen chatting together. The question everyone is asking whether Rajneet is staying away from the yatra because she does not wish to be seen on the same podium as her husband. The guessing game is on.

Right wingers in India were particularly ecstatic when Donald Trump took over the US Presidency for a second time early this year. Social media was inundated with posts on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s special bond with Trump and how Indo-US relations would henceforth go from strength to strength. Six months later, it’s a different story. Not only has Trump offered no concessions to India, he has penalised the country for purchasing oil from Russia, which, he said, was funding the war on Ukraine. Right wingers here are predictably angry over the turn of events. Unhappy with Trump for what he is doing to India, the right-wing ecosystem here has instead unleashed its fury on external affairs minister S. Jaishankar for India’s foreign policy crisis. Since the minister has been the Modi government’s voice on foreign policy issues, he has become an easy target for the angry right wingers, who are blaming him for Trump’s latest India policy. Not just Jaishankar but his son, who heads the Washington office of a high-profile think tank, has not been spared either.

When the Congress Party announced an organisational revamp at the district level, it was decided that freshly-constituted district committees would be headed by upcoming leaders. It was also decided that the new appointees would not contest elections and no MLA would hold that post. However, this informal diktat has gone for a toss with the appointment of Jaivardhan Singh, son of senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, as the president of the party’s Guna district committee in Madhya Pradesh. Not only is Jaivardhan an MLA but he is unlikely to opt out of the electoral race in future. It is to be seen how the Congress leadership deals with this situation.

Even before the film has been released, the trailer of director Vivek Agnihotri’s latest offering, The Bengal Files, has generated a heated controversy. In this case, anger has erupted over the film’s portrayal of a shadowy figure like Gopal Pantha as a Hindu avenger in the 1946 Calcutta riots. Pantha, it is argued angrily, was no hero of his times but a disreputable person, widely seen as an extortionist. A butcher by profession, Pantha ran two meat shops, and is best remembered for helping B.C. Roy win a contentious election to enable him to retain the chief minister’s post. Instead, the film shows him to be a symbol of Hindu resistance. While there is a pushback against juxtaposing Pantha with leaders like Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has not helped matters by ordering a police raid on a private screening of the trailer as it has ended up giving unnecessary publicity to the film. On the other hand, there is a subtle contradiction in the film’s attempt to help the BJP use historical figures for its campaign against illegal immigration as it comes at a time when the party has actually dismissed Bengali language and identity to help build its narrative on the issue of “ghuspetiyas”.