Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury (right) got into the Sushant Singh Rajput-Rhea Chakraborty case and played the ‘Rhea is a Bengali-Brahmin’ card.
However, the fact is, you may not have a choice. Congress has lagged far behind in Bengal and the BJP is now the main adversary of the ruling Trinamool Congress in the state.
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Nothing warms the heart of a Bengali more than when he is told that he is special and that no one comes close to his culture. So it is not surprising that in the face of a belligerent BJP, the Trinamool Congress wants to strike a chord by launching a campaign for ‘Amra Bangali’, that is, ‘We are Bengalis’. The purpose behind this invocation of Bengali pride is to project the BJP as a party of outsiders led by the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo who are not Bengali and therefore do not understand Bengali culture.
And now Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the newly appointed head of Bengal’s Congress, has gone one step further in the hope that his party will be a contender in next year’s assembly elections. He’s gotten into the Sushant Singh Rajput-Rhea Chakraborty case and played the “Rhea is a Bengali-Brahmin” card. At a press conference, he said: “The BJP is doing politics about Sushant before the Bihar elections. But Rhea, who is a Bengali-Brahmin, is under attack.”
Those in Congress who want to steer clear of this Sushant-Rhea issue may not be happy with what Adhir said, but the fact remains that you may have few options. Congress has lagged far behind in Bengal and the BJP is now the main adversary of the ruling Trinamool Congress in the state. And the Congress-Left combination is hardly strong enough to take on both the BJP and the TMC. Adhir has a difficult task ahead of him, and therefore does not want to leave any problems out. Interestingly, while the BJP has played the ‘Bihar card’ on behalf of Sushant, it has refrained from turning Rhea into a Bengali card prior to the Bengal polls. What’s even more interesting is that even Trinamool has preferred to stay away from this issue and has not jumped to Rhea’s defense. As one source put it, “Bollywood and its affairs can be messy and if we get into it it will spill over onto us.” That is why TMC will use its ‘Bengali pride’ campaign with party chief Mamata Banerjee as a mascot, in an attempt to project him as what a ‘proud Bengal’ represents. So we have Mamata Banerjee touring the state, talking about the history, the culture of Bengal and also Rabindra Sangeet,
Congress has no leader or face that can match Mamata. And this perhaps explains why Adhir used the Rea factor in an attempt to portray that when others do not defend theirs, Congress does. He followed the lead of Bihar’s political parties which, ahead of the polls this year, have supported the ‘son of the earth’ Sushant Singh Rajput. In fact, even the Bihar Congress had demanded a CBI investigation into the actor’s death. But in Bengal, Rea kept his distance; until Adhir intervened. It may not help Congress at all. In fact, it could backfire. To win elections you need a strong organization. something that Congress has neglected.
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