The timing couldn’t have been better. Just as the BJP was looking for a popular face to counter the ‘Bangla Nijer Meye Ke Chai’ (Bengal wants its daughter) slogan of the Trinamool Congress, along came Mithun Chakraborty or ‘Banglar Chhele’ (Bengal’s son) as Prime Minister Modi addressed him, a few minutes after the actor joined the BJP at Kolkata Brigade Parade Ground on Sunday.
Mithun, who once floored audience with his versatile acting – be it playing the innocent tribal Ghinua in Mrinal Sen’s Mrigaya or the smashing dancer in Disco Dancer – showed the audience that he has not lost his spark, or rather his ‘sting’ after so many years.
“Aami joldhora noi, belebora noi, aami jaat gokhro, ek chobolei chobi (I am not an ordinary snake. I am the Indian cobra. One bite, and you turn into a photograph),” the actor told a cheering audience at Brigade Parade Ground.
The actor’s induction to the BJP is good news for the party ahead of the state assembly elections, especially given Mithun’s huge fan base, both across the country and the state. He is set to start campaigning for the state assembly polls from March 12.
The saffron party earlier has tried to woo former cricketer and BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and acclaimed Bengali actor Prosenjit Chatterjee into the party fold, but in vain. While Ganguly is said to have expressed his unwillingness to join politics, Chatterjee, who was recently seen at the Prime Minister’s event at Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial on the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, too has expressed similar concerns.
Speculations on Mithun’s apparent entry into BJP made the rounds when the actor met RSS chief Mohan Bhagawat at his bungalow in Mumbai on February 16. There were rumours that the BJP may even project him as its chief ministerial candidate in Bengal.
From ‘maoist sympathiser’ to rightist
From being a Maoist sympathiser in his youth to now joining right wing politics, Mithun has seen both ends of the spectrum. As a youth, Mithun was deeply influenced by the Naxalite movement in Bengal in the 1960s and is even said to have had ties with Maoist leader Charu Mazumdar. He, however, was disillusioned with the movement and, particularly armed struggle following the untimely death of his brother.
But, the Naxal tag stuck to him when he entered the film industry.
“People in the industry and outside it knew all about my involvement with the Naxalite movement in Calcutta and my close links with Charu Mazumdar, the fiery leader of the Naxalites. I had quit the movement after there was a tragedy in my family, but the label of being a Naxalite moved with me wherever I went, whether it was the FTII in Pune or when I came to Bombay in the late seventies,” he said in an interview to film journalist Ali Peter John.
Leaning towards the Left for decades, Mithun was once close to CPI (M) leader Subhas Chakraborty, but is said to have severed ties with the ideology once the Jyoti Basu era ended.
In 2014, he was sent to Rajya Sabha after being nominated for the post by Trinamool Congress chief and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. He quit the party two years later citing health reasons, soon after his name surfaced in the Saradha Ponzi scam.
The current polls has seen the saffron party roping in a host of celebrities from the Bengali film industry to counter the ‘outsider’ tag given to it by the Trinamool Congress. Many of the prominent faces include Rudranil Ghosh, Yash Dasgupta, Hiran Chatterjee, Srabanti Chatterjee and Payal Sarkar among others.
Seventy-year-old Mithun, popularly known as ‘Mithun Da’, on the other hand, apart from being popular is active and visible on regional television. Currently, he is one of the judges on reality show Dance Dance Junior airing on Star Jalsha.
Apart from his star appeal, Mithun’s close ties with former TMC minister Suvendu Adhikari is said to be another reason for the BJP to have roped him in. The actor had campaigned for Adhikari in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, ensuring his win from the constituency. With Mamata Banerjee shifting her battlefield to Nandigram, Adhikari’s stronghold, some ‘Mithun intervention’ may come in handy for the BJP to win the constituency.