Don't be fooled by the loud speeches and the dramatic tears. What you are watching is a high-budget production where the audience is being subjected to a relentless act of emotional hatyaachar. In this theater, the "Manush" aren't citizens with rights, they are merely a background score used to justify a script written by and for the lead actor.
"Maa crying, mati given to infiltrators, manush fled", thus cried the BJP's star campaigner at an election rally in West Bengal.
While attacking the TMC he claimed that the iconic 'Maa' is crying, the 'Mati' (soil) has been sold to "infiltrators," and the 'Manush' has fled, accusing Mamata Banerjee of abandoning her party's founding slogan and failing Bengal.
It’s a classic tragedy, narrated with the kind of baritone intensity usually reserved for selling luxury watches or announcing sudden national lockdowns.
The irony is thick. Critics point to a jarring contradiction: a narrative that invokes the sanctity of motherhood for an emotional response, yet frequently leans on staged domestic imagery for political optics.
There is a sense that the 'Maa' in this script is treated less as a person and more as a powerful visual prop, brought into focus when the cameras are rolling to project a specific image, only for that sentiment to be shelved once they were off.
As for the 'Manush' packing their bags, well, he would do well if he desisted from testing the people's memory.
The nation still remembers the ultimate "content creation" moment when lakhs of migrant labourers were forced into an impromptu cross-country marathon during the pandemic.
While he was busy on balcony sets, perfecting the theatrics of "saving the nation" with pots, pans, and flower petals, the actual people were walking thousands of miles home.
They weren't "The People" then; they were an inconvenient reality that didn't fit the heroic green-screen edit.
While he promises to make "content creation" and "Economy", the new strength of Bengal, one wonders if he’s referring to the digital armies of saffron IT Cell that turn dissent into viral hashtags.
As for the "Mati," opposition voices suggest it hasn't been lost to "infiltrators" so much as it has been gifted to corporate cronies in a masterclass of "Land Acquisition.
Bengal is being promised a blockbuster future by a director whose current projects are mostly famous for their trailers, not their results.
The performance of the star campaigner is chilling in West Bengal, the present "Society of the Spectacle," in which the image of a savior is polished for the cameras, while the actual social relation, the duty of a leader to his people, is sacrificed.
The citizens are reduced to a data point, an audience member to be manipulated, and ultimately, a mere vote in a play where the curtain never seems to fall on the theatrics.
