West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee.
Credit: PTI Photo
Hirak Rajar Deshe (In the Land of Diamond King) is a 1980 masterpiece by legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray. The musical film starring ace actors like Utpal Dutt and Soumitra Chatterjee is a timeless statement in celluloid against autocracy and dictatorship.
The film is about a king, who – aided by sycophants around him – unleashes a reign of tyranny, brainwashes people into pledging loyalty to him, and even bans education arguing: “One who learns comes under cars”.
Nearly four-and-a-half decades later, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took inspiration from the film and launched a campaign in West Bengal against Mamata Banerjee, who has been the chief minister of the state since 2011. The campaign – Hirak Ranir Deshe – draws a parallel between the Trinamool Congress supremo and the king in the award-winning film by Ray.
The party called upon people on social media platforms to register on the website www.hirakranibyebye.com to get liberated from the ‘exploitation’ of ‘Hirak Rani’. In the 1980 fantasy musical, Goopi Gyne and Bagha Byne, the characters originally created by Ray’s grandfather Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, come to the aid of the oppressed people, who, led by a teacher, then end the tyranny of Hirak Raja and bring down a colossal statue of the tyrant king.
The BJP also borrowed a slogan from the film – Dari Dhare Maro Tan, Raja Habe Khan Khan” (Pull the Rope and the Statue of the King will be Broken into Pieces) – to call upon people to vote against Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress in the Lok Sabha elections. The campaign got a boost when Home Minister Amit Shah said at an election rally that Ray would’ve made ‘Hirak Ranir Deshe’ had he been alive today.