Political parties have now begun to engage in both online and offline confrontations through multiple means. In the latest incident, West Bengal’s ruling party, the Trinamool Congress, released a poster from its official handle and dragged Prime Minister Narendra Modi into the ongoing ethnic conflict in Manipur. The poster was of Christopher Nolan’s latest release, Oppenheimer. Robert J. Oppenheimer, popularly known as the inventor of the atomic bomb, is the subject of the movie.
A photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was meticulously edited to match that of the film’s lead, Cillian Murphy. In addition, the names of Union Minority Affairs and Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh and National Commission for Women (NCW) Chairperson Rekha Sharma were added to it.
It further featured bombs exploding in the backdrop with the name ‘Modenheimer’ in the front. “A film by the National Democratic Alliance” is also written on the poster. The post created by TMC referred to the prime minister as “death, the destroyer of worlds” and held him responsible for the violence in the northeastern state.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, however, wasted no time in taking offence to this and retaliated with another poster which illustrated TMC supremo and the chief minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee as the cruel Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. It was tweeted by party leader and chairman and trustee of the Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation, Anirban Ganguly.
It listed the nephew of Mamata Banerjee and Lok Sabha MP from Diamond Harbour, Abhishek Banerjee, senior party leader Kunal Ghosh and the convicted members of the party former minister Partha Chatterjee, MLA Soaqat Mollah, and ex-lawmaker Arabul Islam who are behind bars in various cases including corruption and murder.
The TMC founder is shown sporting the same military uniform that Idi Amin formerly donned. “A film by I.N.D.I.A., in collaboration with TMC,” is written on it. She is labelled as the person responsible for the fall of the state in the poster which is titled ‘Didi Amin.’
Notably, it is estimated that around 3 lakh people were killed under the presidency of Idi Amin which lasted from 1971 to 1979. The names of Sujay Bhadra, Anubrata Mondol and Arpita Mukherjee are also added to it.