Politics and celebrity have always gone together pretty well. In every election campaign, political parties rope in film stars or cricketers or musicians to help them campaign, and to draw crowds to their rallies. In some parts of the country, actors and actresses design their careers and pick movies in such a way that they prepare the ground for a subsequent political career; the organised fan clubs of Andhra Pradesh and of Tamil Nadu allowed the emergence of M G Ramachandran, N T Rama Rao and J Jayalalithaa as chief ministers - and more recently, of Vijayakanth of the MDMK and Chiranjeevi of the Congress as significant political players. But there is a vast and unexplored area between the use of celebrities in politics to draw crowds, and the entrance into full-fledged politics of celebrities whose work was already pretty political. Unexplored, that is, till this election. In 2014, parties across the political spectrum are wooing celebrities as never before - but in order to become actual candidates, not just as campaigners.
The numbers of such candidates are startling. The Congress, which has in the past propped up people like Mohammad Azharuddin and Govinda - neither of whom had a particularly distinguished career in Parliament - has gone with the dour middle-order batsman Mohammad Kaif as its candidate from Jawaharlal Nehru's constituency of Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh. Still, it is generally acknowledged that Mohammad Kaif is not such a bad choice, as a celebrity with a clear local connection. Indeed, the Congress has specialised in local, rather than national, celebrities; its list of candidates declared so far includes Bhojpuri-language film star Ravi Kishen and Odiya actors Aparajita and Bijay Mohanty. The fledgling Aam Aadmi Party, naturally, needs to expand quickly, and clearly sees celebrity as a route to that expansion. In Chandigarh, the former actress Gul Panag, who has been an energetic social activist for some years, has received the AAP's nomination. A number of well-known journalists have also been given the party tickets - three in Delhi alone. The academic Rajmohan Gandhi, too, will contest from Delhi for the AAP. The Bharatiya Janata Party has been relatively cautious in comparison. Perhaps it has learnt a few lessons after facing a bit of trouble in Punjab, where its celebrity MPs Vinod Khanna and Navjot Singh Sidhu are reportedly losing the support of local party units.
Unquestionably the worst offender, however, when it comes to chasing celebrity nominees, is the Trinamool Congress, ruled with a hand of iron by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. In the last elections, several well-known names, including the folksinger Kabir Suman, won on the Trinamool ticket. This year's list has even more. Kabir Suman is out, but two other singers - Indranil Sen and Soumitra Roy - are in. The footballer Prasun Mukherjee, who represented Howrah in the outgoing Lok Sabha, will be joined as a nominee by former India captain Bhaichung Bhutia. And the actors Sandhya Roy, Dipak Adhikari - commonly known as Dev - and Moon Moon Sen will all contest from Bengal; Biswajit Chatterjee, one of the legends of Bengali cinema, will contest from New Delhi. Perhaps the Trinamool Congress' choices reveal most clearly why celebrity candidates are being sought after. It reflects the decline of the parliamentarian as an independent power base. In Mamata Banerjee's party, the presence of independent opinions among members of Parliament or the legislative assembly are discouraged. Kabir Suman is not being renominated because he did not agree with his party chief sufficiently. Celebrities are expected to bring the people in - but not to think, or do politics, independently. The moment they are, they might be dropped. The prevalence of celebrity candidates for Parliament in 2014 is likely to be interpreted as a sign of the decline of its importance as a deliberative body.
