This polls, wall graffiti takes on new characters: Chinese, Alchiki, Telugu

Scripts of three languages — Chinese, Alchiki and Telugu — have made an appearance as wall

graffiti

for a general election for the first time in

Bengal

as politicians vie to get their message across in languages that voters are most comfortable with.


Bengali and English and, in some zones,

Urdu

and Hindi have been the wall-writer’s preferred languages in the state. But political graffiti in Chinese — which has popped up on the walls of Tangra — and Alchiki and Telugu, which have appeared in Jhargram and Kharagpur respectively, have now added to the cacophony of voices and languages in Bengal.

Trinamool workers have roped in Tangra resident Hou King Thaim to do graffiti opposite Tangra’s Chinatown. Around 2,300 Chinese live in Tangra and as many in central Kolkata’s Tiretta Bazar; about half of them are registered voters.

Thaim’s friends, who approached him to help write graffiti for Trinamool’s Dakshin Kolkata candidate Mala Roy in Chinese, are confident he has “made history by becoming the first in India to write a campaign slogan in a foreign language”.

“Trinamool workers wanted to do something different to attract the attention of Chinese-Indians living in Tangra and so hit upon the idea of writing graffiti in Chinese. Some of them approached me,” Thaim said.

“I am not a regular wall-writer and so I composed the line, ‘This is All-India Trinamool Congress parliamentary election candidate Mala Roy. Please vote for the TMC candidate’, on computer and then took a printout in a large font so that graffiti artists could copy it on to the wall. I supervised the writing to correct errors. A small stroke here and there can make a big difference in Chinese and alter the meaning completely. I did not want to cause any embarrassment to my Trinamool supporter friends,” Thaim said.

He learnt his Chinese at Pei Mei School in Tangra before moving to another nearby school, Grace Ling Liang. But he dropped out in class VII and now works in an e-rickshaw manufacturing firm based in Howrah's

Amta

.

The Chinese residing in Tangra speak Hakka and those who stay in Tiretta Bazaar converse in Cantonese but the script is the same.

The Trinamool, again, has taken the lead in reaching out to people in the local script in several tribal-dominated Lok Sabha constituencies in West Midnapore. The BJP is a significant factor in most of these seats and reaching out to the tribal population through graffiti in the Santhali script, Alchiki, can help.

Jayanta Sani, who usually does graffiti in English, Bengali and Hindi, has done several in Alchiki this time for Trinamool Congress Jhargram candidate Birbaha Soren. “Santhals like Tudu, Hembram, Hansda, Mandi, Kusku, Soren, Murmu and Baske comprise nearly 52% of the voting population in the belt. Writing in their language can influence them to vote for the Trinamool instead of the BJP,” he explained.

In Kharagpur, yet another Lok Sabha constituency in the same district, Telugu-speaking people make up nearly 50% of the electorate. The BJP holds considerable sway in the railway township and so the Trinamool is canvassing in Telugu for its candidate, Manas Bhuniya.

Prashant Rao and Tarakeshwar Rao, both residents of Subhas Palli, have been helping Manik Kar Mahapatra write graffiti in Telugu. “We have joined hands to write over 40 walls,” Mahapatra, a professional wall graffiti artist, said. He usually does advertisements for products when it is not election time.

Bhuniya’s election agent, Debasis Chowdhury, says Telugu graffiti was first done during the civic elections in 2015. “But this is the first time we are doing it in a Lok Sabha election. And this won’t be the last,” he said.