The award-winning Bengal tableau during the Republic Day parade on Sunday

Jan. 28: Bengal and a group of ordinary people have emerged as the toppers on the mightiest catwalk in the country in a year the spectacle has survived sniper shots from an Aam Aadmi Party government.

The Republic Day tableau from Bengal was today adjudged the best by a panel of judges from the Union defence ministry.

Such pole positions for Bengal are not that common — certainly not on the Republic Day parade charts. Bengal has not won the first prize in the past three years and few could recall if it had done so before that.

Memories are cob-webbed because Bengal had stopped participating for the 12 years that preceded 2011 when the Mamata Banerjee government took over from the Left.

The tradition of the tableau carries a turbulent political history. From 1999, the then Jyoti Basu government had stopped sending tableaux, apparently because of the Centre’s mistrust and interference.

Delhi was always worried whether the Bengal tableaux would promote the Left agenda or take swipes at powers such as the US.

The concerns were heightened in 1999 because the Pokhran II nuclear blasts had taken place the year before and Bengal apparently had a nuclear theme in mind, which the defence ministry found objectionable. But some sources said the then Bengal government did not want to waste money on such mobile platforms.

It was against this backdrop that the Mamata Banerjee government revived the tradition in 2012.

This year, the parade drew more attention than usual because of the dharna by Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal near the parade route. The dharna was called off well in time before the parade could be affected but not before the chief minister had threatened to disrupt it by flooding Rajpath, the main route, with lakhs of his supporters.

Eventually, everything went off smoothly and Kejriwal was spotted among the VIP audience when the parade rolled past this Sunday.

The Delhi chief minister is unlikely to have missed the vibrancy and agility of the rippling and somersaulting dancers wearing colourful masks on the Bengal tableau. The theme was the Chhau dance (mask dance) of Purulia — a district that has some of the poorest people in the state.

A 10-member Chhau Group from the Shiv Shakti Chhow Dance Academy, Purulia, staged the live performance on the tableau.

The underlying story line would also have appealed to the demon-slaying instincts of Kejriwal. The story that was enacted was that of Mahishasur Mardini, signifying the triumph of good over evil.

The Purulia Chhau traces its origin to a warrior tribe —Bhumij or Munda. Drawing on episodes from the Ramayan, Mahabharat and the Puranas, the Chhau has evolved as a ritual to propitiate the Sun, Shiva and Shakti and dominantly depicts the vira and raudra rasas.

On the tableau, the performers wore elaborate masks made in Charida village of Purulia by a group of artisans led by Falguni Sutradhar.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee shared news of the first prize on Facebook. “I am very proud to share with you that West Bengal tableau in the Republic Day Parade, 2014, at New Delhi has been selected as the best and ranked first,” Mamata posted. “My heartiest congratulations to the participants and to all those who put up the great show,” she added.

State information and cultural affairs secretary Atri Bhattacharya said the chief minister had reason to be happy as she had handpicked the theme and fine-tuned the tableau, which ranked first among the 18 that took part in the Republic Day parade on Rajpath.

In Delhi, the principal resident commissioner of Bengal, Bhaskar Khulbe, was elated. “We are all delighted. The chief minister had taken a keen interest in the selection of this year’s theme and its depiction,” Khulbe said.

Calcutta-based firm Adland Publicity had designed the tableau.

“We proposed the theme, which was initially approved by the department of information and cultural affairs. After six months of meetings from June 2013, the proposal for the tableau was sent to the expert committee of the ministry of defence and was given the final approval,” said Surajit Chakraborty, of Adland Publicity.

Tamil Nadu’s tableau on the Pongal festival was adjudged the runner-up and the third position went to Assam’s tableau based on the contributions of singer, composer and writer Bhupen Hazarika to the state’s folk culture.