‘Sound of cow’: Mahua Moitra on Mamata Banerjee’s ‘Humba Humba’

On Tuesday, September 5, Mahua Moitra, Lok Sabha MP of Trinamool Congress attempted to explain West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s well-known and strange oddities that sound like gibberish- “Humba humba ramba ramba kamba kamba.” Moitra said that those odd words uttered by Banerjee resembled the sound of a cow. She also slammed the BJP for targeting the West Bengal CM on several occasions.

When asked what exactly “Humba humba ramba ramba,” means, Moitra in an exclusive interview with ‘The Lallantop’ said, “Humba Humba is a sound of a cow. In what context was it? Mamata Didi is an emotional speaker and the BJP IT cell targets her by releasing such videos.”

Opposition has cracked a new code, when you can’t defend the stupidity of your leader, blame it on the ‘BJP IT Cell’

Frustrated @MahuaMoitra 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/bxBynZI606

— Naweed (@Spoof_Junkey) September 5, 2023

Moitra meanwhile also indicated that Mamata Banerjee speaks on the spot and that she does not use the teleprompter while delivering her speeches. “We narrate stories, and jokes, and use them to put up our point. This is how we develop connections with several people who stay in the villages,” she said.

She also targeted the Prime Minister of India and said that he uses a teleprompter to deliver his speeches. She reiterated that Mamata Banerjee speaks from her heart and that she is a natural, intuitive speaker. “I don’t know in what context she said it. But it must have been some story that contained the sound of cow and only that much has been made viral,” the TMC MP added. (Time Stamp: around 15:12 minutes)

Notably, the video that is being talked about in the exclusive interview by Lallantop dates back to February 2021. Banerjee was seen uttering gibberish, “Humba humba ramba ramba kamba kamba,” in one of the rallies ahead of the 2022 West Bengal assembly elections. “Humba humba ramba ramba kamba kamba dumba dumba bumba bumba bamba bamba” is what Mamata seemed to have said in one of the election rallies whose video had massively gone viral over the internet.

“Humaba humaba ramba ramba kamba kamba dumba dumba bumba bumba bamba bamba”

Translation: I am losing Bengal #MamataBanerjee pic.twitter.com/7zNpkTo16o

— Smita Barooah (@smitabarooah) February 10, 2021

It was reported that the West Bengal CM had used these words back then to describe the former Trinamool leaders who had left the party to join the BJP. The TMC supremo was heard saying that such former TMC leaders were ‘naughty cows’, and they mooed making several different sounds, not just the familiar ones.

The full context of the viral gibberish was noted by OpIndia. Mamata Banerjee then said, “A few naughty cows left the party to join BJP like Mir Jafar did in the Battle of Plassey. They are now making a lot of noise — hamba hamba, ramba ramba, kamba kamba, dumba dumba, bumba bumba, bamba bamba. There are some others too. The sooner they leave the party, the better. An empty cowshed is better than having bad cows. Good riddance. I do not sell the party for money.”

Notably, this is not the only instance when Mamata Banerjee seemed to have evoked laughter among social media users with her gibberish remarks. During one of her rants against the CAA, she had taken to unconventional sloganeering in opposition to the CAA. The most prominent among which went something like “Caa Caa Chi Chi, Chi Chi Chi Chi.”

She also had mocked Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP President JP Nadda in 2020, hours after Nadda and the party’s national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya’s convoy was attacked by alleged TMC party workers in West Bengal. She said that as BJP leaders have no other work, sometimes their chief ministers visit West Bengal, sometimes it is home minister Amit Shah who visits the state, and sometimes some ‘Chadda Madda Fadda Bhadda Nadda’ is here.

The videos of these incidents have also gone viral over social media.

#WATCH They (BJP) has no other work. At times Home Minister is here, other times its Chaddha, Nadda, Fadda, Bhaddha is here. When they’ve no audience, they call their workers for doing Nautanki: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee addressing a public rally in Kolkata pic.twitter.com/uXrIyhdrj2

— ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2020

Interestingly, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee has been awarded the first Bangla Academy award for her ‘relentless literary pursuit’. The award was introduced in the year 2022 and CM Mamata was given the first award for her book ‘Kabita Bitan’.

The award to Mamata Banerjee was presented at the ‘Kavi Pranam’ event organized by the West Bengal government’s Information and Culture Department on May 10, 2022, on the occasion of the birth anniversary of legendary poet Rabindranath Tagore.

It was claimed that Mamata’s name was chosen for the award by a panel of some of the best writers in the state.

Her book ‘Kabita Bitan’ was launched at the Kolkata Book Fair in the year 2020. The book contains 946 poems written by the chief minister herself.