To have Subhas Chakraborty as the self-appointed spokesperson for their cultural preferences is not the worst fate to have befallen Calcuttans. They suffer worse, and in the hands of the same person. The damage that Mr Chakraborty, as transport minister, has been doing, with astonishing impunity, to the city and its people for years goes well beyond questions of good taste. Good health — or often bare life — is an impossible luxury in the city, given its levels of air pollution and road safety. So Mr Chakraborty’s objections to Shah Rukh Khan’s show before the Twenty20 match at the Eden Gardens today, as it happens to be Rabindranath Tagore’s birthday, becomes all the more fatuous because he voices them on behalf of all Calcuttans of taste. The minister had objected earlier to the cheerleaders, sharing this distaste with his right-wing opponents elsewhere in the country. This time he is possibly attempting to make a subtler point — about cultural, rather than moral, decorum.

As an attempt, it need not have been taken seriously at all, had it not been for two reasons. First, sensible Calcuttans, whether or not they are devoted to Tagore, might wish to distance themselves from such a spokesperson. It should be possible for most Calcuttans to keep their enjoyment of a certain brand of cricket quite distinct from their love and respect for Tagore without resorting to such a mindlessly overzealous form of cultural puritanism. There is, mercifully, a huge number of people living in Calcutta who are not Tagore-worshipping Bengalis. Even those who might be so (Bengali or otherwise) have enough sense in them not to feel culturally annihilated if Shah Rukh Khan keeps them entertained on Baisakh 25. And one of the markers of their good taste would certainly be their unwillingness to be spoken for by the transport minister. Second, by having his way with Shah Rukh Khan and his team of entertainers, through a particularly officious form of ‘cultural blackmail’, Mr Chakraborty may have succeeded in lowering even further (if that is possible) the standards of the popular homage paid to Tagore in the city on his birthday. Most people with a modicum of good sense are capable of seeing the point of Bollywood and the point of Tagore as two separate things. Trying to run them together, in the name of rescuing one from the other, marks the failure of that good sense.