Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday demanded Narendra Modi's apology for calling Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay "Bankim da" in Parliament on Monday, and accused the saffron ecosystem of regularly insulting Bengal luminaries.
The chief minister, at rally in Cooch Behar, said the author of India's national song was not accorded the minimum respect by the Prime Minister in Parliament.
“Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was called Bankim-da. Sounds like Shyam-da or Hari-da (any Tom, Dick, and Harry). He who composed our national song was not paid minimum respect," said Mamata, also the Trinamool Congress supremo.
"You should bow your head, offer naak-khat (rub nose on the ground in shame) and seek forgiveness from people. But you still won’t be forgiven. Because you have disrespected our nation's history and the freedom movement,” she added on a day her party protested in New Delhi and Calcutta against Modi's alleged insult of the 19th century Bengali icon.
On Monday, Modi had initiated the Lok Sabha debate to mark 150 years of Vande Mataram by referring to the national song’s composer as “Bankim-da”, in the likely belief that it would endear him to Bengalis. He seemed taken aback when Trinamool members protested.
Modi also slipped up while referring to two Bengali freedom fighters — “Master-da” Surya Sen and Pulin Bihari Das. He dropped “da” from “Master-da” and referred to Das as “Pulin Vikas Das”, which passed unnoticed.
The BJP publicly accused Bengal's ruling party of manufacturing a diversionary tactic. But multiple BJP insiders admitted that such mistakes lent credence to Mamata's allegations that the saffron ecosystem was bohiragoto (outsider) in Bengal.
On Tuesday, Mamata again attacked the Sangh Parivar for its dubious role in the freedom struggle. "Where were you then... doing what?" she asked.
She told people that the BJP kept undermining Bengal’s glorious legacy, bringing up instances of "saffron insult" to the likes of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Khudiram Bose, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Birsa Munda, Rabindranath Tagore, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Ray Gunakor Bharatchandra, Jibananda Das, Swami Vivekananda and Siraj ud-Daulah.
"They said Raja Rammohan Roy was not a patriot. They called Khudiram Bose a terrorist. They broke Vidyasagar's statue...," said Mamata.
Mamata has always slammed attempts by the saffron ecosystem to have Indian history rewritten and deify its icons such as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Deendayal Upadhyaya — sometimes at the cost of others with inclusive, secular philosophies such as Roy and Tagore.
One of the Sangh Parivar’s pet peeves is that most varsities in the country teach a “Leftist” version of Indian history. It wants Indian history rewritten to project the whole of Islamic rule in south Asia as foreign and retrogressive, and lionise Hindu kings such as Prithviraj Chauhan and Rana Pratap, who fought Muslim invaders or rulers, while vilifying Muslim monarchs like Siraj and Tipu Sultan, who actually died fighting the British colonisers.
Warning people again against the special intensive revision (SIR) of the allegedly compromised Election Commission of India, Mamata linked it to the contentious National Register of Citizens and the BJP's exclusionary matrix.
Mamata said if the BJP came to power in Bengal, they would decimate everything its people hold dear, from culture to language, as the state's complex, pluralist-inclusive ethos remains incomprehensible to the Hindutva brigade.
She called the central government "despotic, corrupt" and urged its removal. "If we don't, they will destroy the Constitution. They will destroy our democracy, judiciary, electoral system... to rule only by brute force,” said Mamata.
