Calcutta, Nov. 28: A group waving DYFI and SFI flags and pictures of Fidel Castro today turned up outside the American Centre in Calcutta to protest.

To passers-by, most of whom perhaps had demonetisation on their mind, the noontime slogans seemed unnecessary - the young men and women were shouting against US President-elect Donald Trump's statement on Fidel Castro after his death on November 25.

This at a time when several Left outfits had called a Bengal bandh today against demonetisation that was ineffective on the ground.

As the city tried this afternoon to cope with Mamata's march on the same demonetisation issue, some wondered who these protesters were and what they were doing.

"We are protesting against the tasteless remarks by the Fascist demagogue Donald Trump, whom even Americans cannot accept as their President, against the Maximo Lider," said Bikash Jha,

CPM student wing SFI's city-based leader.

To the uninitiated, Maximo Lider is what many of Bengal's comrades call Cuban Left patriarch Fidel Castro, who passed away at 90 on Saturday.

Shortly after Castro's demise, Trump had issued a statement - in sharp contrast to the balanced approach of President Barack Obama -calling him a "brutal dictator".

This group, hurriedly assembled by the CPM students' wing SFI and youth wing DYFI over the weekend, was protesting the remarks two days later, because a Monday ensures better visibility, one of them told this newspaper.

Youths standing next to Jha were holding placards that read "Comrade Fidel Castro, laal salaam (red salute)", below a picture of the late Cuban leader.

One of the curious bystanders wondered aloud the relevance of the protest in Calcutta about a death in Havana and comments made in Washington DC.

" Maney, dorkar ta ki? Just bojha gyalo na (I mean, what is the need for this? Just incomprehensible)," said a man in his early twenties.

But those who grew up in the Calcutta of the sixties, seventies, eighties, even early nineties would recall that international developments - from the US attack on Vietnam to Israeli attack on Palestine - would result in similar protests in Calcutta.

Those protests then used to be led by the likes of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Biman Bose, Subhas Chakraborty and Shyamal Chakraborty, who later became ministers and important party office bearers.

Now, the mantle has passed on to the likes of Jha and Sayandeep Mitra, the state president of the DYFI who was instrumental in organising the protest outside the American Centre. It lasted less than 10 minutes.

Far less significant than the failed state-wide strike called by the Left in protest of demonetisation, it was reminiscent of one of the many age-old habits of the Bengal Left, which has contributed to its loss of relevance and electoral debacle year after year.

"US imperialism, to be worsened by the ascent of Trump, must be protested at every opportunity. The movements worldwide must get stronger than ever now," said Mitra, who promised a bigger rally on the issue next week.