An attempt is unlikely to be made but if Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to find out who made him look like a ungracious host at Victoria Memorial on Saturday, a safe starting point will be the trail of a batch of 400 invitation cards.
As many as 400 invitation cards for the Prime Minister’s programme celebrating Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s birth anniversary were distributed from the BJP office, a source in the state party headquarters, 6 Muralidhar Sen Lane, said on Sunday.
Many more than these 400 guests were invited to the event in which chief minister Mamata Banerjee expressed her displeasure at the behaviour of a section of the audience that kept shouting “Jai Shri Ram”.
According to police sources, parking arrangements were made for 600 chauffeur-driven cars, of which only 150 turned up.
“It is unlikely that the sloganeers came in those 150 cars,” said a police officer.
Which casts the glare back on the 400 cards purportedly farmed out from the BJP office.
Sugata Bose, Netaji’s grandnephew and chairperson of the Netaji Research Bureau at Netaji Bhavan, asked on Sunday: “My question is how the upholders and bearers of an extreme degenerate culture were allowed to enter the event by the Union culture ministry? How did these elements get past the SPG net? Or, were they specifically allowed to be part of this?”
A BJP leader said in private: “It is customary that if it’s a Union government programme, which is to be attended by central ministers, some cards reach us which we distribute among party leaders. This time, some 400 cards came for the programme.”
This newspaper tried to corroborate the version with the BJP but calls to Pratap Banerjee, the officer-in-charge and a state vice-president of the party, went unanswered.
Officially, the BJP is putting up a brave face, accusing Mamata of using “the occasion to further her sectarian politics” and insisting that chanting “Jai Shri Ram” is part of Indian culture.
But the consensus across the rest of the political spectrum appeared to be that the party had once again ended up underscoring its cultural disconnect with Bengal.
A more discernible measure too suggested that Modi could have done without the controversy. It ensured that the Prime Minister’s thunder was stolen — at least on the front pages of most newspapers in Bengal where Mamata’s protest overshadowed all other developments of the day for which Modi had been grooming himself.
“The sloganeering gave Mamata Banerjee the opportunity to prove that the culture of Bengal is alien to the BJP,” a BJP office-bearer said on Sunday. “The distribution of cards should have been done by the Union culture ministry itself. Distributing the cards through the party led to this ruckus.”
Another state BJP leader said the leaders would have gone to the event in any case and that there was no excuse for sending so many party workers to a Union government event, which made it look like a partisan programme.
But another section of BJP leaders insisted that it was only natural that party workers would be invited to a programme — whether government-sponsored or not — that is graced by the party’s tallest leader.
“There is ample evidence of the dominating presence of Trinamul supporters at state government programmes. Why is it a big deal if BJP supporters are invited to an event hosted by the Union government headed by the party?” a state BJP vice-president asked.
Mamata found support from her archrivals, the Congress and the Left, with front chairman Biman Bose and the Congress’s leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, issuing statements condemning the heckling.
Additional reporting by Meghdeep Bhattacharyya
