Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Birsa Munda, Rabindranath Tagore, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Ray Gunakor Bharatchandra, Jibanananda Das, Lakshman Sen, Shashanka....
The names are from the growing list of major figures that the BJP has made gaffes over in its zeal to shed its bohiragawto (outsider) label in Bengal.
The last two names were added on Saturday by the state BJP unit, which organised an exhibition on Bengal in Kolaghat on the sidelines of a party workshop. Two standees displayed images meant to represent monarchs Sen and Shashanka. But they caused a stir, for the wrong reasons.
The picture used to represent Sen, a 12th-13th century monarch, is of Maharawal Sir Lakshman Singh Dungarpur (1908-1989), the last ruler of Dungarpur in Rajasthan who also served as a Rajya Sabha member.
Sen, a Vaishnav, ruled between 1178 and 1206. Sen, who succeeded his father Ballal Sen to the throne, helped expand and strengthen the kingdom. At the time of his death, the Delhi Sultanate of south Asia was being founded by Qutubuddin Aibak, the Turkic-Mamluk slave-general of the Ghurid Empire, and vast swathes of Bengal were being conquered by Ghurid Turkic-Afghan general Bakhtiar Khilji.
“Even children know you can't get a photo or photorealistic painting of someone from the 12th century,” said Kanad Sinha, who teaches ancient history at Sanskrit College and University. "Whoever from the BJP ran the image search for Lakshman Sen on the internet did not bother to double-check? Beyond that, how did it get past later stages of scrutiny?”
Shashanka's image is juxtaposed with the ruins of the Nalanda Mahavihar (427-1197) in Bihar. Kashshaf Ghani, who teaches history at Nalanda University, identified it as Sariputta Stupa of the Nalanda ruins.
Shashanka, a 7th-century contemporary of emperor Harshavardhan, was a Hindu ruler viewed as anti-Buddhist.
“These bloopers are absurd…. Such a scattershot kind of evocation of history is likely to result in errors,” said Sugata Bose, the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University. “I don’t know what to say really. I don’t even know whether I should comment on it… as a historian, whether I should actually engage with this,” added Bose, a grandson of Sarat Chandra Bose and a grandnephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
Several historians also underscored the conspicuous absence of non-Hindu monarchs or dynasties, even Buddhist, such as the Pal Empire (8th-12th centuries), in the saffron camp’s attempt at the portrayal of the “Golden Age of Bengal”.
“By playing the so-called golden age card, they were obviously looking to remain completely silent on the glorious Medieval and Early-modern eras in Bengal’s history till before the Renaissance, because it was almost entirely Islamic. But even Buddhists being excluded is ludicrous, even by saffron standards,” said a senior historian currently employed with the Union government, on the condition of anonymity.
“It shows, yet again, their abysmal ignorance of the rich, nuanced history and culture of Bengal,” said Trinamul’s Dum Dum MP Saugata Roy.
“This shows why the BJP’s desperate attempts at recovery in Bengal will never be fruitful…. Much of that is on account of this very inability to understand or connect with Bengal,” he added.
Officially on Saturday night, the BJP’s Bengal unit said it was unaware of this.
“I have not seen the images. I cannot comment without checking them,” said BJP state chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya. “The mistakes are unlikely unless they are printing mistakes,” he added.
