On Saturday, mud-slinging between the ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and the BJP increased over the celebrations of the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
The Centre pulled out all stops to make the celebrations of the birth anniversary of Bose a grand spectacle, with all senior ministers participating in events. President Ram Nath Kovind unveiled a portrait of Bose at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Saturday. However, the portrait has become the latest grounds for dispute now!
Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra and several others claimed on Twitter the image in the portrait was that of Bengali actor Prosenjit Chatterjee. Prosenjit had played the role of Bose in the 2019 move Gumnaami. Moitra tweeted, "After donating ₹5 lakhs to the Ram temple the President honours Netaji by unveiling a portrait of Prasenjit, the actor who played him in biopic. God Save India (because this government certainly can’t)." However, Moitra soon deleted the tweet.
Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill declared the controversy showed "how deeply & perversely BJP ‘cinema nationalism’ has polluted the system". Shergill tweeted, "With due respect, unveiling of actor Prosenjit portrait by Hon’ble President to commemorate #NetajiSubhasChandraBose shows how deeply & perversely BJP ‘cinema nationalism’ has polluted the system-Also, more worrying is NO ONE in entire rashtrapati bhavan recognizes real Netaji?"
Journalist Barkha Dutt tweeted, "Shocked to hear that the President unveiled the portrait of actor Prasenjit Chatterjee, who played #Netaji instead of the real deal… I wish this were a headline from the Onion. I had to look twice to make sure it had actually happened. How utterly embarrassing."
However, many others pointed out that the Rashtrapati Bhavan portrait of Bose was indeed based on a photograph of the freedom fighter. Journalist Nistula Hebbar of The Hindu pointed out the portrait unveiled by Kovind was based on an original photograph of the freedom fighter. Hebbar tweeted, “The original photo of Netaji on which artist Paresh Maity based the portrait unveiled at Rashtrapati Bhawan was sourced from Jayanti Bose Rakshit, Netaji’s grand neice.”
