BJP's Sukanta Majumdar Faces Backlash Over Comments on Swami Vivekananda

For the third day in a row, the Trinamul Congress launched an attack against the saffron camp, claiming that Sukanta Majumdar, the head of the BJP state unit, had "insulted" Bengal's most revered figure, Swami Vivekananda.

The catalyst was a remark made by Majumdar in a caustic reply to Udayan Guha, the Dinhata MLA and minister of development for north Bengal, who attempted to minimize the significance of Sunday's Gita-reading event for the saffron ecology by quoting the philosopher-monk.

Trinamul staged demonstrations in every Bengali block and urban center. The primary event, organized by the party's youth wing chairman Sayani Ghosh and Industries Minister Shashi Panja, was a football rally from Shyambazar Five-point Crossing to Swami Vivekananda's home in Calcutta.

"More than 48 hours have passed since BJP Bengal president Sukanta Majumdar made the offensive comments, and he hasn't shown sorrow or apologized. This demonstrates the BJP's haughtiness. Minister Panja said, "We would like to inquire with the central leadership of the BJP right now if they have even asked Majumdar to apologize."

"They won't even get 3.5 seats if this is the kind of comment they (the BJP leaders) make," Ghosh said, "let alone their set target of 35 Lok Sabha seats (out of Bengal's 42)."

Party insiders indicated that chief minister Mamata Banerjee will make a harsh comment on the matter during her public appearance at North 24-Parganas on Thursday.

In response to queries from reporters on Sunday, Guha quoted Swami Vivekananda to state that playing football “would have been better for the body and the mind” instead of the participants in the “Lokkho Konthe Gita Path (reading of the Gita by a lakh voices)”.

When media questioned Majumdar at the Brigade Parade Grounds on Sunday about Guha's comments, he said, "Bengal has, for ages, been a flag-bearer of Sanatan culture." Bengal was, somewhere in the center, duped by the Leftists. Is it not evident today that having little information is harmful? Those who now argue that reading the Gita is not as important as playing football are just products of the Left. Bengal will now go in the correct direction. The start of the adventure is today, Sunday.

Since then, Trinamul has decided to take Majumdar's reply to be addressed to Vivekananda.

Leader of Trinamul Party Panja said that Majumdar's reply was just another example of the BJP's contempt for Bengal and its symbols.

Bengal's multifaceted, cosmopolitan, pluralist, inclusive, humanist attitude and worldview is foreign to these bohiragawto (outsiders). Panja said, "What Majumdar stated is a disgrace to Bengal and demonstrates the worst disregard for Swami Vivekananda.

First and first, our young men must be strong, according to Swami Vivekananda, cited on the media.belurmath.org website of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. Religion will follow. My advise to you, my young friends, is to be strong. Playing football will get you closer to Heaven than studying the Gita.

These are audacious remarks, but I must make them because I adore you. Where the shoe pinches, I know. As stated on the website, "I have gained a little experience."

However, it was soon followed by, "Your muscles, your biceps, will be a little stronger and you will understand the Gita better." With a tiny bit of powerful blood in you, you will comprehend Krishna's tremendous brilliance and strength more fully.

Majumdar was calling Guha, who was a member of the Forward Bloc, a "Leftist product," according to the BJP.

Majumdar emphasized on Monday Vivekananda's suggestion to use football to build the physique in order to comprehend the Gita better.

"It is detrimental to have limited knowledge," he said.

"I spoke especially of individuals who say these things today—people who are obviously still alive. Lives, does Vivekananda? Why would I include him in my comment? "What I was referring to is that history is distorted by Leftists," he said. "It is not appropriate to apologize to these ignorant people."

According to Trinamuls sources, the governing party could not be held accountable for these demonstrations given the history of the saffron camp and the "ambiguity" of Majumdar's remark permitting such an interpretation.

A Trinamul MP listed the prominent people the BJP had made "public gaffes" over, including "Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Birsa Munda, Rabindranath Tagore, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Ray Gunakor Bharatchandra, Jibananda Das, Lakshman Sen, Shashanka, and now, Swami Vivekananda."

For once, Majumdar's gaffe may have been the result of an unintentional misreading. However, the head of Trinamul noted, "the saffron ecosystem, which feeds on misinformation and disinformation, has done enough even otherwise."

Soumya Aich Roy, the chief spokesman for the Congress in the state, stated that although Majumdar's comments revealed the BJP's "true character" of ignorance about Bengal and its icons, they were also a part of a "wider conspiracy" to support Trinamul by stoking debates that deflected attention from pressing problems that the majority of people face.

"No great work ever gets done through slyness," as Vivekananda famously stated, "is something that CPM state secretary Md Salim added. They (the BJP and Trinamul) are both trying to misdirect people so that the very many lapses of both camps are not talked about enough." This is a virtual echo of Aich Roy.