BJP has found its Bengali Hindutva icon ahead of 2021 assembly polls — Syama Prasad Mookerjee

Modi govt renamed 150-yr-old Kolkata Port as Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port in January. Bengal BJP has launched programmes to celebrate him as Bengali leader of eminence.

(From left front row) Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Jairamdas Doulatram and Jawaharlal Nehru | Commons

Kolkata: The BJP’s West Bengal unit is gearing up for the 2021 assembly elections in the state, where it has been making massive inroads for some time, by looking to prop up Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee as its Bengali icon.  

Mookerjee, once a member of first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet, fell out with him and later formed the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP. 

He, however, faded into oblivion in Bengal — the state that remembers his father Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee as ‘Banglar Bagh (tiger of Bengal)’ who stood up to the British rule.

While there are colleges and streets named after Ashutosh Mukherjee, one of the most prolific barristers, academicians and jurists of his time, and Mookerjee’s mother Jogamaya Devi in Kolkata, the state capital only has one SP Mookerjee Road dedicated to the Jana Sangh founder and Hindu Mahasabha leader’s memory.

Mookerjee doesn’t find mention in Bengal’s textbooks, nor has he been celebrated much in the state in any other way. 

The BJP is now looking to change that. 

Over the past year, some major central government installations have been named after Mookerjee, while some old documents are being republished to make him relevant in the state and the country. 

In January this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi renamed the 150-year-old riverine Kolkata Port as the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port. 

The century-old Raj Bhavan, the state Governor’s official residence, has also installed his portrait in its corridor, alongside Bengali icons such as Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar observed Mookerjee’s birth anniversary at Raj Bhavan last month — a first by a governor of the state. 

According to Anirban Ganguly, director, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation, the central government will also name the smart campus of Indian Association of Cultivation of Science after him. 

The foundation also tried to convert one part of his south Kolkata residence to a memorial but that did not work out following some objection from the family, Ganguly said.

“Mookerjee’s mention in the syllabus and books was deliberately and politically suppressed. Since last year, we have launched a programme of taking him to all small and big towns in Bengal,” Ganguly said. “Amit Shahji asked us to instil a debate on his work and role. We travelled across districts and held meetings with local intellectuals. But we were surprised to see that he is still relevant in Bengal.”

The BJP narrative

The nudge has come from the very top, with state leaders saying Home Minister Amit Shah is behind the idea to celebrate Mookerjee as a Bengali leader of eminence.

A senior BJP leader, on condition of anonymity, pointed out that Shah and Modi’s idea of India is closer to Mookerjee’s notion of the country. “This is why, during the regime of former PM and party patriarch Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Mookerjee and his ideas did not get this much prominence that he is getting now.”

Throughout his life, Mookerjee was opposed to a separate status for Jammu and Kashmir.

Senior BJP leader and Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy, who is also a biographer of Mookerjee, said, “By 1952, the country, of which Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part, had two prime ministers, Nehru and (Sheikh) Abdullah; two heads of state, the President of the Republic of India and Sadr-i-Riyasat of Jammu and Kashmir; two Constitutions, one of which was still unfinished, and two flags.”

He added, “Has any nation of the world, which claims a certain part of it as an integral part of the nation, ever subjected itself to such indignity? It is against this indignity that Dr Mookerjee had thundered ‘Ek desh mein do Vidhan, do Nishan nahin chalenge, nahin chalenge’.”

Roy is the author of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Life and Times.

The BJP in Bengal is now attempting to project Mookerjee as the ‘son of the soil’ who spearheaded a movement to retain West Bengal, especially Kolkata, with India during Partition.

The BJP’s intellectual wing, which includes Anirban Ganguly and Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, has been reaching out to groups to push the narrative of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Partition and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

The BJP has been calling the CAA another “wish” of Mookerjee as it would grant citizenship to Hindu Bengali victims of Partition.

Political experts, however, say the success of the strategy will depend on how much the “average Bengali bhadralok” buys into the narrative.

“BJP has chosen a personality whom Bengal almost forgot. It is now to see how an average Bengali bhadralok (gentleman) will connect to him and his ideology,” said Samir Das, professor of political science at Calcutta University. He said the young and the middle aged in the state have little idea about Mookerjee.

“This sudden euphoria over Dr. Mookerjee is another extreme of that calculated action of pushing him to oblivion by the Communists,” Das said. “This switch-on-and-switch-off phases never brought out his character or his bold and unique ideas of integral India. He has always been shuttling between these two extremes.”

He added, “During my stint in JNU in 2012, I saw and heard discussion about him there. But his home state mostly remained ignorant about his ideas. Of late, the BJP is projecting him as a Bengali icon. But I feel it is half-hearted and politically motivated. There is no analysis on his idea of federal India, his idea of borders, and his idea of states. He was and still is a loner in Indian politics.”

‘Most misinterpreted & least analysed’

While the BJP looks to highlight Mookerjee, his family members in Kolkata feel he has widely been used for “vested political interests”.

Speaking to The Print, Mookerjee’s nephew Justice (retired) Chittatosh Mookerjee, a former chief justice of Calcutta and Bombay high courts, said, “There has been no proper assessment of his character and his ideas. Barely naming institutions and installations after him would not do any justice to his ideas and his personality.”

He added, “I am pained to see that many wrong information, some letters and some documents in bits and pieces are being published or in circulation. They misrepresent facts. Some politicians hold him responsible for Partition, quote him out of context. Partition was inevitable then and all right-thinking Bengali intellectuals supported it.”

The former judge said West Bengal “would have never come to existence” if the state wasn’t split into two. “Had there been no Partition, West Bengal would have never come to existence and it would have been a part of East Pakistan. Most importantly, India would have lost all access to its north-eastern states.”

He added, “He (Mookerjee) was opposed to the Treaty of Sovereign Bengal then because the Muslim Lleague wanted it in East Pakistan. There are several intricate issues in history, which nobody wants to deal with now and all political parties are out to do politics over his personality.”

On the BJP’s efforts, Justice Mookerjee said his uncle was never enthused with V.D. Savarkar’s “militant idea of Hindu Mahasabha”.

Syama Prasad Mookerjee had been a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha founded by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Lala Lajpat Rai.

“He disagreed with Savarkar’s idea of Hindu Mahasabha. There are letters written on these,” Justice Mookerjee said. “But there had never been any discussion on his idea of India, his struggle for Bengali Hindus, his fight against appeasement policies. Political parties do part-time study on him to serve their vested interests.”

According to him, Mookerjee tried to fill the leadership vacuum that was created after Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose left Bengal to seek foreign help for freedom, and the subsequent imprisonment of Sarat Bose, another senior Congress leader.

‘Never a hero’

The ruling Trinamool Congress, however, feels Mookerjee cannot be highlighted as a Bengali icon.

“The BJP does not have a Bengali icon. They initially started bringing in Deendayal Upadhyay but no none knows about him here,” said veteran TMC MP Prof. Sougata Roy. “Realising the need for a Bengali face, they started invoking Syama Prasad. But a little research on him would tell that he was never considered a hero or an icon by the Bengalis when he was alive. All Bengali patriots who were into freedom struggle went to jail, barring him. Only the Jana Sangh members and later Communists never had any contribution to the freedom struggle.”

Roy added, “His role in the Independence movement was even more discredited in Bengal as he joined the cabinet of Abul Kasem Fazlul Huq. He was then called Syama Huq. After Independence, he had a larger-than-life image for some time when he fought for Bengali Hindus and his role in getting West Bengal into India. He also played an important role in education, becoming the youngest vice-chancellor of Calcutta University.”

Roy is the younger brother of Tathagata Roy, the Meghalaya governor who is the only biographer of Mookerjee.