oppn parties Netaji Portrait: Doubters Have To Eat Their Words

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Netaji Portrait: Doubters Have To Eat Their Words

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-01-26 02:44:11

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

What happens to people who try to be extra smart? They often have to eat their words or they fall flat on their face. It happened recently with Australian cricket greats of yore when they wrote off the Indian cricket team after the first Test and had no place to hide when India made a remarkable comeback and won the series.

It has now happened to Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Congress leaders who doubted the authenticity of the portrait of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose unveiled at Rashtrapati Bhawan by the President. These leaders, of whom Mohua Moitra of the TMC was the shrillest and most offending (she wanted God to save India as Modi wouldn't), said that the said portrait was of the actor Prosenjit who plays Netaji in the Bengali film Gumnaami.

Others, like Jawahar Sircar, a former cultural secretary with the government of India and a former CEO of Doordarshan and All India Radio, jumped on the bandwagon and said this was a "terrible error" by an "ignorant regime" that was "stupid".

Ordinary netizens, powered by the stupidity of these politicians and other supposedly learned people, took to social media to make fun of the government and the President by saying that next time Ben Kingsley would be depicted as Gandhi and Roshan Seth as Nehru.

How can these people be so taken up with criticizing the government they abhor by putting their own reputations on the line by not doing a fact-check about what they are saying? A simple confirmation with Paresh Maity, the artist who painted the portrait or Srijit Mukherjee, the director of the film or Prosenjit, the actor who played the part would have confirmed that they were wrong. All three have confirmed that it is indeed Netaji and not Prosenjit in the portrait.

But such is their urge to show the Modi government in bad light that they do not take the trouble to double check the facts, secure in their belief that this "ignorant", "uneducated" and "autocratic" government is bound to make such silly mistakes. Despite being in positions of power, they know nothing about the procedure followed in commissioning such projects where government committees consult with a wide range of people, including the family of the subject, before selecting the picture on which the painting will be based and then the painter who would do the job.

Mohua Moitra and her ilk have done a great disservice to the nation by making such false allegations. Just deleting the tweet will not do - they must apologize for their mistake.

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