Rajdeep Chatterjee

a drop in the river of civilization

[Anuj Dhar @anujdhar]

On August 7, the Govt of India is likely to give its first response to the petition filed by Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi on behalf of Netaji's daughter Dr Anita Pfaff. She wants her father's so-called remains in Japan to be brought to India. While the Modi government did well to release some of the secret files, it has not overturned the stand of the previous Congress government. Given that the Chief Justice of India seems to be sympathetic towards the demand of Dr Pfaff, the Govt cannot dodge the matter. The options before the Govt are two:

1. To bring the remains to India

2. To refuse to bring the remains to India

Should the Govt decides to bring the remains to India, it would entail a mega event, covered live on TV channels across the nation. Ministers would be required to go to Japan to take ceremonial custody of the remains and then bring them to India with due honour. The remains would have to be received by the PM and other top dignities. Armed forces would be required to become part of the ceremony. All of it would be shown and discussed live on electronic and print media, and surely on social media. Thereafter, the remains would likely be taken around in processions in Bengal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and other states for people to pay their last respects to the man who freed India. Then there will be the last rites (which is what Dr Pfaff wants) and there will be a memorial. A spot near Raj Ghat might be the most suited place.

In other words, if the Govt goes for the option 1, there will be massive publicity to the Bose death case. Those opposed to the official view (@chandrachurg and me in particular) will get to air their views. (I will discuss the repercussions later. Things aren't always what they seem.)

Now, should the Govt refuses to bring the remains kept in #Renkojitemple to India for whatever reasons, it would be clear to anyone with common sense that, all said and done, at the highest level, the Govt doesn’t support the view that #Netaji died and was cremated in Taiwan.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

1. Congress & the Left cabal tried to demean Netaji for decades, yet they have become politically irrelevant.
2. BJP in Centre might have great leadership, but most of its leaders in Bengal are immature, egoistic and lack the basic understanding of their political vulnerability.

[Anuj Dhar @anujdhar]

From the time he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi has always showed great respect towards Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. As Prime Minister, he took steps like no one before him. This included the release of some important secret files from PMO, MEA, MHA, etc. and the installation of Netaji's statue in the heart of New Delhi. After taking over as the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Suvendu Adhikari too has been most respectful towards Netaji. However, first the Bengal state BJP chief made an uncharitable remark, and now another BJP MP from the state has spewed total nonsense about Bose. BJP president Nitin Nabin is hereby requested to kindly instil some sense in the heads of the local leaders. BJP Bengal leaders should be told that Netaji is a revered national figure -- the most famous and respected Bengali for most Indians living across the world. Top national icons, such as Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar and Veer Savarkar, credited Bose with winning freedom for India -- which is now borne by declassified documents. By making such statements, the local BJP leaders are doing a great disservice to their own party, which, since the days of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has revered Netaji. @narendramodi @AmitShah @NitinNabin @SuvenduWB

[Surajit Dasgupta @surajitdasgupta]

Looking at the state of the Bengali community today, I hang my head in shame.

Once upon a time, Bengal did not produce turncoats. It produced men and women who walked into the storm with their spines intact. From Raja Rammohun Roy redifining Hinduism — never mind today’s retrospective criticism — to Vidyasagar forcing widow remarriage against a howling orthodoxy, from Bankim Chandra’s pen that lit the fire of patriotism to the revolutionaries who embraced the gallows with “Vandemataram” on their lips, Bengalis of that era earned their reputation, swimming against the tide. They spoke when it was dangerous. They acted when it was suicidal. They did not wait for the result sheet before deciding which side of history to stand on. Subhas Chandra Bose did not ask for a safe seat in the Viceroy’s council; he raised an army. The Anushilan and Jugantar boys did not write cautious editorials; they carried bombs. Rabindranath Tagore did not trim his verses to suit the ruling dispensation of the day. That Bengal is gone. What remains in West Bengal today is a community that has perfected the art of backdated courage and pre-emptive surrender.

Look at the spectacle that unfolded after 4 May this year. TMC musclemen, suddenly draped in saffron, went on a rampage precisely to manufacture the narrative, “BJP is doing what we did in 2021.” The moment the lie stood exposed and the BJP made it clear these were not its workers, the same ecosystem that had spent 15 years abusing the BJP as “fascist” and “communal” began its frantic migration. Three Rajya Sabha MPs were let in. The rest were told the new ruling party’s doors were closed for them. A majority of the 80 TMC MLAs promptly deserted Mamata Banerjee under Ritabrata Banerjee’s leadership. Most Lok Sabha MPs ran to an obscure party floated in 2023 and informed the speaker they would no longer sit beside Abhishek Banerjee and his coterie. Far from being an SOP in Indian politics — the weathercocks of no other state match Bengal’s scale — this is the behaviour of people who treat ideology as seasonal clothing.

The media followed with even less shame. Anandabazar Patrika, which had been a glorified Congress house organ during Jyoti Basu’s long rule, then became Mamata Banerjee’s most enthusiastic cheerleader for two decades (as its own former chief editor Sumon Chattopadhyay later admitted), discovered overnight that the TMC was corrupt, authoritarian and finished. Suman De, the star anchor of ABP Bangla, performed the same U-turn during the campaign itself. The moment the results were declared, the channel completed its transformation into an uncritical BJP mouthpiece. The same organisation that once manufactured consent for the ruling party now mobilises mass support for the new one. No apology. No explanation. Just the smooth click of the weathercock changing direction with the wind.

The literary and intellectual class has been even more contemptible. The moment it was announced that Taslima Nasreen would visit Kolkata on 1 August, writers who had maintained a studied silence for years suddenly discovered their voices. They now thunder against the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government for declaring her persona non grata and against the TMC for never revoking that order. Where were these custodians of conscience when the beleaguered intellectual — an atheist feminist who treated Islam with contempt in a fanatically Islamist Bangladesh — was forced to live in undisclosed safe houses, moving like a hunted animal from city to city, denied even basic security by the very state that now claims to be “secular” and “progressive”? The men of letters’ outrage today is performance timed for maximum safety and minimum risk.

And then there are the people themselves. For 15 years, they complained, whispered, posted cryptic Facebook statuses and forwarded WhatsApp messages. They were ‘very angry’. Yet not one egg was thrown at a TMC leader’s face, not one serious street protest sustained, not one relentless campaign of civil disobedience mounted while the regime was in power. The moment the results showed the regime had fallen, suddenly everyone discovered their inner rebel. The same citizenry that could not muster the courage to confront power when it mattered now competes to be photographed burning effigies of yesterday’s rulers. Their U-turn smacks of the relief of spectators who waited for the match to be decided before choosing which team to celebrate.

We Bengalis of West Bengal have become a community of post-facto heroes and pre-emptive cowards. We produce more column inches of moral posturing after the danger has passed than we ever produced when speaking up carried actual cost. The same people who once gave India its sharpest minds and bravest hearts — pioneering in India’s freedom struggle — now specialise in the refined art of changing masters without changing their vocabulary of self-righteousness.

The tragedy is not that some politicians switched sides. Politicians everywhere are opportunists (I repeat, not on this magnitude and scale). The tragedy is that the broader society — its writers, its journalists, its “civil society,” its ordinary citizens — has lost even the memory of what moral consistency once looked like. We no longer feel shame when we flip. We feel only the need to justify the chameleon in us with fresh language of ethics every time the wind changes direction.

The Bengal that once terrified the British with its intellect and its audacity has become a Bengal that terrifies no one except those who still remember what it used to be. We have traded character for comfort, courage for calculation, and honesty for the safety of whichever side happens to be winning at the moment.

History will remember this phase. It will not remember it kindly.

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

@sanjeevsanyal Will the Calcutta Stock Exchange open? The BBD Bag area used to be the financial capital of the nation once upon a time. Shanghai's HSBC building was inaugurated in 1923, Calcutta's HSBC in 1924. Same architecture, built parallely.

The whole place needs a heritage restoration.

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

@surajitdasgupta All throughout my school life I carried dry tiffin which was almost veg, if not the eggs added in the bakery items. Even in my college life as a day scholar, I preferred veg lunch over fish or meat because of hygiene and price.

[Anuj Dhar @anujdhar]

More from the report: "In August, 1946 he [Suhrawardy] became the Chief Minister of (undivided) Bengal. It was during this period that he engineered the mass killing of Hindus in Calcutta – he personally led the Muslim goondas and was responsible for the plotting and supervision of the plan. He put most of the 24 Police Stations of Calcutta under the charge of Muslim Station-House Officers and was known to direct the operations personally from the Control Room. It is for this reason that the Hindus of East Bengal hate him and are not prepared ever to put their trust in him. These killings ended on the 14th of August, 1947. Suhrawardy took asylum in the Ashram of Gandhi Ji who protected him from those who, in revenge, might have otherwise tried to kill him."

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

On the occasion of Paschimbanga Divas, let's look at how Bengal was the richest place on Earth, before it fell to colonization, how again it rose to glory. How this industrial & cultural giant was ruined by politics, yet everytime Bengal rises up.

https://t.co/WfSQloSsm6

[Anuj Dhar @anujdhar]

“No one will ever know or understand what a loss this has been for me.”

-- Gumnami Baba to INA secret service veteran (and former MLA) Dr Pabitra Mohan Roy following the death of RSS chief Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar this day in 1973.

[Chandrachur Ghose @chandrachurg]

M.S. Golkalwar addressed home minister Sardar Patel as 'Manyavar Sardarji'.

On the other hand, he addressed an obscure and mysterious Sannyasi as 'Pujyapad', 'Seva me satashah pranam.'

That difference in addressing the two people is itself a story.
@anujdhar

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

@peyushbansal If something is "outdated" that means it ws in practice at some point of time. If something is "training document" thn it reflects the mindset of the CEO n the mangnt.
Fortunately I never wasted my money on this anti-Hindu fraud company. Go try this trick in an islamic country.

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

@Nithin0dha @zerodha @NPCI_BHIM Here is an explanatory video on how exactly UPI became such a humongous success in India, when the per capita income is low and overall technology penetration is still lower compared to other parts of the world where digital payments are used.
https://t.co/jem2Oa4Utw

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

But still they forced their chosen puppet, the classic narcissistic madman to wage a war which they CAN'T win. In few weeks, it broke apart all the standard geo-economic equations on which the US hegemony stands, which is nothing but trust in US finance and its military.

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

The Deep State accelerates De-dollarization?

America's ongoing unnecessary engagement in West Asia has put the US hegemony in more trouble than anytime before. Do we have to believe that the 'true' power clusters in Washington were not aware of this? .....

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

Israel attacked Iran's South Pars gas field- world's largest gas field. In return, Iran destroyed by bombing Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG complex which is again the world's largest LNG complex.

Can India rely on West Asian LPG imports anymore?
WATCH THIS-
https://t.co/pqcbo8hd97

[Anand Ranganathan @ARanganathan72]

A blatant overreach that mocks the very principles of justice - this is exactly what Emergency looks like, except that this time round the unelected have declared it.

On this, one of the darkest of days in the history of Indian Judiciary, I stand with Michel Danino. Always will.

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

This is the real question for India:

Do we want to be skilled workers forever? Or long-term owners?

History doesn’t remember employees. It remembers those who own the systems.

Think about it.

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

We celebrate “Make in India” a lot. Indian engineers designed a super advanced 2 nm chip, but who owns the IP- Qualcomm, California.

We are making iPhones, chips, softwares. But the main uncomfortable question is: Who actually owns all this?

https://t.co/aL4no2ITDb

[Rajdeep Chatterjee @rajdeepind18]

This didn’t happen by accident.

Since the 1980s, we chose safety. Jobs. Services. Outsourcing. Not platforms, IP or ownership.

It gave us salaries. It did not give us power. After 40 years, we still don’t own global tech systems.