Political row in Bengal as governor CV Ananda Bose learns Bengali alphabet – Times of India

Kolkata News

KOLKATA: A haat-e khari ceremony (learning to write the first letter of the Bengali alphabet) for Bengal governor C V Ananda Bose, organised at Raj Bhavan on the occasion of Saraswati Puja and Republic Day on Thursday, has sparked a political row with a role reversal of sorts.
Bengal BJP leaders, who swore by Bose’s predecessor, Jagdeep Dhankhar, called the ceremony – attended by CM Mamata Banerjee – “drama”. TMC leaders, who labelled Raj Bhavan under Dhankhar as the “BJP’s camp office in Bengal”, threw their weight behind Bose, calling the BJP attacks “an insult to the governor and the Bengali language”.
Bose himself left for Delhi amid the row to attend PM Narendra Modi’s programme with school students.
Bose’s haat-e khari occurred at the hands of his nine-year old siksha guru, Diyasinee Roy, a class-III student of Chandernagore St Joseph’s Convent School. She came to Raj Bhavan dressed for the occasion in a yellow sari and appeared thrilled to hear the governor utter the sound of Bengali letters following her instruction. The nine-year-old admitted she was a bit nervous before walking up to the dais to conduct the ‘first-letter’. “But I was not afraid of the governor because he was very cooperative,” she said.
The governor handed over a silver coin, bearing the images of Lakshmi and Ganesh, as gurudakshina to Roy after writing the first letter in front of the CM. Bose’s interaction with his teacher ended with a meal and more gifts, including chocolates.
BJP trying to put pressure on Guv as he is being neutral, says Kunal Ghosh
Kolkata: Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said she was extremely happy that governor C V Ananda Bose was keen on learning Bengali. She later presented him a copy of the Bengali primer, ‘Barnaparichay’, written by Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar.Apart from Diyasinee Roy, a class-III student of Chandernagore St Joseph’s Convent School, who was the governor’s siksha guru at the haat-e khari, two other children – Subhojit Dhar and Ranjana Biswas, class-IV students of the Raj Bhavan Free Primary School Unit I – also took part in the ceremony, helping Bose learn two important words; one taught him ‘Ma’ and the other the meaning of prithibi (Earth).
BJP national vice-president Dilip Ghosh called it “drama” and said the governor was acting on the “advice of others”. “He is an educated person. This ceremony, as far as I know, is an initiation into the world of letters. Arranging such a programme for the governor is going too far; it does not suit the post. I fear he is acting on the advice of others. His is a constitutional post. The governor should rise above all this frivolity,” Ghosh said.Assembly opposition leader and BJP MLA Suvendu Adhikari, who stayed away from the event because he was assigned a seat at the back (like what happened at the governor’s swearing-in ceremony), found another point to pick with the governor.
“The ‘Jai Bangla’ slogan is from erstwhile East Pakistan. I don’t know whether it matches the dignity of the governor’s post. He is educated, knows many languages and is aware of things. Hope he will discharge his duties in a manner in a way that no one can point fingers at him,” Adhikari said days after BJP president J P Nadda, too, had raised the same ‘Jai Bangla’ slogan at a public meeting in Nadia. Trinamool general secretary Kunal Ghosh said: “Such remarks are an insult to the governor and to the Bengali language. The BJP is trying to put pressure on the governor because he is being neutral.”

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