BJP’s brand building of Syama Prasad Mookerjee opens Pandora’s Box

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) opened a Pandora’s Box, trying to brand Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee as the “creator of West Bengal” and “saviour of Bengalis” on his 129th birth anniversary on Monday (July 6).

The BJP is the offshoot of the Jana Sangh and considers Mookerjee as one of its leading lights along with Deendayal Upadhyaya.

Addressing a virtual mass-contact programme, BJP president JP Nadda said if West Bengal is today included in the map of India, it is because of Mookerjee. The address was part of a slew of programmes the party lined up to promote its campaign, branding Mookerjee as “Paschim Banger shristikorta (creator of West Bengal), Bangalir rakkhakarta (saviour of Bengalis)” in an attempt to find a credible Bengali icon to link the party with.

Among others, a Facebook live programme on Mookherjee was also conducted by the BJP’s state president Dilip Ghosh in the evening. There too, Mookherjee was projected as the one who had saved West Bengal from becoming part of the then East Pakistan.

Not everyone in the BJP is, however, convinced that by upholding the controversial legacy of Mookerjee, the party would gain much.

“The branding will unnecessarily drag Syama Prasad into a fresh controversy by giving the opposition an opportunity to revisit his controversial past, particularly his alliance with the Muslim League,” said a BJP leader requesting anonymity.

Another senior BJP leader and Subhash Chandra Bose’s grandson Chandra Kumar Bose, however, did not mince words to question the move. “(Atal Bihari) Vajpayee is far more relevant in West Bengal today. He was an inclusive tall leader and is extremely popular even in Bengal,” Bose told The Federal.

Bose also did not subscribe to the theory of Mookerjee being the architect of West Bengal. “He (Mookerjee) had a fear that if Bengal was not divided, then the entire entity would have become part of East Pakistan, and so, he fiercely advocated for its partition on the basis of religion. But his fear was unfounded. The division has, in fact, done great harm to Bengal,” he added.

He, however, hailed Mookerjee’s role in promoting education and his fight for scrapping of Article 370 of the Constitution, for complete integration of Jammu and Kashmir with Indian union.

West Bengal Pradesh Congress president Somen Mitra too debunked the BJP’s theory, pointing out that it was Mookerjee who had first demanded the partition of Bengal. Mitra was referring to the controversial letter Mookerjee had written to Lord Mountbatten in May, 1947, demanding that Bengal must be partitioned even if India was not.

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“Where was Syama Prasad when a movement was on during 1946-47 for an United Bengal under the leadership of Sarat Chandra Bose and Bidhan Chandra Roy,” the Congress leader asked.

He further asked what contribution Mookerjee had in the freedom movement. Bengali revolutionaries had sacrificed their lives for the freedom of the country and Congress leaders had gone to jail, he added.

CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty said that the BJP’s attempt would not succeed as people of Bengal were aware of Mookerjee’s role in dividing Bengal.

Incidentally, Mookerjee, a prominent leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, served as the finance minister of Bengal Province in 1941–42 under AK Fazlul Haq’s Progressive Coalition government. Notably, it was Haq who had presented the Lahore Resolution (later termed the Pakistan Resolution), a formal political statement adopted by the All-India Muslim League on the occasion of its three-day general session in Lahore on March 1940. For this, the Congress party had denounced Haq as a communalist.

Mookerjee, however, had no qualm to be part of the Haq government.