Of award, Nazis and intolerance

Shubhadeep Choudhury 

Amid the Gorkhaland trouble at home, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee left for the Hague to receive a UN award for the West Bengal Government’s “Kanyashree” (scholarship to adolescent girls) scheme. Local journalists from both the print and electronic media travelled with the CM to report the event. However, the CPM cautioned Mamata against telling “half-truths,” pointing out “others too have received the award.” 

Twelve institutions from 11 countries were honoured by the United Nations on June 23, the UN Public Service Day, for  excellence in providing public services.

Memorial lecture

Delivering the “Samar Sen Memorial Lecture” on “Paradox of Democracy” at the Asutosh Mukherjee Auditorium here, Prof Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak of the Columbia University, expressed solidarity with social scientist Partha Chatterjee for his “General Dyer Moment” piece. 

She reminded the audience that even the Nazis and their more recent avatars Narendra Modi and Donald Trump had come to power through democratic means. “Internal rules of democracy can never prevent such a thing,” she said.

An emperor and the CPM

Statues of famous Muslim men and women are a rarity. This is so because conservative Muslims believe idol worship is against the tenets of Islam. A bust of Siraj ud-Daulah, the last Nawab of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, though can be found in Plassey, not far from the battleground where he was defeated by the British. 

CPM leader Satarup Ghosh, who unsuccessfully fought the 2011 Assembly poll, has courted a controversy by garlanding the bust. 

However, Shyamal Chakravarty, a senior member of the CPM’s state secretariat, has supported Ghosh. In a Facebook post, he wrote Siraj was an embodiment of secularism and that remembering him was important at a time when people stood increasingly polarised on religious basis.