Hours after President Ramnath Kovind inaugurated a portrait of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose at Rashtrapati Bhavan, several prominent ‘journalists’ and politicians falsely claimed that the portrait was that of Bengali actor Prosenjit Chatterjee. It must be mentioned that Chatterjee had played the character of the freedom fighter in the movie ‘Gumnami’.
A similar claim was made by a faculty member at Ashoka University, named Neelanjan Sircar. Unlike others who weaponised the fake news to take potshots at the Modi government, Sircar instead mocked Lord Ram under the pretext of criticising the BJP. Sircar, who works as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the university, in a now deleted tweet wrote, “Totally amazing! This isn’t Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, it’s a picture of famous Bengali actor Prosenjit Chatterjee playing Netaji in a movie. “
While his tweet, until this part reeked only of falsehood, he then decided to take a jibe on Hindu beliefs. “And this after yelling ‘Jai Shri Ram’ at a Netaji event. The bankruptcy of political appropriation of independence-era leaders,” the faculty member of Ashoka University added.
This has been one of the strategies of the left-liberal ecosystem in India, wherein, they deliberately target Hindu deities under the garb of political criticism.
According to the Centre for Policy Research, Neelanjan Sircar is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the same institute. “Mr Sircar’s recent work focused on state-level elections in India through both data work and ethnographic methods. He is particularly interested in understanding theoretic principles that undergird the decision-making processes of voters in India, which can shed light on democratic practice in the developing world more generally,” the website read.
The Jai Shree Ram controversy
Sircar’s tweet was in reference to the event at Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial for Netaji birth anniversary celebrations. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was seen walking out of the stage refusing to address the crowd, after slogans of Jai Shree Ram, Bharat Mata ki Jai, etc, were raised when she was invited to address the event. Getting offended by the slogans of Jai Shree Ram, Mamata Banerjee said that as a mark of protest against this ‘disrespect’, she would not say anything.
Ashoka University removed link introducing Nidhi Razdan as Harvard professor
Recently, Ashoka University had announced that it is withdrawing tweets and posts where they had introduced Nidhi Razdan as an associate professor at Harvard University “pending further cross-verification”. Nidhi Razdan had earlier claimed that she fell victim to a phishing attack and she was never really offered a job at Harvard.