Days after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Bengal unit chief Dilip Ghosh staged a protest in the Parliament premises against alleged atrocities on women in Bengal by Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers, some spelling errors in the banner he carried have triggered a row.
“Kanyashree chaina, nari samman chai,” (Don’t want Kanyashree, want respect for women), said the small banner printed in Bengali.
Ghosh, the Lok Sabha MP from Midnapore, carried it on August 11 while staging a protest near the statue of Mahatma Gandhi alongside eight other MPs from Bengal.
While the grammar and composition in the banners carried by the other MPs were correct, the word Kanyashree (the Bengal government’s welfare scheme for girls) was spelt incorrectly. Also, the symbol of a vowel was placed in the wrong direction in two other words.
The row started after some people pointed out the errors on the Bengal BJP’s social media page.
To avoid a controversy, Ghosh told the media that the error was made by Hindi-speaking people in Delhi where the banners were printed. “They could not write the words correctly,” he said.
“It is good in a way. The errors drew the attention of the media to the real issue,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}“It is good in a way. The errors drew the attention of the media to the real issue,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}A critic of Ghosh, senior BJP leader and former governor of Meghalaya and Tripura, Tathagata Roy, took a potshot on Twitter on Thursday, 48 hours after the incident.
“This is why Vidyasagar said there is no end to mistakes fools make. I am talking of the one who printed the poster,” Roy wrote and posted a photograph of Ghosh holding the banner.
Since 19th century social reformer and educator Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar is recognized as the father of the modern Bengali alphabet and typeface, Roy’s comment was picked up by political leaders and people active on social media.
Congress leader Kaustav Bagchi on Thursday e-mailed a scanned copy of Barnaparichay --- the booklet on Bengali alphabet and prose that Vidyasagar printed for students --- to Ghosh.
“A hard copy of the same shall also be sent to you via speed post tomorrow,” Bagchi wrote.
Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders did not spare Ghosh. “What more can one expect from him?” quipped senior TMC legislator Tapas Roy.
This is not the first time Ghosh has landed in a controversy of this nature.
In November 2019, Ghosh made headlines when he said in public that milk from Indian cows contain gold and consumption of this milk can make one immune to all diseases.
“Indian cows have a hump. Foreign cows don’t have that. This hump has a special nerve. Gold is created when sunlight falls on this nerve. That is why the milk is yellowish or golden. This milk is a great antidote. One can survive by having only this milk. It is a complete meal,” Ghosh said while addressing a programme in Bengal’s Burdwan district.