Buddha questions Lord Ram's existence

The Bengal CM says, "Ram was born in the imagination of poets and Ram Sethu is a natural formation under the sea." Tanmay Chatterjee and Drimi Chaudhuri report.

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has raised a controversy again, this time by calling Ram an imaginary character and describing as “communal forces” those who oppose the Ram Sethu project.

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Addressing litterateurs at a government function here on Thursday, Bhattacharjee said, “I am amazed to see that some communal forces are bent on establishing that Ram built a bridge across the sea. How is that possible? How many engineering colleges did we have those days? Ram is a mythological character and the so-called bridge is a natural phenomenon that geologists have already explained.”

In New Delhi, BJP leader L.K. Advani reacted to Bhattacharjee’s statement, saying his questioning the existence of Lord Ram was “highly objectionable” and an offence under the law as it hurt religious sentiments.

State BJP general secretary Rahul Sinha said in Kolkata, “The mental balance of the chief minister is questionable. His statements have no value whatsoever because a few days later he will retract them and apologise.”

“The CPI(M) has been playing a communal game, as it did with the ouster of Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen. The Left has proved that it is the most communal party,” he said.

The BJP leader pointed out that the CPI(M) had once criticised Ram Krishna Paramhansa as ‘an epileptic’, Tagore as a ‘bourgeois poet’ and Subhas Chandra Bose as ‘Japanese premier Tojo’s dog’. “Later, the Left decided to re-evaluate their contributions and accepted them as their own,” Sinha said.