Bengal MlAs are likely to bring a resolution condemning former Supreme Court Judge Markendya Katju for allegedly uttering indecorous language against Poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
State Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee on Wednesday said he had been flooded with complaints from a large number of MlAs who had “expressed their anguish at the way Katju has belittled the names of two of India’s greatest sons.” The MlAs “may also bring a resolution on the issue,” Banerjee added.
The Speaker’s statement came a day after lone BJP MlA Samik Bhattacharya lodged an FIR at the Jorasanko Police Station in North Kolkata seeking action against the former Apex Court Judge for his alleged uncouth remarks against Tagore and Netaji.
In an off the wall remark clearly unbecoming of a person who had vast jurisprudential knowledge, Katju had called Tagore a “British stooge” and Netaji a “Japanese agent,” said a legislator from the Trinamool Congress adding “whatever remarks should come from the Chief Minister on the issue.” Even a child would understand that “by using such profane words against two of India’s greatest men this man has lowered the dignity that goes with a former Supreme Court Judge. He has not only humiliated and hurt Bengal but has done so to the entire nation.”
Katju had also said he would soon come to Kolkata to remove some “misconception” from the minds of Benaglis about Tagore and Netaji. “I am soon coming to Kolkata where I will give a speech with a scathing attack on that British stooge Tagore and that Japanese agent Subhas Chandra Bose,” the former Judge had said.
A great many number of Bengal politicians wondered “whether a person uttering such words against two great men has ever ventured outside the regular bare Acts. If so he should have known how Tagore had renounced his Knighthood after the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre.”
A former Forward Bloc MlA questioned the justification of Katju’s calling Netaji an “ambitious” man. “If so he would not have during his civil services exams left a full question (translation) with colonial and anti-India contents that cost him the first place in the exam” he said adding “though Bose was aware that Gandhiji preferred him to Nehru in the initial years of their association he chose to oppose him on various issues and in doing so perhaps he lost the great possibility of being the Prime Minister of the country in subsequent years.”