Shantiniketan: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has landed a political self-goal in West Bengal after its leaders and supporters launched a divisive attack on Rabindranath Tagore’s song Amar Sonar Bangla. What began as a localised event in Assam rapidly escalated into a statewide political firestorm in neighbouring West Bengal, drawing fierce condemnation from artists, intellectuals and sections of BJP’s target support base – the Bengali middle class.

The controversy began when senior Congress leader Bidhu Bhushan Das sang Amar Sonar Bangla at a meeting in Assam’s Karimganj district. Local BJP leaders promptly branded the act “anti-national”. Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma escalated the situation further by ordering a sedition case to be filed against the septuagenarian.

This rhetoric quickly spread into West Bengal, where BJP supporters on social media echoed the sentiment, derogatorily referring to the song as “Abdul Chacha’s song” – an Islamophobic slur to imply it is foreign. Sajal Ghosh, who joined BJP after switching from Trinamool Congress in 2021, publicly questioned the right to sing Bangladesh’s national anthem in India.

“So what if it is written by Tagore, you cannot stand in India and sing Bangladesh’s national anthem, and then call it a Rabindra Sangeet. That won’t be allowed,” Ghosh declared in a press conference at the BJP office in Kolkata.

Ironically, Narendra Modi, during his campaign in 2014, recited the line “Amar Sonar Bangla” at his first major rally in Kolkata’s Brigade parade ground.

Facing statewide outrage, Ghosh made a U-turn and told The Wire, “I made a mistake in my choice of words. The context came from what Assam leaders had said first.”

However, if the strategy was to stir up sentiment in Assam, the act spectacularly backfired in West Bengal. An attack on Tagore, Bengal’s cultural icon and moral compass, struck at the very heart of Bengali identity.

“When senior political leaders portray Rabindranath as a traitor, it reflects the moral bankruptcy of their politics. Tagore authored two national anthems and also influenced Sri Lanka’s. An insult to him is an insult to India itself,” remarked Bengali linguist Pabitra Sarkar.

At Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, a site of Tagore’s legacy, the outrage was palpable. Students sang Amar Sonar Bangla, daring the government to file sedition charges against them.

Rabindra Sangeet exponent and former Sangit Bhavan principal Mohan Singh Khanguhra said, “Hearing such comments, I feel the melodies I learned since childhood are being defiled. There’s no lower point than this.”

“Rabindranath wrote this song in 1905 against the Partition of Bengal. To see it being mocked in the name of politics by the uneducated is tragic and shameful,” added Supriya Thakur, the former principal of Patha Bhavan, Santiniketan, and a descendant of the Tagore family.

A coalition of West Bengal’s leading cultural figures issued a joint declaration. They announced that the song would be played statewide multiple times, followed by symbolic effigy burnings of BJP figures. 

The statement, signed by eminent personalities, accused the BJP of “systematically denigrating Bengal’s culture” and “distorting history to divide society.”  The CPI(M) too announced a statewide event where people would sing Amar Sonar Bangla in unison.

Translated from Bangla by Aparna Bhattacharya.

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