Rabindranath Tagore
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
New Delhi: Trinamool Congress MP Ritabrata Banerjee demanded on Thursday that a statue of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore be installed at the Jallianwala Bagh in Punjab's Amritsar.
Tagore, a Bengali polymath who was a poet, writer, composer and painter, was awarded a knighthood by King George V in 1915. Tagore renounced it after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
The demand came after Minister of Culture Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, in a written reply to a question from Banerjee in the Rajya Sabha, denied that the government had any plans to install Tagore's statue at the memorial.
"Statue of Rabindranath Tagore is not installed in Jallianwala Bagh as the memorial primarily commemorates the victims of the massacre and includes a Martyr's Gallery and a well where people tried to escape," Shekhawat said in his reply.
Banerjee said the first and sharpest protest against the massacre came from Tagore.
"I asked the culture ministry if there is any statue of Rabindranath Tagore at Jallianwala Bagh or if there is any plan to install his statue. The answer was no," Banerjee told the media.
"The first and sharpest protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, where many innocent people were killed, came from Rabindranath Tagore. In 1915, he was given knighthood, after this incident, he wrote a heart-rendering letter and gave up his knighthood in protest against this extreme violence," the TMC MP said.
"Today, Bengali-speaking people are being targeted in BJP-ruled states. The BJP has omitted Tagore from school texts in Uttar Pradesh. Tagore, apart from being an accomplished musician, artist and philosopher, was a passionate political activist too," he added.
"He gave up his knighthood in protest against (the) Jallianwala Bagh (massacre). The letter must be displayed properly and prominently along with the installation of Tagore's statue," Banerjee said.
In a post on X, the TMC said, "Gurudev was one of the most prominent and principled respondents to Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Deeply shaken by the colonial brutality, he renounced his Knighthood conferred by the British Crown, as a mark of protest against the horrific violence unleashed upon innocent civilians." "To ignore Tagore is to sideline Bengal's indelible contribution to the freedom struggle. We urge GoI to correct this omission and ensure that the voice that once shook the British Empire finds a rightful place in Jallianwala Bagh," the party said.
The Jallianwala Bagh is a historic garden and memorial of national importance close to the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar.
On April 13, 1919, on the day of the Baisakhi festival, a crowd of around 20,000 had gathered in the complex, amid protests over the "Rowlatt Act" that gave power to police to arrest any Indian without any reason.
Brigadier General R E H Dyer ordered his troops to fire on the unarmed civilians, with many jumping in the well in the open compound to escape the bullets.
Tagore renounced his knighthood in protest against the massacre. He wrote a letter to the Viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford, on May 30, 1919, expressing his outrage at the brutal suppression of unarmed civilians by the British government.