Congress leaders to protest Gandhi book at Siliguri Book Fair

SILIGURI: A book by a Kolkata-based author on Monday created chaos at Siliguri Book Fair when Congress leaders and activists protested against the book that has tried to malign Mahatma Gandhi. In his book Gandhijir Opokormo (Gandhiji's Misdeeds), author Alok Krishna Chakraborty has called Gandhiji a 'pervert' and an 'agent of the British'.

However, the stall that was selling the book has been temporarily closed down and 70 copies of the book were seized and handed over to police. The two workers - Raju Saha and Subhash Mallik - at the stall were arrested and later released on bail.

"The author tried to depict Bapu in very poor light. The language, too, is filthy. The Congress will never tolerate such nonsense. We have decided to sue the author," said Jiban Mazumdar, secretary of the Darjeeling Congress (Plains), who was the first to find out details of the book from his workers.

Questions have been raised over the research work that went into Chakraborty's findings. Given the size of the book (barely 100 pages) and the manner in which it was being distributed, it was evident that the views of the author from Ballygunj were based on mere hearsay rather than hardcore evidence. The book, it seems, was an attempt to titillate readers rather than educate them about what may have been a lesser-known side of the man who is respected across the world.

The book, published by the Kolkata-based S R Publications, was being sold for Rs 100 from a stall called 'Gitanjali', which happens to be the anthology of poems for which Tagore won the Nobel Prize for literature. The stall had managed to sell about 20 copies when Congress workers led by Matigara-Naxalbari MLA Sankar Malakar and Siliguri mayor Gangotri Dutta walked in.

"We have learnt that the stall had managed to sell some 20 copies of the book since the fair was inaugurated on Saturday. It is an insult to our country. How can a man dare to call Gandhiji a pervert when the country calls him Mahatma? We would expect the governments, both the Centre and the state, to come down heavily on the author," said Malakar.

"It was already decided no controversial book would be allowed to be sold at the fair. In spite of this, there was this controversy. We have given strict instructions to all the stall owners not to repeat anything of this sort," said Madhusudhan Sen, organising secretary of the Siliguri Book Fair Committee.

This is not the first time that some has tried to malign Gandhiji's image. Earlier, Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Lelyveld's hypothesis of what he later referred to as a 'homoerotic' relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and a bodybuilder of Jewish-origin in his book "Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India" drew ire from the entire nation.

by-Times of India