New Delhi, Sept. 12 -- Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari's reference to jailed Bangladeshi monk Chinmoy Krishna Das to underscore the importance of the state's creation as a homeland for Bengali Hindus triggered a sharp counterattack from the CPI(M), which accused the BJP of "double standards" and cited the arrest of student leader Umar Khalid.
Adhikari on Saturday leveraged the emotional imagery of a jailed Hindu monk attending his mother's funeral on a five-hour parole to underscore the significance of West Bengal's accession to India.
During a Ganesh Puja inauguration, Adhikari said the sight of Chinmoy Krishna breaking down at his mother Sandhya Rani Dhar's last rites in Chittagong had shaken the hearts of Hindus worldwide.
"If we had not got accession to India through the struggle of Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Swami Pranavananda, perhaps our condition today would have been like Chinmoy Krishna," he said.
Adhikari alleged that previous Left and Trinamool administrations had sought to forget their contribution, while his government aimed to pay homage to them.
Adhikari also invoked the pain in his own family, recalling the experience of his mother, Gayatri Devi, whose family originally hailed from what is now Bangladesh, saying she had to flee to India with her father during Partition because they were Hindus.
"There is pain in my own life too. Because she was a Hindu, my mother too had to flee with her father, leaving everything behind and carrying only the clothes she was wearing," he said.
CPI(M) leader Kaltan Dasgupta, however, sought to turn the argument back on the BJP, saying the Left stood for minority rights irrespective of national boundaries but alleged that the saffron party applied different standards at home and abroad.
"We Leftists have always stood for the rights of minorities and against majoritarian domination, whether in Bangladesh, India or Palestine," Dasgupta said.
"But the BJP is practising double standards. Chinmoy Krishna is in jail there after being branded anti-national; here, Umar Khalid is also in jail. The BJP's double standards are becoming increasingly evident to the people," he said.
Chinmay Krishna has been in custody since November 2024 on sedition and other charges, including a murder case linked to violence after his arrest. Although the High Court granted him bail in four of six cases, his release remains stalled due to a Supreme Court stay order on bail in the sedition case and ongoing trial proceedings.
Following his mother's death on Thursday, the Chittagong district administration granted him a five-hour parole to perform the last rites, after which he returned to jail.
However, Left drew parallels between Chinmoy's incarceration in Bangladesh and the continued detention of Indian activists Umar Khalid and the late Stan Swamy under anti-terror laws.
Speaking at a news channel summit, the Chief Minister said the state government would soon introduce new industrial and land policies, amend the land ceiling Act and announce an incentive package for investors, without giving a timeline or details.
He said industrialisation was crucial to creating jobs for the state's large pool of educated unemployed youths.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.