BHOPAL: Enthused by the landslide poll win in Bihar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Friday evening said that the victory set the groundwork for a similar performance in neighbouring West Bengal.
Just a day later, Inder Singh Parmar, a minister of the BJP regime in Madhya Pradesh, has triggered political controversy by terming Raja Ram Mohan Roy a “British Agent.”
Roy, a 17th and 18th century social reformer, is highly respected across Bengal and is widely considered the ‘Father of the Bengal Renaissance.’
Addressing the Jan Jatiya Gaurav Diwas program to mark the birth anniversary of legendary tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda in native Agar Malwa district on Saturday, the minister claimed that Roy acted as a “British agent,” who worked to divide Indian society on caste lines.
“Britishers were working at changing the religious faith and identities of people in India through promotion of English education. It was in that direction that many Indians had been turned into social reformers by the British, one of whom was Raja Ram Mohan Roy, a British agent. He worked to divide Indian society along caste lines,” Parmar said.
Adding in the same vein, the MP higher education minister said, it was tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda, who broke the vicious cycle of religious conversion and saved the tribal society.
Reacting sharply to the minister’s controversial remark on Roy, the state Congress spokesperson Bhupendra Gupta termed the development as shameful.
“The minister seems to have a deep understanding of history. He needs to also tell whether Roy’s role in abolition of Sati too was part of British brokerage. Those who once were themselves the agents of the British are now terming social reformers as British agents,” Gupta said, mocking the minister.
With his statements having triggered a political storm, the MP minister (who reportedly has a strong RSS background), apologised for his remarks on Sunday morning. “I am sorry and sad for what I said about the great social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy. I have deep regard for him, I mistakenly made the statement.”
This isn’t the first time that the present higher education minister and former school education minister of the BJP-ruled state has hit the headlines with his controversial statements.
In September 2024, while addressing the annual convocation of the Barkatullah University in Bhopal, the same minister had kicked up a row by claiming that the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama didn’t discover the sea route to India, but merely followed an Indian sea merchant Chandan into India. He also claimed that it wasn’t Christopher Columbus, but Indian sailor Vasulun, who could’ve actually discovered America.
Parmar hadn’t stopped there, but said that while it’s written that the first Olympic Games were held around 2800 years back which meant that stadiums and spirit of sports started from there only. “But past archaeological excavations in Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch have unearthed the remains of two big stadiums which were 5500 years old. This means that our ancestors knew in detail about sports and built big stadiums thousands of years before the modern Olympic Games started.