AGARTALA, MAY 11,
Tripura Opposition parties on Friday took a dig at Chief Minister Biplab Deb, after a video on social media allegedly showed him saying that Rabindranath Tagore returned the Nobel prize to protest the atrocities of the British regime.
The office of the Chief Minister has not yet made any clarification, but a close aide denied that he made such a comment. The authenticity of the video is yet to be confirmed.
In the video, the Chief Minister was reportedly seen speaking on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Tagore at Udaipur, headquarters of Gomati district in Tripura.
The Congress and CPI(M) called out a gaffe in that speech, saying that Tagore had only renounced his knighthood and not his Nobel prize.
“Who does not know that Tagore refused to continue with his knighthood label to exhibit his strong protest against the massacre the British committed at Jallianwala Bagh in Punjab,” Congress leader Rahul Saha told The Hindu.
A press release issued earlier by the Information Department on the programme at Udaipur stated that the Chief Minister spoke at length to describe the great works and services of Tagore.
Mr. Deb’s earlier statements, from the ”existence of the Internet and satellites in the ancient era” to Diana Hayden’s Miss World beauty pageant title, had provoked sharp criticism.
