Rajendra prasad
डॉ श्यामा प्रसाद मुखर्जी...
The man, the melange
On July 6, 2000, prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee arrived in Kolkata to inaugurate the birth centenary celebrations of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, his political mentor.
Deen dayal upadhyay
Vajpayee was Mookerjee’s secretary when he was the president of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu, who had sanctioned the use of the Netaji indoor stadium for the celebrations, and deputy chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee were invited to the function.
But Basu was away in Israel, and the state cabinet gave the event a miss. A furious Vajpayee later told journalists that the leftists had insulted Bengal by boycotting the event. But then Mookerjee’s politics had always been unacceptable to a large section of the Indian political establishment, especially the left, as they believed that he promoted communal politics.