After complaint of hurting 'Hindu sentiments' for poem mocking Adityanath, poet Srijato says he won't stop

A police complaint has been filed against poet Srijato Bandopadhyay for a poetry which has posted on his Facebook wall. The poetry, headlined ‘Abhishap’ or curse has, according to the complaint by Arnab Sarkar, a member of Hindu Samhati, hurt Hindu sentiments.

“It appears that the poetry has been aimed against the new Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath but my objection is on the use or rather misuse of the word ‘trishul’ in the poetry. ‘Trishul’ essentially signifies Hinduism. Poets and intellectuals like these can only insult Hinduism but they keep quiet when there is an offence created by members of some other religion,” Sarkar said.

The complaint, filed at Siliguri’s Cyber Crime Police Station, said that the post was an attempt to deprive Hindus from their fundamental right to preach, practice and propagate their religion and that the poet should be immediately arrested. He also said that if police didn’t take any action against the poet they would move court.

Bandopadhyay, however, said he had only exercised his fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression. “I think everyone should protest against anything that goes amiss in society and I, as a poet have only my medium of poetry to put up a protest. I had written a series of poems protesting against the killing of Bangladeshi bloggers and even at that time I had received several threats,” he said.

Asked if such complaints would deter him from posting in future, he said, “I would not have written any poetry if I was afraid of these. Even in future my pen would speak for me against anything which I find I should protest against.”

The 12-line poetry was posted on March 19 at 8.25 pm. Interestingly, that very day Adityanath had been sworn in as the CM of Uttar Pradesh after the landslide victory of BJP in the last Assembly polls there. By 6 pm on March 21, the post had received over 8000 likes and 1853 shares, followed by a barrage of comments, of which many had been highly acerbic, criticising the poet in unparliamentary terms. Many others have congratulated the poet and said that the nail has been hit on the head and that is why religious fanatics were reacting that way.

Theatre artist and state IT minister Bratya Basu said that it was the handiwork of the Sangh parivar to spread communal violence. "Just like they have done in other parts of the country, they want to spread communal violence here through acts like these but they will not be successful in their attempts in Bengal," he said.