On 23 January to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary celebrations of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the President of India unveiled a portrait of the freedom fighter at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The President’s official Twitter handle also posted images from the function.
However, there were soon claims that the portrait unveiled by the President was not of the real Subhas Chandra Bose, but of actor Prosenjit Chatterjee, who played Netaji in a Bengali film that dealt with his mysterious death titled Gumnaami, directed by Srijit Mukherjee.
Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra had tweeted a message saying, “God Save India (because this government certainly can’t)” in reaction to the incident. “After donating Rs 5 lakhs to the Ram temple the President honours Netaji by unveiling a portrait of Prasenjit, (sic) the actor who played him in biopic,” said her tweet, which the MP later deleted.
Senior journalist Barkha Dutt had also earlier tweeted stating that she was “shocked” to hear about the incident and that it was “utterly embarrassing”. She later deleted her tweet after another journalist claimed that the portrait by artist Paresh Maity was based on an original photograph of Netaji sourced from his grand niece.
According to reports, the government has clarified that the portrait unveiled by the President is based on an original photograph of Netaji. Rajdeep Sardesai who had earlier tweeted about the portrait being Prosenjit’s deleted his tweet and said that the “government insists that the Netaji portrait in the Rashtrapati Bhavan is an original portrait and not from a movie”.
Actor Prosenjit Chatterjee later tweeted that he was elated that people thought that the painting resembles him from the film Gumnaami.
Mukerji, who directed Prosenjit as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in the film Gumnaami also tweeted a photo of Netaji saying that, “The following is the picture on the basis of which the painting at Rashtrapati Bhawan was painted by Paresh Maity. For any similarity of Prosenjit’s look to this photo, the credit goes to Somnath Kundu”. Kundu was the make-up artiste on Gumnaami.
The controversy started after several Twitter users pointed out that the portrait unveiled by the President was of actor Prosenjit Chatterjee from Gumnaami.
Meanwhile, several Twitter users also directed attention towards this tweet from 11 January by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s grand nephew, which includes a photograph of Bose that was used for Maity’s portrait.
Others too had a similar opinion that the entire controversy was unwarranted.
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