Kolkata: Vivek Agnihotri’s ‘The Bengal Files’ has met with opposition from unexpected quarters.Santanu Mukherjee, the grandson of Gopal Mukherjee — the legendary ‘Gopal Pattha’ — who was a key defender of central Calcutta’s Hindu neighbourhoods during the Direct Action Day communal clashes of Aug 1946, has sent a legal notice to Agnihotri, claiming the movie “belittles, dehumanises and demonises an important figure from the history of India’s independence struggle.”On Saturday, the film’s trailer was screened at ITC Royal Bengal, triggering a war of words between Agnihotri and Trinamool, with the former accusing Bengal administration of “anarchy and dictatorship”. TMC said the film “was a political video made as part of a pre-election political assignment”.The Mukherjee family does not want to be a part of the politics but has firm ideas about its most famous forebear, Gopal Pattha. Santanu had filed an FIR against the movie on July 14, apprehending “denigration of not only his (Gopal’s) words or deeds but his ideological conviction along with historic struggle”.”Listening to interviews and reading previews of the film, I was apprehensive about how my grandfather would be portrayed. The trailer has confirmed those suspicions,” Santanu told TOI, sitting at the family’s 200-year-old ancestral home in central Kolkata’s Malanga Lane near Wellington Square. The family’s biggest issue with the film is its apparent portrayal of the Kolkata strongman as “a rabble-rousing Muslim-hating butcher”.”Grandfather also protected Muslim families in our neighbourhood during the communal clashes of 1946,” Santanu said. Pointing to the house opposite, his sister Niharika added: “He sheltered members of that Muslim family on our terrace. Grandfather also protected the family of a rickshaw-puller… we called him Rafique Chacha. Even today, families who own the Islamia medicine shop or Mullickbazar’s Haji meat shop respect our family.”This Aug 16 marked 80 years of the communal clashes that unfolded on Malanga Lane. Ahead of the 1946 riots, Muslim League volunteers had started gathering in different parts of Kolkata, Santanu said. On Aug 16, at a public meeting at Shaheed Minar, a call went out that before India’s Independence, the League must be given Pakistan. After that, looting started at the arms shops around Esplanade. Killings and plunder followed. The “action” then spread to Narkeldanga and Colootola.The film, Santanu fears, will negate Gopal Pattha’s message to his followers: “Don’t kill the innocent. Protect children and women, whether Hindus or Muslims.” He said: “To resist the riots, my grandfather organised his followers and took up arms. He had declared, ‘if League rioters kill one, you must kill 10. But no harm must come to any innocent Muslim’.” “The trailer crystallises my grandfather’s persona in a single phrase — ‘Ek tha kasai’. We think Gopal Pattha was much more than a mere butcher. He was a freedom fighter and social worker,” Santanu added.The “Pattha” term, too, leaves a lot of scope for misinterpretation, feels Santanu. “Local Biharis started calling my grandfather ‘Gopal Pattha’ because of his bravery… from the Bengali phrase ‘buker paata’. ‘Pattha’ never referred to ‘pnatha’ or goat. The film, I apprehend, is ill-researched and do my grandfather’s reputation more harm than good,” he said, adding that Gopal Pattha was “a known follower of both Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji”.Highlighting a part of the trailer where actor Sourav Das (who plays the character of Gopal Pattha) is seen saying, “Bharat Hinduon ka rashtra hai… is yudh me Hindu haar rahe hain… Jeet kaun raha hain? Jinnah… Hum sab nashe mein chur hain aur is nashe ka naam hain Gandhi ki ahimsa”, Santanu said: “My grandfather had started as a follower of Gandhi. Then, like Netaji, he felt there had to be an armed struggle. To reduce him to a hater of Muslims and Gandhi is just not on. The trailer shows Gopal Pattha running with a sword with saffron flags in background. That’s absolutely wrong.”Gopal Mukherjee opened his meat shop on Premchand Boral Street in 1935, with the family’s primary earner — Gopal’s uncle freedom-fighter Anukul — in jail, said Santanu’s elder sister Neeta. The shop closed in 2015. The family, however, has another meat shop in Jadubabur Baazaar. “My grandfather used to buy goats from Muslim traders — before and after Direct Action day,” said Santanu. Gopal died in 2005 at 92.Santanu wrote in the police complaint and legal notice: “These nefarious activities of Vivek Agnihotri are willfully, wantonly and maliciously besmirching the reputation of grandfather, stereotyping him as a communal thug and is aimed at flaring up communal tensions based on baseless depictions of my late grandfather’s historic actions.”
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