Union minister sets off row with ‘Tagore skin’ remarks
Santiniketan/Kolkata, Aug. 18: Union minister Subhas Sarkar courted a controversy on Wednesday with his remarks that Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's mother did not cradle him in her arms when he was a child because of his “not so fair complexion”, provoking angry reactions from West Bengal’s ruling TMC, which said it was an “insult” to a state icon.
The BJP, however, defended the minister, saying his remarks were against “racism”.
The minister of state for education made the comments during a visit to Visva Bharati, the university founded by Tagore.
The doctor-turned-BJP MP said before a small audience that while other members of the Tagore family had “bright yellowish fair” complexion, Tagore was fair but had a reddish hue to his skin.
“There are two types of fair skinned people. One that are very fair with a yellowish hue and those
who are fair but with a reddish tinge. Kabiguru belonged to the second category,” he said.
Mr Sarkar went on to say that “due to his not so fair complexion, his mother and many others in the family did not cradle Rabindranath in their arms or sat him in their laps”.
Mr Sarkar's comments triggered a controversy, with educationists and politicians denouncing him.
Former Rabindra Bharati University vicechancellor Pabitra Sarkar said, “No idea on what basis the Hon’ble minister made such comments. Don’t know if he has read biographies of Tagore thoroughly or whether he understood the spirit of these writings properly.”
“Tagore was not of dark complexion though people like his elder sister had described him as Rabi, our dark-complexioned boy. This was an exaggeration. Did the minister mean to say Rabindranath was as dark as Africans? Or he meant he had a complexion that was somewhat between fair and dark?”
“The minister did not clarify. And will he say what he wanted to prove by referring to the complexion of Tagore? How does it matter? Did that matter for Tagore when he got the Nobel, did it matter for Tagore when he became a world visionary, a poet-writer-painter-playwright, a Mohican?” Pabitra Sarkar said.
He said the remarks were “unexpected from an education minister” and only indicated the “insanity we see all around and the sad state of affairs in the country”.