Gumnamhaikoi: Netaji portrait mystery, now

The unveiling of a portrait of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose by President Kovind in the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday became a subject of mindless mirth.

The controversy erupted when several Twitter users claimed that the portrait was not of Netaji. Rather, it was a rendition of actor Prosenjit Chatterjee who essayed the role of Bose in a Bengali movie called ‘Gumnaami’ -- the Ayodhya-based sadhu who many believed was Netaji living under an assumed name after his purported death.

The ghost of Gumnaami was again resurrected on Bose’s 125th birth anniversary celebrations, by none other than the President's official handle which also tweeted pictures of the unveiling of the portrait.

But what began with a few innocuous tweets soon snowballed into a major controversy. Sample the now deleted post of TMC MP Mahua Moitra: She hit out at the

government alleging that that after donating Rs. 5 lakh to the Ayodhya Ram temple, President Kovind had "honoured Netaji by unveiling a portrait of Prosenjit, the actor who played him in the biopic". As is often the case, the controversy soon went off the tangent with 'Bhagat Singh,'Mangal Pandey’ and 'Sardar Patel' getting drawn into the rigmarole. And it all harked back to one painting! Moitra soon had company: In another deleted post, this time journalist Barkha Dutt spoke about her outrage over the “utterly embarrassing” situation. Calling it a portrait of Prosenjit, she added rather confusingly that she had to "look twice to make sure it had actually happened". Some were ambivalent: they said that if this was not Prosenjit Chatterjee, it was also certainly not Netaji. And going by the number of un-deleted posts, it would seem that many of the detractors of the portrait were not too sure of themselves. The confusion may have been amplified somewhat by the actor's rather convincing portrayal of the iconic Bengali freedom fighter. Interestingly, most Bengalis seemed convinced that the portrait was not of Netaji. The West Bengal Congress party even took to Twitter with a sage remark about how "education matters". BJP sources junked the theory, asserting that the photo was provided by Netaji's family to famous the Padma Shri award winning artist Paresh Maity, who painted the portrait.

Chandra Kumar Bose, Netaji's grand-nephew and a member of the BJP, also posted what he said was the photo given for the portrait.

BJP's social media chief Amit Malviya, in-charge of Bengal, posted a sharp rejoinder: "If the neoBengal experts are done making a fool of themselves, outraging over the portrait of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, unveiled by the President of India, let me remind them that all their misplaced activism won't be able to save Mamata Banerjee..."