Thread by @tathagata2

Yesterday @SudheenKulkarni held forth on Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee on his birthday abusing him through total lies and half-truths. Perhaps a few people were impressed,bcz Sudheendraji has traveled thru 3 parties. First CPI(M),then BJP. Last I heard he’s batting for Rahul Gandhi.

Today I shall try to put forth a few facts about SPM in a series of tweets to refute SK’s lies and half-truths. I should not have to quote sources,because SK’s principal source has been SPM’s biography AUTHORED BY ME. Quoted out of context,of course.

@SudheenKulkarni (SK) is trying to pull a fast one by subtly trying to play on our admiration of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (NSCB); and implicitly putting forth the proposition that anybody who had a difference of opinion with NSCB is not a patriot,possibly worse.
Now look at...

the photo and text abt the gentleman SK has put on his profile. It is Mohandas Gandhi (MKG). I presume SK (at least for the present) is an admirer of MKG. Let's look at some things MKG said about NSCB in a letter dated 29 Dec 1939.
"You are irrepressible whether ill or well.....

I am surprised that you won't distinguish between discipline and indiscipline...we must sail in different boats,though their destinations may appear,but only appear,to be the same".
[Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, Rupa, New Delhi, 2005,p. 419]

(tongue in cheek) "After all Subhas Babu is not an enemy of the country". (ibid. p. 374)
"I had the pain of wholly associating myself with the ban pronounced on him....I feel Subhas is behaving like a spoilt child of the family" (ibid. p. 403)
Now why am I quoting all this? Not

to please my present political masters; for,unlike SK,I have never changed my political beliefs,and I am out of active politics just now. Will SK now agree that since MKG said so many unkind things about NSCB,therefore MKG must be bad, just as SPM was bad because NSCB said unkind

things about SPM?No, I am quoting this to underline the fact that however much I admire NSCB(and I do,immensely) I do not try to canvass an unsupportable proposition that whoever differs with NSCB is an enemy of the country. I consider NSCB,MKG and SPM to be all great patriots,

and I don't try to prove one is good and therefore the other must be bad. This is intellectually dishonest.
The statement "He (SPM) served as Finance Minister of Bengal in 1941–42 under Prime Minister A.K. Fazlul Haq (AKFH) of Muslim League" is a BLACK LIE. Fazlul Haq's party

was known as Krishak Praja Party and they had merely formed a coalition with the Muslim League,because of the stupidity of the Congress in not forming a coalition with them. SPM pulled AKFH out of the embrace of Muslim League and formed a coalition with him.
Finally,where did SK

get this information that SPM believed in Two-Nation theory? What SPM believed is that Hindus must not bend over backwards to please the Muslims and get incessantly beaten in the process.
I have not read Amreek Singh's book,so I can't comment on it. I can only say that a lot

of the literature on Bengal partition are in Bengali (Abul Mansur Ahmad's "Amar Dekha Rajneetir Ponchas Bochhor" is an invaluable book). If someone can confirm that Amreek Singhji has accessed such books I shall buy his book and read it, because Bengal politics is my obsession.

Further to add:
SPM's success in mobilising Bengali Hindu opinion in 1947 in favour of partition of Bengal got Muslim Leaguers aghast. Jinnah said,"It is a sinister move actuated by spite and bitterness"[V.P.Menon,The Transfer of Power in India,Orient Longman,Chennai,1993, p.355]