LONDON: Two groups of protesters disrupted West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s speech at Kellogg College, Oxford, on Thursday night, causing the event, which was meant to be the highlight of her UK trip, to descend into chaos. Oxford’s security officers had to be called.
The fiasco began when the CM was talking about the crores of investment proposals that the state had received from different industries and Dr Rajat Banerjee, who drove down from Liverpool, heckled her, asking her to name the industries.
“There are so many. It may be IBM, it may be Tata,” she said, which led to uproar from the back of the room, owing to Tata withdrawing its Nano project from the state in 2008.
Sushil Dokwal, a British accountant who had not even registered to attend the event but turned up on the night and got in via a waiting list on the door, and his friend Gujarati artist Jignesh Patel shouted at her “Tata ran way under leadership”. The pair were there with several others.
Next seven Indian Bengali students, not from Oxford, who are part of Students’ Federation of India (SFI), which is politically aligned with CPI(M), stood up in unison at the back, holding banners. One read: “TMC engineered violence in 2023 local elections”.
One shouted out accusing her of allowing Abhaya to be killed.
“The case is sub judice and central govt has taken over, it is not with us. Please don’t do politics here, it is not a political stage, you can do it with me in my state, not here,” Banerjee pleaded from the stage. “When we come and ask you questions in Kolkata you say you will break our fingers,” one of the students shouted back.
As abuse continued to be hurled at Banerjee, with protesters accusing her of “killing Hindus” and “selling human body parts”, she said: “This is you want to kill me (sic) — I was about to die” and grabbed a black-and-white 1990 picture of herself in bandages. “This is not a drama platform. Don’t behave like this” she shouted. “You are misbehaving.”
The event was by now in chaos with the entire audience facing the two groups of protesters and many screaming at them to leave.
“Anyone for Hindus,” asked Patel. “I am for all, I am for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs. I am for unity and you people are not. Don’t mention one caste only,” Banerjee shouted.
After some time security officials from the proctor’s office arrived and made the protesters leave.
No one searched Patel’s bag so he brought in three placards. “If we hadn’t gone, the headlines in India would be all creamy that she went to Oxford and spoke all her lies so our intention was to show that is not the reality,” he said.
