Tagore was ‘not in favour’ of memorial at Jallianwala Bagh

Tribune News Service

Kolkata, March 2

Rabindranath Tagore was not in favour of the idea of raising a memorial at Jallianwala Bagh proposed by Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress in the early 1920s, Sarmistha Dutta Gupta, curator of an exhibition on the massacre, said here today.

Sanchayan Ghosh, artistic director, assisted Sarmistha in curating the exhibition entitled “Ways of remembering Jallianwala Bagh and Rabindranath Tagore’s response to the massacre”.

West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar today inaugurated the exhibition being held at Kolkata’s historic Victoria Memorial Hall.

Sarmistha said while Tagore’s decision to relinquish knighthood in protest against the massacre was known to all, hardly anyone knew that the poet was against erecting a structure in memory of people killed in the massacre.

“The poet did not want to burden the minds of the future with stones carrying the black memory of wrongs,” said Sarmistha, a scholar.