ITANAGAR, June 20 (PTI): Arunachal Pradesh Governor Lt Gen K T Parnaik on Tuesday urged the state’s people to celebrate the vibrant, bold and multicultural spirit of West Bengal, which has been the harbinger of modernisation in fine arts, textiles and traditional cuisines.
Participating at the West Bengal ‘Foundation Day’ at Raj Bhavan here, the Governor greeted the people of West Bengal and conveyed the best wishes of the people of his state.
In the spirit of ‘Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat’, the Raj Bhavan observed the ‘Foundation Day’ of West Bengal in traditional Bengali fervour.
Parnaik recalled the contribution of socio-cultural reformists such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Swami Vivekananda, cultural exponents – Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nurul Islam and Satyajit Ray and freedom fighters – Subhas Chandra Bose and Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.
The Governor said there is much for the people to learn and imbibe from West Bengal, the cultural capital of India.
A large number of people from West Bengal, who are currently residing in Arunachal Pradesh, participated in the programme.
In Kolkata, West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose organised the state’s ‘Foundation Day’ programme at the Raj Bhavan, but no representative of the state government was present at the event.
In a letter to Bose on Monday, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had expressed “shock” at his “unilateral” decision to commemorate the state’s ‘Foundation Day’ asserting that it “was not founded on any particular day, least of all on any 20th of June.”
Banerjee pointed out that the pain and trauma of partition was such, that people in the state have never commemorated any day as ‘Foundation Day’ since India’s independence.
