Sarbananda Sonowal-led BJP government’s effort to pay homage to Assam’s culture icon Jyoti Prasad Agarwala on Shilpi Divas has gone horribly wrong.
Government’s effort has backfired on Thursday because of an erroneous newspaper advertisement.
The advertisement sponsored by Janasanyog and published in Assam’s newspapers on Shilpi Divas wrongly quoted a stanza of an Assamese poem penned by Jyoti Prasad.
There are at least two serious errors in the three-line stanza of the poem. In the second line of the stanza, the word moi (I) has been replaced by ei (this).
Similarly, the last word of the third line has been written as anirmesh in place of animesh (without any blink). Interestingly, there is no such word as anirmesh in Assamese dictionary.
“We are utterly shocked that such a serious mistake has been made and an important poem of Jyotiprasad shamelessly being distorted,” said a Facebook user in a post.
To remember the cultural icon and freedom fighter Jyoti Prasad January 17 is observed as Shilpi Divas every year in Assam.
Several other users also slammed the government for the errors.
Also known as Gana Shilpi (People’s Artist), the cultural activist was born in 1903. Agarwala was a renowned filmmaker, dramatist, poet and lyricist.
He was the pioneer of filmmaking in the state and made the first Assamese film in 1930s -a time when there was hardly any infrastructure for filmmaking in Assam.