Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy stoked a controversy on Wednesday for his remark on Nobel laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee.
Mr. Roy asked why Mr. Banerjee’s middle name was Vinayak. “I have two fundamental questions. Where is Abhijit Banerjee born? Many are saying Kolkata, others saying Dhule in Maharashtra. His mother is Marathi and father Bengali, late Dipak Banerjee. The tradition in Maharashtra is to use father’s name as the middle name. Then his [Mr. Banerjee’s] middle name should have been Dipak; [then] why is it Vinayak?” asked the Governor in a post in Bengali.
The comment infuriated thousands on both Twitter and Facebook. Many asked if he was not insulting his position by asking such “irrelevant” questions. Others asked if Mr. Roy and his party — the BJP — was targeting the economist because he did not support demonetisation.
“I have a fundamental question too. Why are you silent about your brother accepting cash on camera?” asked a social media user. Mr. Roy’s brother Sougata Roy, a Trinamool Congress MP, had been purportedly caught on camera taking wads of cash in the Narada sting operation case.
Mr. Roy later commented that had he not raised “two simple questions”, then he would not have known that there were “so many dumb people on Facebook and Twitter.”
