Artists protest attack on Mamata, minister

KOLKATA: Two days after chief minister MamataBanerjee and finance ministerAmitMitra were harassed in New Delhi by the supporters of Students' Federation of India (SFI), the intellectuals and performing artists of the state protested the attack.
A meeting on the Nandan campus, held minutes before Gaanmela started, raised questions about the security of performing artists in Delhi.
The organizers, who tried to keep it a non-political platform, asked Trinamool MLAs Anup Ghoshal and Parikshit Bala to refrain from taking part in the meeting.
Sandhya Mukherjee, the 82-year-old legendary singer, was for the first time present at such a meeting. While a local crowd thronged to have a glimpse of her, she spoke in a tone rarely heard before. "The attack on the chief minister and other ministers should be condemned. I do not find any reason for so much of violence and hatred. I wish that we live in peace in future," she said.
Dwijen Bandyopadhyay, the first to reach the meeting, was critical about an apparently declining value system among the political groups. "A girl was beating drums and dancing while they manhandled Mitra. This is not a culture we are accustomed to. I have been to Delhi many a times before, but never faced such a situation," he said.
Performing artists like Nirmala Misra, Usha Utthup, Banasree Sengupta, Sreeradha Bandyopadhyay, Arundhati Hom Chaudhuri, Antara Chaudhuri and Shibaji Chatterjee were also present at the meeting.
Singer Indranil Sen said, "The political party which attacked the ministers can attack us too. We are afraid of our security at Delhi. We could have protested if similar thing happened to any other chief minister."