Fans and family divided over singer Manna Dey’s birth year

KOLKATA: Controversy refuses to leave the memories of legendary singer Manna Dey. On his birth anniversary on May 1, his connoisseurs and family members are divided over his year of birth.

While his daughter and son-in-law put the date to 1920, members of Manna Dey Sangeet Academy and

Manna Dey Foundation

insisted he was born a year earlier.

Amidst this, a temporary injunction order was issued by the Bengaluru City Civil court restraining the Manna Dey Sangeet Academy from organising any centenary celebrations or conducting any other event or programme by falsifying Dey’s date of birth.

Dey’s Bangalore-based daughter Shumita

Deb

and son-in-law Jnanranjan Deb are peeved with the centenary celebrations this year and call it a “distortion” of facts to “mislead” people.

“We have also written to Wikipedia to make the corrections on Manna Dey’s page that mentions his birth date as 1919. His passport clearly states that he was born in Kolkata on May 1, 1920. A bust of the singer installed in Alipurduar also mentioned the same year on the inscription. He opened a bank account in 2008 where he himself mentioned 1920 as his birth year. No state government anywhere in India is beginning the centenary celebrations this year,” the Debs said.

Gautam Roy, founder-secretary of Manna Dey Sangeet Academy said he wasn’t aware of the injunction order.

“When I wrote a book on him, we needed to make his horoscope. That’s when we discovered that he was born on a Thursday. But May 1, 1920, wasn’t a Thursday. I asked him if he was surehis birthday was Thursday. In that case, his year of birth had to be either 1919 or 1924. He agreed to go by 1919 but didn’t want to take up the trouble of changing the passport details,” Roy claimed.

On Tuesday, Manna Dey Sangeet Academy is kick-starting the centenary celebrations at Mahajati Sadan with a musical programme and award ceremony.

Deb family will begin the centenary celebrations from next May.


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