Rupang Bhatt blogs

Vadodara

There’s this word ‘left wing liberals’ very famous on social media. This word is mostly used by right wing handles on twitter.

But here something on ‘Right wing liberals’ who are out in Vadodara with Vadfest festival.

Traditionally in Gujarat, meat or non-veg items are not served in any government function or government supported function, but Saurabh Patel’s Vadfest will host number of cuisine events in which non-veg items will be catered.

The event is titled as ‘Royal Cuisine’, and the food items in offering will be Jhingyachi Kadhi, Miri Maas, Mutton Kabarga, Zinga Dum Nisha, Kachche Gosh Ki Dum Biryani, Meth Kokad, Mool Maach, Murgh Pulao, Machchi Dam Pukh, Gosht Ka Halwa, among others(click here for PDF list).

So on one side, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tries to promote vegetarian food even in Lutyen’s Delhi across all government hosted function, and on the other hand the Government of Gujarat in collaboration with private parties will serve non-veg dishes to promote Royal cuisine in Gujarat’s cultural capital Vadodara.

But here is the story of ‘Right wing liberals’ who are organizing Vadfest.

Then there’s this Nandita Das play at Vadfest. We don’t know how much Vadfest organizers are going to pay Nandita Das. But if its tax payers money, then its gross injustice to voters who elected this government to power as they were angry with kids of Teesta Setalvads and Nandita Das. If its left government, they would never call an artist in state supported/organized festivals remotely associated with any forum of right. There’s nothing much to say about Nandita Das here. Vadfest organizers just need to watch her film on Gujarat riots in which opportunist Paresh Rawal too had acted. It’s worth watching how this film portrayed average Gujarati in poor light. Obviously this film traveled across the world in various film and award events with Nandita’s speech on Gujarat riots. Just Google search Nandita Das and Gujarat and you would get hundreds of results. And then you elect BJP government, and it will organize and event, and will purchase Nandita Das’s drama with tax payers money! Therefore I used this word ‘Right wing liberals’.

And if Nandita Das is in, who is out? Well it’s Narendra Modi.

The Vadfest organizers just on the eve of the first day of festival canceled a painting exhibition featuring Narendra Modi’s paintings made by Dubai based Muslim artist Akbar Saheb due to protest by some left wing former students of Fine Arts faculty.

A local daily report suggests that Akbar Saheb was specially invited to exhibit his paintings featuring Shri Narendra Modi. In reponse, he arrived at Vadodara with his paintings. But some former students of Faculty of Fine Arts and some artists protested this development and started circulating an email. Later, Vadfest organizer Amit Bhatnagar held a meeting with Akbar Saheb and convinced him to withdraw his exhibition. However Akbar Saheb’s exhibition is taking place in art gallery at Old Padra Road, but outside the Vadfest menu. Akbar is disappointed with this decision. He said he made 12 paintings of Shri Narendra Modi sitting in Dubai with hard work of two years.

More about ‘Right wing liberals’? Well, as if number of recent Hindi films financed by dubious funding channels are not enough to promote Hindu girls marrying Muslim boys, one of the plays in Vadfest promotes the same. It’s a story of love affair of a Punjabi-Bengali girl and a Muslim boy.

Vadfest kicks off today.