Moon Moon Sen after casting her vote in Kolkata on Sunday. (Express photo by Partha Paul) Moon Moon Sen after casting her vote in Kolkata on Sunday. (Express photo by Partha Paul)

Once again undermining the unrest that has plagued West Bengal in all seven phases of polling, actor-turned-politician and TMC leader Moon Moon Sen on Sunday said the clashes during BJP chief Amit Shah’s roadshow was a “tiny bit of violence”.

“Things have been polarised for the last six years in Bengal and it wasn’t the Bengalis. There may have been a little bit of violence like in other states, but no one talks about the violence in the last five years in Uttar Pradesh…This is a tiny bit of violence,” Sen, who contested from Asansol, told NDTV when asked about the desecration incident at Vidyasagar College in north Kolkata last week.

The violence between the Trinamool Congress and BJP workers during Amit Shah’s roadshow in Kolkata and the vandalisation of the bust of Vidyasagar led to an unprecedented curtailment of the election campaign in Bengal by 20 hours.

The vandalisation of Vidyasagar’s statue had become an emotive issue in Bengal, where the 19th-century social reformer is remembered for championing the cause of women’s education and remarriage of widows.

Sen further said that no Bengali would vandalise Vidyasagar’s statue unless he had changed parties from the Trinamool while underlining the secular demography of Kolkata.

“The Vidyasagar statue on College Street…no Bengali will do it unless he has changed parties from the Trinamool. We are secular in Kolkata…non-Bengali include Sikhs, Jews, Armenians, Gujaratis, Muslims, everyone. There are so many Tagore statues, no one has broken them. This is vandalism,” she said.

She had also made off-the-cuff remarks during voting in Asansol last month. Responding to questions regarding clashes in Asansol, during which BJP MP Babul Supriyo’s car was vandalised, Sen said she was unaware of the violence as she “woke up late”.

“They gave me my bed tea very late so I woke up very late. Ar ki bolbo bolo (What more can I say?) I really don’t know,” the actor-turned-politician told NDTV.

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