This post has been updated

The Bharatiya Janata Party-appointed governor of Tripura, Tathagata Roy, has sparked off a controversy on Twitter with his comments calling the people who assembled for Yakub Memon's funeral procession "potential terrorists".



The reaction to this was swift and outrage followed at the fact that a Governor, a man supposedly above politics was tweeting views which were decidedly controversial.



Roy was, however, unfazed by this.


This isn't the first time, thought, that Roy, ex-president of the West Bengal unit of the BJP, has been accused of communal bigotry on Twitter. Some of his earlier controversial tweets range from commending someone because they "appreciate what the Hindus did" in Gujarat in 2002 to hoping that West Bengal will also “polarise” along communal lines.

Love Jihad

Even though the Bharatiya Janata Party never officially validated the existence of “Love Jihad” – the idea that there is an organised effort by Muslim men to convert Hindu women by making them fall in love with them – a number of party leaders have taken it up as a handy tool to rile up passions. Roy seems to be one of them.

Later on when a user asked Roy to “approach women as individuals” and “let them decide”, he shot that suggestion down:

Unsurprisingly, Roy had no problems with the many calls for women to procreate in larger numbers in order to increase the Hindu population:

 

So taken up by this issue is he, that after a horrific case of violence in 2014, where a mentally-ill Muslim man was lynched in Kolkata on the suspicion of trying to steal a phone, all Roy could comment on was the number of children the murdered person had:

2002 Pogrom

Tathagata Roy has some strong views on the Gujarat violence of 2002 and Modi’s role in it and he hasn’t been afraid to express them on Twitter.

The most egregious tweet of Roy’s was where he expresses his views on Gujarat 2002:

 

Given his views on the Gujarat Pogrom, it is no surprise that he wants his home state, West Bengal, to “polarise” as well:

 

Praise for muzzling Doniger

Roy commends the attack on Wendy Doniger’s academic study of Hinduism, The Hindus, in 2014, taking care to point out that doing what Doniger did is no longer “safe”. The incident had forced the withdrawal and pulping of all copies of the book.

 

Nehru, the murderer?

With his Twiter profile proudly proclaiming that his ideology is Hindutva, it is not surprising that Roy does not like Nehru. But to publicly accuse the first prime minster of murder is an extreme view even then.

 

Since it was after he had expressed views like these that Roy was appointed governor by the Modi government in May 2015, it is maybe no small wonder that he has kept this up.