Mamata Cabinet wants State to be renamed as Bengal

After the name change proposal is passed by the Assembly, it has to be approved by Parliament.

The West Bengal government on Tuesday passed a proposal to rename the state as just Bengal.

It was during Partition in 1947 that the British province of Bengal was split into West Bengal, which stayed with India, and East Pakistan [formerly East Bengal] which went to the newly-created Pakistan. While East Pakistan went on to become Bangladesh in 1971, its Indian counterpart continued to be called West Bengal.

“We have proposed that in Bengali, the name of the State will be Bangla or Banga. In English, it will be Bengal,” Education Minister Partha Chatterjee told journalists after the Cabinet meeting.

Special session soon

A special session of the West Bengal Assembly will be convened on August 26 to pass the proposal. It would have to be then ratified by Parliament before West Bengal actually becomes Bengal.

A section of the administration feels that renaming will help the State to move up the alphabetical order: as of now West Bengal sits at the bottom of the table, but doing away with ‘West’ would help it climb up to no. 4.

On July 16, after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee attended an Inter State Council meeting in New Delhi, she shared her displeasure with close associates, saying she was made to speak at the very end, “after six hours of waiting when none was willing to listen.”

Her annoyance, it is said, was largely responsible for Tuesday’s decision to rename the State, even though she had toyed with the idea earlier in 2011 when she came to power for the first time.

Heated debate

The move, as expected, has triggered a heated debate, with Bengalis speaking out against or in support of the rechristening. Author Sirshendu Mukherjee and veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee said that the name ‘West Bengal’ was irrelevant as there is no place called ‘East Bengal’ now.

However, the counter argument was that the renaming would wipe out the painful history of Partition of Bengal.

Historian and former vice-chancellor of Visva Bharati, Rajat Kanta Roy, said there was no rationale behind renaming the State.

Harvard Historian and Trinamool Congress MP Sugata Bose described it as “a good move” both historically and “also for the future.” Writer Nabaneeta Dev Sen said that if the Bengali name was chosen as Bangla, “there are high chances of people confusing it with Bangladesh.”