Mamata once again demands name change to ‘Bangla’
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has once again called on the Union government to consider renaming the state of West Bengal as ‘Bangla’.
As precedents, she cited the renaming of Bombay to Mumbai and Orissa to Odisha, and questioned why her state should be an exception to this practice.
She made these comments at a press conference in Kolkata on Thursday, January 11.
Emphasising the benefits that would accrue to the state by adopting the name ‘Bangla’, which holds an earlier alphabetical position than ‘West Bengal’, she said such a change would be advantageous for the state’s children participating in competitions.
She added that there is no necessity now for the word ‘west’ (which is actually a relic of history, of the partition of 1947).
She also said that even though there is the name ‘Bangladesh’, there is no reason why ‘Bangla’ should not be the name of the state, drawing a parallel with ‘Punjab’, saying states by that name exist both in India and Pakistan (at the time of partition in 1947, the province was split into East Punjab and West Punjab, but later both became ‘Punjab’).
Short history of name change proposals
- In 1999, the Left Front government had proposed the name ‘Bangla’ but it was rejected by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government.
- In 2011, after the Trinamool Congress came to power, a suggestion went to the Union government to change the name of the state to ‘Paschimbanga’, but it was rejected by the UPA government.
- In 2016, there were reports of a proposal to rename the state as ‘Bengal’ in English, ‘Bangla’ in Bengali, and ‘Bangal’ in Hindi. But there was no official move on this one.
- On July 26, 2018, the state assembly unanimously approved a resolution to rename the state as ‘Bangla’. The resolution was sent to the Rajnath Singh-led Union Home Ministry for approval but it was again rejected, for the fourth time in two decades. The reason, reportedly, was the name’s similarity with that of the neighbouring country of Bangladesh.
