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After the name change proposal is passed by the Assembly, it has to be approved by Parliament.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” is a frequently referenced part of William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet seems to argue that it does not matter that Romeo is from her rival’s house of Montague, that is, that he is named “Montague.”
But it really matters when you are called by the alphabetic order in any meeting; Bengal will be called much ahead of West Bengal. Which has created many issues in the past for the administrative meetings in New Delhi when interstate meetings.
The West Bengal government on Tuesday passed a proposal to rename the state as just Bengal.
Bengal was the erstwhile name of the state in British India but it was during Partition of India in 1947 that the British province of Bengal was split into West Bengal & East Pakistan.
West Bengal which stayed with India, and East Bengal(East Pakistan), which went to the newly-created Pakistan. While East Bengal went on to become Bangladesh in 1971, its Indian counterpart continued to be called West Bengal. An Historic naming resembles partition of 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
Parliament has to approve finally the change of West Bengal into Bengal. But before that on 26th Aug 2016 a special session with be called for West Bengal Assembly for passing this cabinet meeting and with Mamata having majority it’s just the formality to pass it in assembly.
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 that too only 11 minutes which is not at all sufficient for all issues, “after six hours of waiting when none was willing to listen.”
This was the igniting idea for Mamata to change the name to get the attention in future meetings in New Delhi.
“Bring Back Calcutta Nostalgia,Change Kolkata to Calcutta again”
This timne the move, as expected, has triggered a heated debate, with Bengalis found a reason for tea time ADDA. 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.”
