A move to rename several roads in Kolkata is doing the rounds. Proposals to change names of thoroughfares named after international leaders of Communist movement will certainly send a message that is not in keeping with the Left leaning international image of the city.
Names of Lenin Sarani, Karl Marx Sarani, Ho Chi Minh Sarani are set to be changed. The proposals of name changing will be sent to the Assembly by a 10-member committee headed by Swami Pradiptananda better known as Kartik Maharaj of Bharat Sevashram Sangha.
The committee also includes former state BJP chief, Tathagata Roy. Public places in the state including roads and bridges are under the committee’s scanner.
The committee will hold its meeting after Durga Puja. Their recommendations of name changing will be sent thereafter.
No finality can now be associated with the name changing proposals now. Relevance of the persons in the context of Bengali and Indian culture will be a deciding criteria.
Yet the tone and tenor of the man heading the first BJP government of West Bengal is a pointer to its instinct to replace the Left with the Right. Acts indicate that this saffron dispensation will walk down path less travelled in the past.
If former chief minister Mamata Banerjee dropped in on any community Durga pujas pandals that took her fancy, the present incumbent tried an one-up- man act when he dropped in at several Ganesh puja pandals in his constituency of Bhowanipore which Mamata Banerjee never visited. He took a dig at the dictatorial ways of his predecessor which set aside even almanac dates on puja and did not even let go birth anniversaries of such luminaries as Jyoti Basu.
High on enthusiasm, chief minister Adhikari sometimes overshot his mark. His successful bid at a road renaming is the case in point.
Suhrawardy Avenue is the first road to be renamed in Kolkata after the BJP dispensation walked into the corridors of power. It was named after Gopal Mukherjee who led the Hindu resistance when Calcutta was torn apart by communal conflagration in August 1946.
The move was welcomed in the saffron camp which claimed it was in the fitness of things that the name of Muslim League leader associated with the Great Calcutta Killing H A Suhraewardy, the then chief minister of undivided Bengal has been removed. But it later turned out that the road was originally named after a renowned scholar.
Sir Hassan Suhrawardy was a well known physician. He happened to be the first Muslim vice-chancellor of Calcutta University who died three months before The Great Calcutta Killing.
Accused by the Opposition of overlooking “historical facts”, chief Suvendu Adhikari has retorted by saying he was against roads being named after Mughals, Pathans and oppressive British rulers. This was a clear pointer that more changes of road names would be made.
The enthusiasm of renaming did not appear to have fizzled out. Lenin Sarani is likely to be named after Deba Prasad Ghosh, a top bracket Jan Sangh leader.
Ghosh was a senior leader of Jan Sangh who was also a mathematician who taught at Ripon
College. A long stretch of thoroughfare in south Kolkata was named after Mookherjee by the then Congress dispensation.
Lenin Sarani was earlier named Dharamtala Street. It was named after the Russian Communist leader Lenin on his birth centenary in 1970.
There is a consideration to rename Ho Chi Minh Sarani after American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Junior. This road on whom a high commission and a embassy is located was earlier named Harrington Street
Unlike in Marx, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh, Harrington needs introduction. John Herbert Harrington was a British administrator and orientalist who had served in Bengal.
Once one of the tony addresses in the city, Harrington Street came to be renamed in 1970 during Vietnam war by the then Left-led government. Uncle Ho as he was affectionately referred to was a Vietnamese leader.
The walls of Kolkata were then filled with graffiti in support of Communist freedom fighters of Vietnam. Small wonder, the saffron camp which looks askance at Communist philosophy have not taken kindly at these graffiti and the renaming.
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The year 1971 saw renaming of Circular Garden Reach Road as Karl Marx Sarani. Two names of noted poets namely Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Rangalal Bandopadhayay are reported to have been shortlisted to replace the name of the German philosopher whose writings propagated egalitarianism the world over.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel ‘s name may also replace the existing names of Strand Road and Mayo Road, both key thoroughfares of the city. Though he banned the RSS after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, Patel is considered to be an icon by BJP.
Apart from important roads, a change of the name of Titumir bus stand in Barasat seems to be on the cards.The name to be selected will be one of a “nationalist Muslim” like educationist Begam Rokeya Sakhawat, authors Qazi Abdul Odud and S.Wajed Ali..
Some changes in the names of Metro stations in Tollygunge -Garia stretch is not ruled out. Instead of persons, the place where the station is located may find place in the sign boards of the underground transport, one of the transport lifelines of Kolkata
