Rome was not built in a day. But the geo-political entity which has come to be known as Paschimbanga or West Bengal was resolved to be formed by the vote of law makers of the Assembly of this state nearly eight decades ago this day.
The resolve to carve out a new state resulted from the call of a single legislator of Hindu Mahasabha-Dr Syama Prasad Mookherjee. His voice was given credence even by those in the Assembly whose ideologies were at vast variance from him.
Unknown and little known facts were dug out nay rescued from the cobwebs as Paschimbanga Diwas was observed on the 20th day of June, 2026 at Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies. (MAKAIAS)
Academics, researchers and a politician spoke their minds decades after their views and voices were cries in the wilderness as history was twisted and turned for political reasons. It is to the credit of MAKAIAS which hosted a seminar “West Bengal :Revisiting its Past”.
The history of Paschimbanga can be traced back to the times which goes back far behind the time span when Rabindranath Tagore was penning his timeless pieces or the Bengal Renaissance or when Chaitanyadev was preaching his all-embracing humanism, West Bengal Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose said. One cannot fault a chartered accountant, that Bose is at his facts and figures.
In a video message, the CA-political leader said Paschimbanga Diwas is a part of our history and political struggle. The day marks the unmaking of a
conspiracy to make it a part and parcel of a theocratic state of Pakistan.
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Harking back to the past, Speaker Bose zeroed in on Dr Syama Prasad Mookherjee as the leading light of the endeavour to wrest West Bengal from a plan to include it within Pakistan. The youngest vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, Mookherjee a far sighted man foresaw in the ’40s the design to eradicate the identity of a large section of Hindus even in the land mass where they far outnumbered the Muslims.
Bose did not give a call to let bygones be bygones. Instead, the unbiased guardian of West Bengal Assembly asked for the incorporating of the history of Partition in the future plans of the development of West Bengal by tapping its unexplored potential.
Dr Sarup Prasad Ghosh, director MAKAIAS zeroed in on the issue as to why Paschimbanga Diwas was not observed all these years. It was to make the Hindu Bengalis, especially those who had to leave their hearth and home in what was then East Bengal forget their past and culture.
It was Dr Mookherjee who raised the demand what prevented 44 to 45 per cent of non-Muslims demand a land of their own, Dr Ghosh said. Ringing loud the alarm bells, the eminent
academic drew attention to the marked fall of Bengali speakers, if successive censuses are anything to go by.
Continuing to be in a role to shake up “somnolence” of Bengali Hindus, Dr Ghosh focussed on the rise in the influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. It is a part of a demographic invasion from Bangladesh to “change” the socio-economic facet and frontage of West Bengal and Assam, he said.
Atheism, he said never had its roots in Bengal. It is a recent import to dissociate Bengali Hindus from their roots and he also made it a point to focus on Kashmiri Pandits, refugeed in their own land
In a bid to make him a pariah in politics and history, Dr Mookherjee, the maker of Paschimbanga was sought to be tagged communal, Bimal Shankar Nanda,
an academic associated with Charuchandra College said. Yet this much maligned man set up department of Islamic history in Calcutta University and arranged for Kazi Nazrul Islam’s convalescence.
The seeds of Pakistan can be traced to setting up of separate electorates for Hindus and Muslims, professor Aloke Kumar Ghosh, Kalyani University contended. It was none other than Tagore who in his genius detected the schism between Hindus and Muslims in his two write ups namely “Byadhi I Pratikar” and “Samashya” way back in 1908-09, years after he had opposed Partition of BV engal in 1905.
