To Bangla or not: Let Bengalis have the last word on their fate

West Bengal Assembly has passed a resolution to change the name of the state to Bangla, the word locals use to refer to it. It fulfils the ruling Trinamool Congress' 2011 promise. Drawing a bit of political mileage after both the Congress and the CPI (M) had opposed the change, CM Mamata Banerjee said she was inspired by Rabindranath Tagore's music.

Well, to be accurate, it was not Rabindra Sangeet -his music - but the poem "Amar sonar Bangla" that lauds the land and became the national anthem of the other Bangla - Bangladesh.

Normally, the change of name should be a non-issue to national parties after the state has opted for it. This is not the first time an Indian state has decided to rename itself. Uttaranchal, which was created out of Uttar Pradesh on November 9, 2000, was renamed Uttarakhand on January 1, 2007 to reinforce its identity as a state and not a region. After Telengana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh, the parent state brushed aside suggestions to change its name as "Seema Andhra" and retained its name.

But the change of name can be a tricky exercise. The Congress party, which was ruling the Madras state, opposed the popular demand for renaming the state as Tamil Nadu as everyone called it and the party's state unit was known Tamil Nadu Congress. It paid a heavy price and lost the state election after the DMK party used the issue as one more foil to flaunt its Dravidian credentials and love for the Tamil language; the Congress party has not been able to return to power in the state since then.

If we go by the Tamil Nadu experience, Banerjee may well be correct in saying "the CPI (M) and Congress have made a historic blunder by opposing the change in name". In fact, the CPI (M)'s opposition is rather curious as it had proposed the name change when it was in power! Is the volte face because the TMC has stolen its thunder in the name game?

Not only the Congress and the CPI (M), but West Bengal's BJP unit too opposes the change, though cadres and leaders of all political parties use only Bangla (or Bango in yet another variation). Interestingly, their rationale for opposing the change is different. In fact, the state BJP president Dilip Ghosh is said to have asked the Centre not to table the resolution for change of name "as it would erase the memories of Partition".

He has a point because no Bengali can forget the trauma Bengal had suffered twice due to the partition of the state - first in 1905 during the British rule and later in 1947, at the time of Independence.

Despite sharing the rich heritage of Bengali language, social and cultural history, the western and eastern halves have suffered from class, caste and religious differences. The Hindu majority dominated the industrialised western half while the poor, landless Muslim majority lived in the agrarian East. While the western half supplied English-speaking babus to the British, the riverine culture of east produced seafarers, rice farmers and Hilsha fish that sustains the life of Bengalis everywhere.

The Partition of Bengal in 1947 resulted in the creation of East Pakistan, preceded by the great Calcutta killings of August 16, 1946 after the Muslim League gave a call for direct action resulting in the loss of about 5,000 lives. The violent birth of East Pakistan a year later left a bloody trail of riots and further killings both in the West and the East. The demography of both halves changed dramatically due to the tectonic effects of Partition. More than 25 lakh Hindus fled from the newly created East Pakistan over a period of four years from 1947, reducing Hindus of the East to a helpless minority from a powerful community, smarting in the aftershocks of Partition to this day.

There was a bit of a political drama before Bengalis reconciled to Partition in 1947. Three months before Partition came into effect, Bengal provincial Muslim League leader Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy came up with the idea of not accepting the partition of the province, but creating an independent Bengal that would join neither India nor Pakistan, as he felt the comparatively less developed Muslim-dominated agrarian eastern half would not be economically viable on its own. He managed to muster the support of Sarat Chandra Bose, Netaji Subash Chandra Bose's brother and a Congress leader in his own right, for his proposal. After detailed discussions to give form to the proposal for a unified Bengal, the two leaders signed an agreement and published the plan on May 27, 1947.

Though Suhrawardy could convince Mohammad Ali Jinnah about the validity of his proposal for a unified Bengal and gain his tacit approval, the Muslim League did not fall in line. It negated the league's two-nation theory that formed the basis for the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim homeland. Even within the Bengal provincial Muslim league, the opinion was divided.

The Congress party outrightly rejected the proposal as it suspected Suhrawardy's intentions. This was not surprising because Suhrawardy's credibility among the population was eroded as many felt he had planned the August 1946 Calcutta killings. The idea of a unified Bengal did not find much support and died a natural death after Bose developed differences over Suhrawardy's insistence that there be separate electorates for Muslims and non-Muslims.

Though the idea of an independent Bengal was short-lived, it showed the strength of Bengali nationalism, which could overcome Hindu-Muslim antipathy.

The bloody aftermath of Partition subsumed the strength of the Bengali identity for nearly two-and-a-half decades. However, East Pakistanis, who were treated as poorer cousins of the Punjabi-dominated West Pakistan, reasserted their Bengali identity to create Bangladesh in 1971, with India providing the military muscle.

The change of name for West Bengal would come into force only after the Parliament approves the resolution for change with two-thirds majority. It would be prudent for national parties, including the BJP and the Congress to see its smooth passage in Parliament rather than creating a ruckus over a non issue.

After all what is in a name? Whether the rest of India accepts it or not, for every Bengali, their state would only be Bangla or Bango. And they would continue to relish the Illich Machcher Jhol (Hilsa fish curry) cooked in distinct East Bengali style with Hilsa smuggled from Bangladesh.