A decision by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) to rename the city’s Suhrawardy Avenue after Gopal Mukherjee has triggered a row in West Bengal, with politicians and academicians calling it a faux pas by the state’s new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.
The arterial road in the Park Circus area was named after Sir Hassan Suhrawardy in 1933, a year after he received a knighthood, and not after his relative Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the prime minister of undivided Bengal in 1947.
Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari welcomed the decision, saying it would rectify a historical wrong and honour a true guardian and savior. However, veteran Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said Bengal’s history is being distorted, while former Trinamool Congress (TMC) Rajya Sabha member Saket Gokhale called it a distortion of Bengal’s real history.
Political science professor Udayan Bandopadhyay also termed it a great faux pas by the Bengal government, pointing out that Sir Hassan Suhrawardy was a noted academician of that era and not Huseyn Suhrawardy, who critics accuse of engineering riots targeting Hindus.
