The Trinamool government’s move to rename the state as ‘Bangla’ was today welcomed by eminent personalities.
The West Bengal Assembly on Thursday passed a resolution to rename the state as ‘Bangla’ in three languages ~ Bengali, English and Hindi.
Film director Goutam Ghosh said: “I am pleased with the move taken by the state government. The name Paschim Bango (West Bengal) had reference to the partition. It brings back the painful memories of migration and leaving behind one’s residence and property, one’s place of birth and growing up.”
“The new name will leave behind that past,” said Ghosh, who directed a film on Partition a few years ago.
READ | Bengal Assembly passes resolution to rename state as ‘Bangla’
He added: “It will encourage Bengalis to think they have a state of their own in the same way in which the people in Bangladesh feel that the Bengalis have a country of their own in this world.”
Thespian Soumitra Chatterjee said while the name ‘Paschim Bango’ had been in use for a long time after independence, the new name ‘Bangla’ feels “home”. “I have no problem if our state is known as Bangla from now on,” said Mr Chatterjee.
Popular Bengali writer Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay pointed out: “We all had been asking for this for a long time. This is what I had wanted. We all had known this place as Bangla since our childhood days and renaming it after the partition as West Bengal was totally illogical,” Mukhopadhyay said.
He pointed out that by renaming it as Bangla “we are retaining the tradition and the long history of this region”.