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Bengali New Year Day to be state’s foundation day: Bengal assembly resolution
The West Bengal assembly resolution comes months after governor CV Ananda Bose celebrated the state’s foundation day on June 20
KOLKATA: The West Bengal assembly on Thursday passed a resolution declaring Bengali New Year Day, which usually falls on April 14 or 15, as the state’s foundation day - Bangla Diwas. The assembly also adopted Banglar Mati Banglar Jol (The soil of Bengal, the water of Bengal), a patriotic song by Rabindranath Tagore, as the state anthem.
“We don’t care whether the Governor signs this (resolution to observe the state’s foundation day on Poila Boisakh – Bengali New Year Day) or not. We will celebrate this on Poila Boisakh. I want to see who is more powerful – the people or the governor who has been nominated. The state anthem would be Banglar Mati Banglar Jol,” Banerjee told the state assembly.
The resolution seek to neutralise governor CV Ananda Bose’s attempt to commemorate the state’s foundation day on June 20 to commemorate the day the Bengal Assembly in 1947 passed a resolution to divide the Bengal province.
Banerjee and the ruling Trinamool Congress have been opposed to celebrating June 20 as the state foundation day on the ground that it would rekindle bitter memories of the state’s creation after Partition that left tens of thousands dead.
In a letter to Bose on June 19, Banerjee said the state was not founded on any particular day, least of all on June 20, and that it was formed through the infamous Radcliffe Award, referring to the demarcation of India–Pakistan and what is now India-Bangladesh–frontier.
Banerjee underlined that the people of Bengal have since independence, never rejoiced, commemorated, or celebrated any day as the “foundation day” of West Bengal. “Rather, we have seen the Partition as a result of unleashing of communal forces that could not be resisted at that point in time,” she said.
The state assembly, however, set up a committee on the topic which recommended that the Bengali New Year Day be celebrated as ‘Bangla Diwas’.
Mamata Banerjee convened an all-party meeting on August 29 but the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist skipped the meeting.
BJP legislator and leader of the opposition in the assembly Suvendu Adhikari said it was an insult to the President Droupadi Murmu who greeted the people on June 20.
“No one has the power to alter the historical importance of June 20. She (Banerjee) may celebrate Bangla Diwas on any chosen day with money from multiple scams. The government, the Constitution and the law have nothing to do with that… The chief minister has no right to insult the President of India who also greeted the people of West Bengal on the state’s foundation day on June 20,” said Adhikari.
