Tripura governor Tathagata Roy is unhappy with the Mamata government’s decision to rename West Bengal as Bengal, saying Hindus will be driven out from the state like they were from East Bengal, a reference to what is now Bangladesh.
“As a lifelong resident of West Bengal with roots in East Bengal whence we were driven out for being Hindu, I am unhappy about dropping ‘West’,” the governor tweeted Tuesday.
“…Things will be clear when Hindus get driven out of West. Day not very far,” Roy tweeted, expressing fears that the community would be targeted like it was in post-partition East Bengal, which went on to be called East Pakistan and emerged as the independent nation of Bangladesh after the 1971 liberation war.
The West Bengal assembly on August 29 passed a resolution renaming the state to Bangla in Bengali, Bengal in English and Bangal in Hindi. The name change will have to be cleared by Parliament.
An avid Twitter user, Roy has tweeted his way into several controversies. He has often come under fire from opposition parties for his aggressive and “political” messages. Opposition says the governor continues to behave like the BJP leader he once was.
The governor, who refers to his days as Swayamsewak in his Twitter bio, also retweeted a picture of Olympic silver medalist PV Sindhu’s visit to Mahankali Temple in her hometown of Hyderabad.
{{/usCountry}}The governor, who refers to his days as Swayamsewak in his Twitter bio, also retweeted a picture of Olympic silver medalist PV Sindhu’s visit to Mahankali Temple in her hometown of Hyderabad.
{{/usCountry}}“Olympic medalist PV Sindhu offers Puja at Mahankali Temple, Hyderabad. One needs religion to have an anchor in life,” he said.
The governor also seems to have taken potshots at the state’s Left government. “Communism is dead for all practical purposes. What remains is just a confused state of mind that I call BengaLeftism.”
Tripura has been ruled by the Communists Party of India (Marxist) for 23 years now.