By Madhuparna Das, ET
Bureau
Updated: Oct 15, 2017, 11.56 PM IST
KOLKATA:
In August, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress emerged as the most vocal
critic in Parliament of the Centre’s proposal to rename the Mughalsarai
station. In just two months after those protests, her government in West Bengal
appears to be on a mission to re-christen state projects, and delink them from
their Communist past.
The foundation stone of the Salt Lake stadium, laid by the late Jyoti Basu, the longest serving Left Front CM, has been removed from the main entry to the Kolkata sporting arena that’s hosting the U-17 soccer world cup. Banerjee has also changed the name of a water treatment plant from the Jyoti Basu Jal Prakalpa to Jai Hind Jal Prakalpa.
The foundation stone of the Salt Lake stadium, laid by the late Jyoti Basu, the longest serving Left Front CM, has been removed from the main entry to the Kolkata sporting arena that’s hosting the U-17 soccer world cup. Banerjee has also changed the name of a water treatment plant from the Jyoti Basu Jal Prakalpa to Jai Hind Jal Prakalpa.
Her
government has also removed Basu’s name from the planned satellite city of
Newtown, and did not hand over a plot of land to the CPIM that bought the
property to build a research and study centre on Basu and the Communist
movement in West Bengal. In the renaming spree, she appears to have spared only
Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin - as of now. In downtown Kolkata, important roads
were named after the greatest Communist thinkers when the Left Front ruled West
Bengal uninterruptedly for 34 years.
These
are among the more visible moves to end the Communist legacy. More subtle,
however, are the Left defections that the Trinamool has successfully engineered
in the past five years.
Simultaneously,
her government has been quietly changing the history syllabus to dilute the
textbook portrayals of the international Communist movement. Karl Marx,
Friedrich Engels and other Communist thinkers are now given limited space in
the school and college curriculum, and her government has replaced the Left
thought with chapters on the freedom struggle and the movements at Nandigram
and Singur.
The
Bengal government has also replaced street art and murals with the logo of
Biswa Bangla, a state initiative that seeks to burnish the state’s allure as an
investment destination. Understandably, the moves have invited criticism from
the Opposition.
Bikash
Ranjan Bhattacharyya, former mayor of Kolkata, said: “How can a government
destroy history? One might love or hate a particular idea, but how can one try
to omit or alter history? If the present regime has something to say, it should
add to the existing literature. But a government should always maintain
historical reality. Banerjee’s government has removed all plates and foundation
stones that had the names of her predecessors Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee. This is pure autocracy.”
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