Mamata Asks Modi To Rename West Bengal As Bangla

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has demanded that Bangla be conferred the status of a 'classical language' at the earliest.

She made the appeal in a letter written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday (January 11).

In the letter, Mamata raked up afresh her demand that the state be renamed "Bangla".

The chief minister said if two states having the same name of Punjab could be there in India and Pakistan, a country named Bangladesh and a state named Bangla could also co-exist.

Mamata said in the letter that Bangla is the second most spoken language in India and the seventh most spoken language in the world.

Later, talking to reporters in Kolkata, she attacked the federal Indian government for not paying heed to the state's long-standing demand for renaming West Bengal to 'Bangla'.

"We had passed it [proposal of changing the state's name to Bangla] twice in the Assembly and clarified all their confusions. But yet we were not given the name. If Bombay can be Mumbai, Orissa can be Odisha, why are we not allowed the new name? Bengal's importance is being reduced," she said.

As the name of West Bengal begins with the letter W, which alphabetically is at the end, officials are made to wait at meetings where representatives of other states are also present, Mamata said. Opportunities to speak at official meetings are given alphabetically.

In her letter to Modi, she said there are already six officially recognised classical languages -- Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Odia.

Mamata attached the summary of a scholarly work undertaken by the West Bengal government which dated the origin of the Bengali language to the third or fourth century BC.

This "will very briefly state the substance of our contention and submit how Bengali eminently qualifies to be classified as a classical language by the Ministry of Home Affairs", she wrote to the prime minister.

Apart from being the national language of Bangladesh, Bangla is an official language of West Bengal, Mamata said.

Bengalis have a rich heritage and culture dating back to prehistoric times, she said.

The chief minister also referred to the language's rich historical evolution encompassing "both oral and written traditions".

She also cited the "evidence - from archaeological findings, inscriptions, references in ancient Sanskrit and Pali texts and a substantial body of pre-seventh-century Bengali literature underpins its classical heritage".

Speaking to reporters, Mamata blamed the erstwhile Left Front government, without naming it, for not taking up the matter of the Bangla language with the Indian government.

"We should have got it long back, but it's because of our idiocy, we did not get it. Because those who were here [in power in Bengal] before us never thought in this manner. They were more interested in doing politics," she said.

"Bengali could have got the classical status long back. It has a history of 2,500 years. Once granted the status, it will make Bengali one of the world's most important languages," she said.