Kolkata: Controversy over the renaming of Park Circus’s Suhrawardy Avenue as Gopal Mukherjee Road intensified on Monday, with CM Suvendu Adhikari indicating that more such renamings could follow, while Trinamool, Congress and Left leaders accused the BJP govt of conflating educationist Hassan Suhrawardy, after whom the road was named, with former undivided Bengal prime minister Huseyn Suhrawardy.“In a bid to punish the nephew (Huseyn Suhrawardy), KMC has punished his uncle (Hassan Suhrawardy),” said Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh. “A govt cannot rewrite history to blame someone for another person’s crimes,” he added.Congress too waded into the controversy with MP Jairam Ramesh saying: “Hassan Suhrawardy, after whom the road was named, was vice-chancellor of Calcutta University. Syama Prasad Mookerjee succeeded him… But Entire Political Science doesn’t teach you this stuff.”Pawan Khera, another Congress MP, said, “He (the CM) and his entire govt claim to represent Bengal but were confused between Hassan Suhrawardy, a scholar, educationist and art critic, with Huseyn Suhrawardy, the Butcher of Bengal.”BJP’s Amit Malviya hit back at detractors. “Irrespective of which member of the family a road, institution or public place may have been named after, Bengal owes the Suhrawardy legacy no tribute,” Malviya said on X.“Whether one chooses to focus on a British-knighted Muslim League politician (Hassan Suhrawardy) or the man widely held responsible for one of the darkest chapters in Bengal’s history before becoming prime minister of Pakistan (Huseyn Suhrawardy), there is little reason for free India to continue honouring the family in its public places,” he added.“The decision to rename the road after Shri Gopal Mukherjee, popularly known as Gopal Patha, is not merely an administrative act. It is a correction of a historical anomaly,” Malviya said further.CPM’s Bengal unit, in a press statement, said: “An attempt is being made to create a perception among the public that Suhrawardy Avenue was named after the prime minister of undivided Bengal, Huseyn Suhrawardy, and that removing his name is somehow a ‘correction of history’.”“The actual truth is completely different. Suhrawardy Avenue was named in the memory of Sir Hassan Suhrawardy — an eminent educationist, physician and an internationally acclaimed intellectual. We believe this is not an isolated incident. It is part of a larger project to reap political dividends by distorting history and misleading the masses,” CPM added.The Bengal govt had announced the renaming on Sunday. In a post on X, the CM said the road had borne “the name of someone who wilfully misused state power as a weapon, orchestrating the massacre of innocent citizens for sheer political gain.”
