Kolkata: Even as a controversy rages over rival demands for a Bengal Day, former MP and historian Sugata Bose said that his grandfather and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s elder brother Sarat Bose had raised the demand for “united Bengal within united India.”
While the BJP wants June 20, the day legislators from what now constitutes Bengal voted for partitioning Bengal in 1947, to be celebrated as Bengal Day, the state legislature, which has an overwhelming Trinamool Congress majority, passed a resolution earlier this month declaring ‘Poila Baisakh’ or the first day of the Bengali calendar as the state day with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee terming partition a “painful and traumatic process.”
“The legislators (from Bengal) who were mostly from the Congress voted for partition as the Congress high command ordered them to vote for partition.
It was really a Congress decision. The Hindu Mahasabha had just one MLA,” Sugata Bose said. The BJP’s Bengal unit has claimed that it was the efforts of Mahasabha leader Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who founded Jana
Sangh (the BJP’s political predecessor), that had led to the partition of Bengal.
“In a sense, it was pre-ordained as the partition plan was announced by Lord Mountbatten on June 3, 1947 and the Congress party accepted it on June 15
and its MLAs in Bengal voted for it on June 20,” he added.