There are credible reports that a section of Bengal BJP has started lobbying for rechristening Sealdah Railway Station as Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Railway Station a la Deen Dayal Upadhyay Railway Station.
The proposal to change the name of the country’s sixth oldest railway station after Mumbai VT, Howrah, Chennai, Kanpur and Vadodara was given by BJP Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya before Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav during his visit to Kolkata on Wednesday.
“But what is in a name?” asked Trinamool Congress’ Kunal Ghosh who wondered why the name of only Mukherjee and why not Swami Vivekananda who lived nearby, barely a mile or two away from the Station at Shimla Street should be considered.
“Why the station should not be named after Swami Vivekananda because after returning from his glorious trip to Chicago his ship came to Budge Budge from where he took a train to Sealdah It is from this place where thousands of young people assembled and dragged his cart by hand,” Ghosh said.
However according to Bhattacharya, “When lakhs of beaten and uprooted refugees from the erstwhile East Pakistan thronged Sealdah Station post Partition it was Dr Mukherjee who stood by them and their cause I will request the honourable Railway Minister to consider renaming Sealdah Station after Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.”
Historically speaking: British architect Walter Glanville in 1869 designed the Sealdah Main Railway Station as it stands today pursuing a Victorian-Gothic form.
Sealdah which has 20 platforms today had only four in 1862 standing out amidst muddy, marshy and potholed vicinity. It was a part of the East Bengal Railway and then Assam Bengal Railway set up in 1857 for the sake of establishing connectivity with northern and southern Bengal which then comprised a large province including Bihar, Odisha and portions of the present North East.
Incidentally there was a tram terminus located just outside Sealdah Station before the year 1978 from where the concept of horse tram carriage started.
Historically speaking Sealdah owes its name to Sealdihi or a village infested by jackals.
In fact the station itself was built clearing a huge Pipal tree surrounded with bushes, swamps and marshes and heavily colonized by jackals on two sides of the great Maratha Ditch (a canal) that surrounded the city and where today runs the Upper and Lower Circular Roads more lately called the Acharya Prafulla Chandra (APC) Road and Acharya Jagadish Chandra (AJC) Road. The Maratha Ditch was dug up to prevent Maratha invasions in those days. So historically today’s Sealdah Station stands by the Maratha Ditch so to say.
The Maratha Ditch could not however prevent Bengal Nawab Siraj ud Daulah from invading Kolkata in 1756 when he crossed the mighty canal and attacked the British garrison “causing a great loss to the white men’s families by bundling about 64 of them including women inside an underground chamber leading to 43 deaths.”
Others however, put the figure to 146 captured and 123 dead.
Sealdah stood witness to the brief but cruel battle between the Nawab and the British who avenged the cruelty post Battle of Plassey by allowing Siraj to be cut into pieces and ferried about the Murshidabad town on a bullock cart.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that his ministry was contemplating a Rs 60,000-crore investment schemes in Bengal and was awaiting the cooperation of the State Government.
