With the Bengal BJP deciding to celebrate the Paschimbanga Diwas on June 20 in a big way the Trinamool Congress has once again attacked the saffron outfit for finding out a “new separatist instrument” for use before the 2026 Assemblyelection.
“Having failed to defeat Mamata Banerjee by repeatedly using its religious communal card the BJP has now decided to use the Bengali identity politics before the 2026 Assembly elections, but once again they will fail in their endeavour as Bengal will once again reject them, because a Manuwadi party like the BJP has no place in a politically and culturally conscious State like others, in short the BJP is once again failing to catch the real pulse of the Bengali voters who are out and out with our leader and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee,” senior TMC leader and party spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said.
Ghosh’s statement came against the backdrop of reports that the State BJP has invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the programme on June 20. It is another matter however that there has been no official confirmation of his visit from the Prime Minister’s Office. “Still we are keeping our hopes high that if time permits our honourable Prime Minister will definitely grace the occasion,” said a State BJP leader.
Ghosh however said that “the BJP is trying to provoke new sentiments after having failed to push through its communal agenda without appreciating that such divisive tactic would not divide the Bengal electorate,” adding “officially Poila Boisakh has already been established as the State Foundation Day, so there is no point raising the issue to generate false emotions, insofar as BJP’s programme is concerned ...they are free not only to do whatever they want but they are also free to invite whosoever they want, we are least
concerned about them.”
The TMC has long being objecting to the BJP’s idea of celebrating June 20 as the West Bengal Foundation Day with the Chief Minister emphatically concluding that there has been no history of celebrating the State’s Foundation Day on June 20.
In fact in 2023 she inspired the State Assembly to choose Poila Boisakh (or first day of Bengali calendar usually on April 15) as the State Day that her Government christened Bangla Diwas. “This day is linked with Partition and is unacceptable,” she had said.
In addition to declaring Poila Boisakh as the State Day Banerjee had also given Bengal a State Anthem after Poet Laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s song “Banglar Ma?i Banglar Jol, — Earth of Bengal, Water of Bengal.” In the same year a parallel Paschimbanga Diwas was celebrated at the Governor House apparently with the patronage of Governor CV Ananada Bose inviting much criticism from the TMC leadership.
Though the Chief Minister in one of her earlier speeches said that “there is no tradition of observing Paschim Banga Diwas on June 20, historically speaking the specific day chosen by the BJP emanates from a historical proceeding in 1947 when the State Assembly voted in favour of a separate Paschim Banga.
The decision followed months of deliberations between Lord Mountbatten and a section of the Bengali civil society including historians, scientists, philosophers and politicians. The man who pioneered the move to create a Bengal exclusively for the Hindu population was Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who later founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, precursor to the BJP. Apparently against allowing Bengali Hindus to face the same plight as the Sindhi Hindus — who at present do not have a State of their own — Mookerjee had then asked how if 25 per cent Muslims could not agree to live in India, how 44 per cent Hindus who lived in undivided Bengal could live under 54 per cent Muslims.
Said Bengal BJP MLA Agnimitra Paul “it is not only Dr Mukherjee who voted in favour of a separate Paschim Banga … but the Marxist stalwart like Jyoti Basu was also one of them,” adding “Mamata Banerjee has sold Bengal to the Bangladeshi infiltrators … now she is trying to destroy and demolish the Bengali Hindu culture once and for all by trying to create a confusion between West Bengal Foundation Day and the Bengali New Year Day,” but the BJP will not let that happen … it will continue to remind the Hindu Bengalis about their glorious past.”
Senior Congress leader Adhir Chowdhury on the other hand said that “the fight over Paschimbanga Diwas and Bangla Diwas is yet another ploy by these two communal outfits in order to create yet another binary before the next year’s elections, if the people of Bengal allow this to continue then there is no way you and I can stop it.”
Meenakshi Mukherjee a CPI(M) central committee member and a new Marxist sensation in the State said “the very topic of Paschimbanga Day or Bangla Diwas is an ample proof of the two Government’s failure to provide a good governance … or else they could have proudly spoken about the many lakhs of jobs they had created or inflation that they had brought down, houses and hospitals that they had built.”