Paschimbanga Diwas: The Day Bengal Chose Her Soul
There are dates in history that shine not with fireworks but with the quiet glow of conscience. June 20, 1947 was one such day, a day when Bengal, bloodied and bewildered, stood at the edge of oblivion and made a fateful choice. It chose India, civilisation over surrender, memory over amnesia.
This day, now observed as Paschimbanga Diwas, marks the moment when Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee stood like a solitary flame in a storm, refusing to let the ambitions of the Muslim League devour Bengal. As the architects of Partition redrew borders in haste and indifference, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee invoked not maps, but moral memory. His resistance was not loud, it was luminous.
In 1947, amidst the chaos of impending Partition, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, then Premier of Bengal, proposed the idea of a 'United Bengal", an independent sovereign state that would remain undivided and separate from both India and Pakistan. This idea, echoed with Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Two-Nation Theory and was widely seen as a strategic attempt to create a Muslim-majority country under the guise of unity, with Kolkata as its capital. Syama Prasad Mookerjee emerged as the strongest voice against this plan. Recognising the danger it posed to Bengal's Hindu population and India's national interest, he vehemently opposed Suhrawardy's proposal. Dr. Mookerjee mobilised public opinion, warned the Congress leadership and argued forcefully for the partition of Bengal to ensure that its Hindu-majority regions, including Kolkata, remained part of India. He warned it would be a 'virtual Pakistan," a land where the soul of Bengal, its temples, poets, women, and identity would be erased. It was not merely a political stand, it was a civilisational intervention. His efforts were instrumental in derailing the United Bengal scheme and securing West Bengal's inclusion in the Indian Union, thus safeguarding its cultural and civilisational heritage.
Yet today, as West Bengal marks another year of existence, the state government refuses to remember, seeking to erase this date, rewrite identity, and obscure sacrifice. Paschimbanga Diwas is replaced by Poila Boishakh, a cultural celebration repurposed as political camouflage.
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose once warned, 'The greatest crime is to compromise with injustice and accept wrong as the norm." This warning echoes hollow in the actions of Mamata Banerjee's government. Mamata Banerjee's regime, in its eagerness to appease and recalibrate identity politics, has abandoned the very legacy that saved Bengal from cultural annihilation. By rejecting 20th June, it rejects the sanctity of memory, the pain of Partition and the fierce foresight of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee. We must ask, Is this historical innocence or deliberate amnesia?
Let us recall, it was Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee who, after the genocide of Direct Action Day, refused to play by the rules of fatalism. He warned Lord Mountbatten, debated Jawaharlal Nehru, opposed Suhrawardy and appealed directly to the people of Bengal. His voice was not communal, it was existential. It was the luminous defiance of a civilisation that refused to be erased.
What he salvaged was not merely a province, it was the dream of Bengal. Not the Bengal of geography, but of poetry and pride, the Bengal of Chaitanya's kirtan, Vidyasagar's reform, Tagore's song and Subhas Bose's fire. A Bengal whose rivers flow with memory and resistance, not just water.
Paschimbanga Diwas, therefore, is not just a political date. It is the ethical inheritance of every Bengali. It is the heartbeat of the soil that once gave India her greatest reformers, artists, thinkers and martyrs.
As Rabindranath Tagore wrote: 'Bipode more rokkha koro e nohe mor prarthona, bipode ami na jeno kori bhoy" (Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.)
Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee did more than pray, he acted.
Let Bengal seek its heart again. Let this not be nostalgia, but necessity. In remembering 20th June, we do not glorify Partition, we sanctify the resolve to survive it with dignity.
Today, as West Bengal contends with violence, unemployment, and cultural erosion, it must look to 20th June not as history, but as instruction.
Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee was the son of Bengal's soil, and 20th June marks the day when this son reclaimed the rights of his motherland. In this moment of drift, we must turn to the compass of conscience. And 20th June, luminous with sacrifice and foresight, is that compass. Let us rise, as Bengal once rose, choosing India, choosing civilisation, choosing the soul over silence. On Paschimbanga Diwas, Bengal must speak again. And this time, the world must listen.
Dr Sukanta Majumdar is the Union Minister of State and President of BJP's West Bengal unit. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
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