Pretext for renaming Suhrawardy Avenue fails fact-checking test in India
Decision to replace prominent Muslim intellectual with controversial Hindu figure has reignited debate over erasure of Muslim history from India's public spaces
NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — The Hindu nationalist BJP government in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal has removed the name of a renowned Muslim scholar from one of Kolkata’s major public avenues.
The move has reignited debate over the erasure of Muslim historical figures from public spaces and the growing effort to rewrite India’s historical landscape.
The controversy erupted after the Kolkata Municipal Corporation renamed Suhrawardy Avenue as Gopal Mukherjee Road.
In a post on X, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari described the move as an attempt to “rectify a historical wrong,” claiming the avenue had been named after Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the last prime minister of undivided Bengal and a former prime minister of Pakistan, whom he accused of responsibility for the communal violence of 1946.
Historians, opposition leaders and social media users quickly challenged that claim, pointing out that the avenue was actually named after Hassan Shahid Suhrawardy, a distinguished Muslim educationist, art historian and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta.
Although Hassan Shahid Suhrawardy and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy belonged to the same prominent Bengali family, they were different historical figures with separate public legacies.
Congress leader Pawan Khera mocked the government for confusing the two men, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist) questioned whether the state’s political leadership was unaware of a basic historical fact. The party said such confusion reflected ignorance at the highest levels of government.
Analysts also noted that the claim linking the avenue to Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy has circulated within Hindu nationalist circles for years and appears to trace back to a 2017 article published by Swarajya, a publication associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent organization of the BJP.
Opposition’s member of parliament Saket Gokhale accused the BJP government of failing to verify easily available historical information before changing the name of a major public landmark, arguing that even a basic online search would have established the identity of the person the avenue was intended to honor.
The controversy has also revived debate over the legacy of Gopal Mukherjee, popularly known as Gopal Pantha, after whom the avenue has been renamed. Mukherjee, a Kolkata meat seller who emerged as a prominent Hindu leader during the violence of August 1946.
Journalist Shoaib Daniyal and other commentators note that historical accounts describe Mukherjee as the organizer of armed Hindu groups and as someone who advocated retaliatory attacks during the communal violence, making him a deeply polarizing figure in Bengal’s history.
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