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Rename West Bengal by removing pre-fix ‘West’

Kashmir Times. Dated: 10/10/2018 3:10:21 PM

Dear Editor,
Students and others born much after India got independence are often confused why a state in eastern part of the country is named as ‘West Bengal’. Only old-timers know that since western part of pre-independence undivided Bengal came to India, the state was named as ‘West Bengal’, and ‘East Bengal’ turned into East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). To remove unnecessary confusion from minds of students and others, prefix ‘West’ should be removed from name of the state. Even name ‘Pashchimbanga’ suggested by the state-government is not correct because again it has Hindi pre-fix ‘Pashchim’ in the suggested name. To avoid abbreviations like UP for Uttar Pradesh, MP for Madhya Pradesh etc, states should be named in single word.
Distorted spelling of country’s capital ‘Delhi’ should also be rectified as ‘Dehli’ which means ‘entrance’. Already neighbouring countries like China and Bangladesh have changed spellings of their capital cities from earlier Peking and Dacca to Beijing and Dhaka respectively. Though spellings of many other cities like Jalandhar, Shimla are already changed, Bareilly and Meerut still remain to be re-spelt.
Union Government should also adopt single name ‘Bharat’ for the country abolishing British given name as India, in tune with unanimous resolution once passed by UP state-assembly. Otherwise also it is senseless to have two names for a country. Countries like Shrilanka and Myanmar have already done away with such British legacy when these countries are no more known as Ceylon and Burma.
—Subhash Agrawal,
1775 Kucha Lattushah
Dariba, Chandni Chowk Delhi