By MADHU AGRAWAL

Only old-timers know that since the western part of pre-independence undivided Bengal came to India, the state was named West Bengal, and East Bengal turned into East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Central Government should accept the demand of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee for the immediate passing of a long-pending resolution of the state assembly to rename the state as BANGLA thus removing ever-confusing Prefix West. The proposed name will be one-worded and will not be able to be abbreviated like double-worded names UP, MP, HP, AP, etc.

The constitution should be amended whereby names of all institutions including High Courts named after states or cities may be auto-changed with a change in names of state or city. The names of Bombay High Court and Madras High Court still remain the same despite renaming of respective cities as Mumbai and Chennai decades back.  

There has been a gradual change in names or spellings of cities with the process still incomplete despite more than seven decades of independence. Distorted spellings of Jullender and Simla by British rulers in India as Jalandhar and Shimla have been rectified. But spellings of cities like Delhi and Bareilly as per actual pronunciation are still to be modified. Delhi is a distorted version of Dehli meaning Entrance in English. Many other countries like Bangladesh and China have already respelled the names of their capitals as per actual pronunciation. There are too many Rampurs and Bilaspurs in India which require renaming to avoid confusion. New names can be after heroic characters of Ramayan and Mahabharat.

Union Government should also adopt single name Bharat for the country abolishing British given name like India, in tune with the unanimous resolution once passed by UP state-assembly. It is senseless to have two names for a country. Sri Lanka and Myanmar have already done away with such a British legacy when these countries are no more known as Ceylon and Burma.