Kolkata Lenin and Marx streets face renaming review

West Bengal's BJP government is considering proposals to rename Kolkata streets that honour Communist leaders, officials said Wednesday.

Swami Pradiptananda, who heads a 10-member committee examining the issue, said the panel had received proposals to change the names of streets named after Lenin, Karl Marx and Ho Chi Minh.

“We are considering the proposal,” he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party won power in West Bengal for the first time in May, ending 15 years of rule by the Trinamool Congress, which had earlier displaced the Communist Party.

Tathagata Roy, a former governor of Tripura and Meghalaya and a senior member of the committee, said streets honouring Lenin, Marx and Ho Chi Minh would be renamed. He said the committee would consider the relevance of figures to Indian and Bengali culture and send recommendations to the state legislative assembly.

Ho Chi Minh Sarani was formerly Harrington Street, named after a British colonial official when Kolkata was known as Calcutta and was the capital of British India. Lenin Sarani was formerly Dharmatala Street, and Circular Garden Reach Road was renamed Karl Marx Sarani.

Roy suggested Ho Chi Minh Sarani could be named after US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, Lenin Sarani after the late mathematician and Bharatiya Jana Sangh figure Debaprasad Ghosh, and the road honouring Marx after 19th-century Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt.