In the past I wrote about the importance of names for destinations, and just today I came across this pieces while navigating the website of Saffron, a brand consulting agency.

“So the new government of West Bengal has decided, in association with The Times of India, to launch a campaign to change West Bengal’s name back to Bengal. What a coincidence, because that’s exactly what the previous government, with Saffron’s help, decided to do. Towards the end of 2010 Saffron was appointed by the last government to create a branding programme which would raise West Bengal’s profile and let people inside the state, and prospective investors, tourists and other target audiences outside the state understand how West Bengal had changed and was continuing to change, that it was going through a renaissance. The intention was, of course, to align out of date perceptions of West Bengal with the reality of a dynamic and fast-moving region with huge potential.

We at Saffron carried out a massive research programme. We interviewed people at all levels – rich, poor, old, young, in cities and villages. We looked at every aspect of West Bengal’s life and after numerous discussions and presentations, during which we presented a number of ideas, we eventually arrived at the core idea, ‘Everyone’s Bengal’. A significant part of our proposal was to go back to the old name, Bengal – and drop the West.

When the elections came and the government was replaced, the programme – which was intended to be a long term investment for the State as a whole and no particular government – was curtailed.

We heard no more. Now, suddenly, the new government has launched a new Only Bengal initiative in partnership with The Times of India. It’s all about going back to the name Bengal. Is the phrase ‘Only Bengal’ more inclusive than ‘Everyone’s Bengal’ which we created? What a shame that there’s no recognition about where all this comes from. But party politicking is so petty, isn’t it?”

Nae good.

The ad campaign is equally impressive as the cause itself. And the subtle humour used in the television campaign (as also in the commentary posted on the ‘Only Bengal’ website) is by no means any less witty. In fact the wit is so profound that one may mistake it as being frivolous. The campaign mentions, “Strangely, on India’s map, West Bengal is located in the east. There is no Royal West Bengal Tiger.” The nitwitted reader lacking an adequate sense of humour could question the logic of this statement. West Bengal is called so not for its location on the map of India but for its location relative to the Bengal geographical region (which includes the modern day political regions of West Bengal and Bangladesh). Similarly the home of the Royal Bengal tiger is not confined within the political boundaries of the state of West Bengal and the word ‘Bengal’ in its name does not exclusively represent West Bengal. The campaign also notes that the sea lying to the south of West Bengal is not called the Bay of West Bengal – this is true indeed as the bay derives its name from the geographical region of Bengal.

Now the bigger question: How important and credible is the project of renaming West Bengal? Is it totally unnecessary and avoidable? Going by the logic enunciated by minister Partha Chatterjee, regardless of the merits of the primary objective of the proposed move as presented in the argumentation, to achieve the stated objective it is imperative that the word ‘West’ is dropped or a name adopted that starts with a letter of the English alphabet higher in position so that the state’s rank on the alphabetic list improves by a meaningful number of places. A majority of the alternative names that are being proposed start with the letter ‘B’ and if any of these names is adopted it will lead to the state moving up a significant number of places on the alphabetic list. As for its credibility in terms of undergoing an image makeover, while I strongly believe that only actions rather than changing names can help achieve this end (I do not believe in this case the name-change can be seen as a part of a rebranding exercise), the changing of name will, at the same time, not be a harmful exercise as long as it does not attempt to alter the identity of the state/region or rewrite history.

That said I wonder how appropriate the name Bengal will be. It is not uncommon to refer to the state of West Bengal only as Bengal in both literature and conversational language in English (the context of such usage generally relates to topics exclusively concerning India). However, the problem extends beyond this – what will be the corresponding Bangla name for Bengal. It has to be either Banga or Bangla (to maintain consistency of meaning with the English name). However, both these names sound incomplete to my ears, perhaps because ‘Pashchim Banga’ is the more commonly used name in non-art literature as well as in vernacular language (the use of Bangla, Banga and Bangabhoomi are not uncommon in literary works). Another argument against the use of Bengal is the fact that, in a broader sense, it represents the geographical region of Bengal that also includes the sovereign nation of Bangladesh. In the same way, in Bangla literature, particularly the ones written before the creation of the Bangladesh nation, the name Bangladesh has been commonly used to refer to any part or the whole of the greater geographical Bengal region. However, following its independence from Pakistan, Bangladesh had already given itself a name that did not exclusively define the region bounded by the political boundaries of the newly formed nation and had thus set an example of ‘hijacking’ a generic name. It is, however, important to note that this ‘hijacking’ was an unavoidable and a fair one as no other name could have been more appropriate in the context of the nation’s gaining freedom from Pakistani rule, the events and factors leading to this historical outcome and the establishment of Bangladesh as an independent sovereign nation.

One false idea that is currently being advocated is that there is only one Bengal. This amounts to an attempted (and needless) hijacking of the historical and cultural identity of a people by one section of the people by refusing to acknowledge the other section as a part of the same culture. It is also an attempt to rewrite history and promotes a narrow sense of nationalism – it seeks to uphold the identity of a people based on citizenship or nationality as the only true identity while undermining the identity based on cultural, ethnic or racial background.

To my mind if indeed a name-change is necessary (and a change that is based on practical factors) then the official name of the state should be made ‘Pashchim Banga’, which will save it from significant tampering as this is the name by which the state is currently referred to in the Bangla language; and in conversational language and non-official literature people are always free to use other names such as West Bengal, Banga and Bangla. While the name Pashchim Banga will not place the state as high on the alphabetic list as Bengal, Bangla or Banga would have achieved but nonetheless, its turn will come before a fair number of states in the inter-state meetings.