Malviya tempers stand on Sylheti speakers after criticism

GUWAHATI

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Amit Malviya has recalibrated his view on people speaking the Sylheti variant of Bengali.

This follows the criticism he faced from Sylheti speakers, including some party leaders from Assam’s Bengali-dominated Barak Valley, for justifying the Delhi Police’s description of Bengali as a “Bangladeshi language”.

Sylheti is a Bengali dialect associated with the Sylhet district of Bangladesh. More than 70 lakh people in Assam, Meghalaya, and Tripura also speak the dialect.

In a long tribute to Rabindranath Tagore on Baishe Shrabon, marking his death anniversary, Mr. Malviya said the Nobel laureate believed in the unity of India and played a pivotal role in forcing the reversal of the 1905 British colonial decision to partition Bengal.

“He was acutely aware of the plight of hapless Hindu Bengali Sylhetis, separated from Bengal and tossed about by political machinations, and empathised with their suffering,” the BJP leader wrote.

“Sylhet should have been part of India, of Bengal, but the Muslim League’s collusion with the British ensured otherwise. Yet Hindu Bengali Sylhetis remained tied to India’s national identity, and many have risen to national prominence,” Mr. Malviya’s post read.

Calling Tagore Bengal’s greatest gift not only to India but to the world, the BJP leader said the literary genius’s greatest contribution was to elevate the Bangla (Bengali) language to the exalted status it enjoys today, at home and abroad.

“It is the second most spoken language in India and an official language of the country; globally, it ranks among the ten most spoken languages. Through both prose and poetry, Tagore gave Bangla a literary richness that resonates universally. The music he composed transcends linguistic and geographical barriers—its appeal is timeless and universal,” Mr. Malviya wrote.

He said Tagore’s political consciousness was as keen as his literary acumen, and that his belief in the unity of the Indian people was embodied in Visva-Bharati, the institution he founded.

“Today, the nation bows to this great son of Bharat who celebrated Bengal, Bangaliness, and Bangla bhasha (language), not from a narrow lens of parochialism or regionalism, but as part of a universal humanism deeply rooted in the soil, culture, and civilisation of India,” he wrote.

Mr. Malviya also took aim at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, accusing her of attempting to undo what Tagore stood for.

“Mamata Banerjee and her cohorts, who are stoking a spurious and divisive controversy over the language and identity of Bengal and Indian Bengalis, will never match Gurudev Tagore’s grand vision of Indian unity,” he wrote.

He insisted that for decades no government had recognised Bangla as one of India’s most prominent languages with a defining role in the subcontinent’s cultural and linguistic history. “It is the (Narendra) Modi government which accorded Bangla the status of Classical Language on 3 October 2024, an acknowledgement of its profound impact on shaping the Indian mind,” Mr. Malviya wrote.

“The fake champions of Bangla bhasha, who aggressively promote Urdu as the official language of West Bengal to pander to the basest anti-Bangla sentiments of a certain group, are undermining the very ‘harmony of one life’ that Gurudev envisioned. They deserve nothing but contempt,” he concluded.