In the heart of Kolkata, where Park Circus meets the city's daily bustle, a 500-metre stretch once known as Suhrawardy Avenue now bears the name Gopal Mukherjee Road. The Kolkata Municipal Corporation's decision, announced on Paschimbanga Divas, was hailed by chief minister Suvendu Adhikari as the correction of a "historical wrong".

On X, Adhikari said the old name honoured a man who had 'wilfully misused state power as a weapon, orchestrating the massacre of innocent citizens'. The new namesake, Gopal Chandra Mukherjee — better known as Gopal 'Pantha' (goat in Bengali), a meat-shop owner and local strongman — is celebrated in Hindu nationalist circles for organising armed resistance to protect Hindu families during the 1946 Great Calcutta Killings.

Yet this act of symbolic politics appears to rest on a basic factual error. The road was never named after the controversial politician Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, premier of Bengal in 1946 and later prime minister of Pakistan. It was named after his uncle, Dr Sir Hassan Suhrawardy — a distinguished surgeon, military officer, member of the Bengal Legislative Council and the first Muslim vice-chancellor of Calcutta University from 1930-34.

The distinction is not a matter of academic nit-picking. It lies at the heart of the controversy.

Historical records leave little room for doubt. The Calcutta Municipal Gazette of March-April 1933 records that the Calcutta Improvement........

© National Herald