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Station Samiti to sit in dialogue with Dimasas & raise joint demand of ‘Silchar Bhasa Shahid Station’
Multi-linguistic communities participate in a meeting in demand of 'Silchar Bhasa Shahid Station'
Aug. 22: It was on 7 November 2016, that the Government of India gave no objection for changing the name of Silchar Railway Station as ‘Bhasa Shahid Station, Silchar.’ In that letter issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs of Government of India, the state government of Assam was requested to issue the required Gazette Notification for the spelling of new name in Devnagri (Hindi), Roman (English) and Regional Language (Bengali). However, since then, the issue was lying pending with the state government for reasons best known to them. But suddenly on 9 August, 2021, while replying to a query by MLA Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha in the state Assembly, Minister Pijush Hazarika informed that renaming Silchar station as ‘Bhasa Shahid Station, Silchar. is not possible due to objection raised by the Dimasas.
The stand adopted by the state government has given rise to strong resentment among the people of Barak Valley who held the language martrys of 1961 in high esteem. It is in this backdrop that a meeting was convened on 22 August by ‘Bhasa Shahid Station Shahid Smaran Samiti’ wherein representatives of more than 30 linguistic organisations including Assamese, Manipuri, Hindi, Nepali, Banga Sahitya Sammelan took part. A number of proposals were put forward by the organisations during the meeting. It was argued that after the Union Government’s approval in 2016, the state government of Assam was asked to only issue the Gazette Notification of the spelling of the new name of the station. At that stage, the state government was not supposed to seek opinion. A strong demand was raised to rename Silchar railway station as ‘Bhasa Shahid Station, Silchar.’
Pradip Dutta Roy, on behalf of Barak Democratic Front (BDF) gave the proposal to have a dialogue with the Dimasas. The suggestion was unanimously accepted by the house. Later on, expressing his views, Dr Rajib Kar on behalf of ‘Bhasa Shahid Station Shahid Smaran Samiti’ said, “We will sit with an open mind with the Dimasas who were very much with us in support of renaming Silchar station as ‘Bhasa Shahid Station, Silchar.’
Dr Kar further said, “We do have deep regards in our heart for Bir Sambhudhan Phonglo, who put up a brave fight against the British. It is the duty of the state government to honour the demand raised by the Dimasas. Without doing any compromise about renaming ‘Bhasa Shahid Station, Silchar’, we can sit and talk with the Dimasa community.” He further proposed that if need be, then the Station Samiti along with the Dimasas will give a joint memorandum to the government to rename any of the significant spots “like the office of the Deputy Commissioner, Cachar or New Halflong Station in the name of Bir Phonglo, but not at the cost of ‘Bhasa Shahid Station, Silchar.'”
Dr Rajib Kar further said, “We are confident that we will be successful in our endeavour very soon and both the Station Samiti and the Dimasas will come out with a joint statement in this regard.”
