By Shuma Raha
A letter written by the Delhi Police, which surfaced on social media on 3 August, has set off a storm of outrage amongst Bengalis. In the letter, the police have sought the help of Banga Bhawan, the official guest house of the state of West Bengal in Delhi, in translating some documents written in “Bangladeshi language” that were picked up from eight people suspected to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
“Bangladeshi language?” Seriously? Are the Delhi Police so ignorant that they are unaware that Bangla, the language spoken by India’s Bengalis, is also the language of Bangladesh, albeit with some variations in accent and vocabulary? If they requested Banga Bhawan for a translation, surely they must have known that the language in question was, in fact, the language of the Indian state of West Bengal.
And yet they went ahead and termed it “Bangladeshi”, smoothly conflating Indian Bengalis with those belonging to Bangladesh—and, in the context of the ongoing drive against illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, lending a whiff of dubiousness to the Bengali language itself.
This story was originally published in thequint.com. Read the full story here.