Kolkata Roads Named After Marx, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh May Be Renamed

The state government of West Bengal, led by the BJP, has formed a ten‑member advisory panel to consider renaming several public places, including three major thoroughfares in Kolkata that bear the names of communist icons Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx and Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. The committee is chaired by Swami Pradiptananda, popularly known as Kartik Maharaj of the Bharat Sevashram Sangha, and includes senior BJP leader Tathagata Roy, chief minister’s adviser Subrata Gupta and KMC commissioner Smita Pandey.

The three roads under review are Lenin Sarani, Karl Marx Sarani and Ho Chi Minh Sarani. Roy has suggested replacing Karl Marx Sarani in Kidderpore with the name of Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt or Rangalal Bandyopadhyay, and renaming Lenin Sarani after former Jana Sangh president and mathematician Debaprasad Ghosh. For Ho Chi Minh Sarani, he proposed the name of civil‑rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He also floated changes for other locations, such as naming a Barasat bus stand after nationalist Muslim figures like Qazi Abdul Wadud, Begum Rokeya and S. Wajed Ali, and urging the Metro Railway to use place‑based names for stations on the Blue Line. The committee is expected to hold its first meeting after the Durga Puja celebrations in October, after which its recommendations will be submitted to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and then to the state legislature.

The proposal has sparked sharp criticism from the ruling Trinamool Congress, whose spokesperson Kunal Ghosh described it as “vendetta politics” and warned that altering Lenin Sarani would signal intolerance toward differing ideologies. The CPI(M) is also expected to oppose any changes to the Lenin‑named road. The debate reflects broader political tensions in West Bengal, pitting the BJP’s nationalist agenda against the TMC’s stance on preserving historical names, and could influence public sentiment ahead of upcoming elections.