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.
