Shanta Kumar asks Jai Ram Government to re-name Dalhousie

Dharamsala: Former Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Shanta Kumar has written a letter to Governor of Himachal Pradesh and Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, urging that the decision of the BJP government in 1992 be fulfilled. 

Shanta Kumar said that when he was the Chief Minister, he had made an ordinance to change the name of Dalhousie, after which the Congress cancelled it.

Taking to this correspondent, he said that he has written that Dalhousie is associated with the memory of three great men, litterateur and Nobel laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore had come here and wrote some part of his famous composition Gitanjali, besides Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose also came here, stayed here for some time and decided to go abroad and introspect the revolutionary idea here to form the Azad Hind Fauj. The famous revolutionary Ajit Singh – the uncle of Shaheed Bhagat Singh too resided in Dalhousie and died here.

He said that the memorials of these three great men should be built in Dalhousie, he demanded that the government should make a grand memorial of the house in which Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose stayed. 

He said, “Today Dalhousie is only famous as a hill tourist center but after the creation of the memorials of three great men, this place will become a historical national pilgrimage centre across India.”

The controversy has erupted in Himachal Pradesh over a proposal to rename Dalhousie, a famous hill station in Chamba district, as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Nagar, a demand made earlier by another BJP leader Subramanian Swamy and being opposed by the Congress. Swamy too is learnt to have written such a proposal letter to State Governor Bandaru Dattatreya in this regard.

 

The town is named after Lord Dalhousie, who was the Governor General of India during the British rule.

Senior Congress leader and Dalhousie MLA Asha Kumari has written to Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, claiming even the locals were against the proposal. “The sentiments of the Dalhousie residents should be given top priority while considering any such suggestion,” she said.

Those associated with the tourism industry claim the name Dalhousie gave the town an international identity to attract even international tourists.