His nephew, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, occupies a very different place in history. As premier of Bengal, he remains one of the most controversial figures associated with Direct Action Day on 16 August 1946, when the Muslim League called for mass mobilisation in support of Pakistan. The violence that followed, remembered as the Great Calcutta Killings, left thousands dead and pushed Bengal further towards the communal rupture of Partition.
Historians, including Joya Chatterji, have documented the administrative failures and political decisions that allowed the violence to spiral. Debate continues over the extent of Suhrawardy’s personal responsibility, but there is little dispute that his legacy remains deeply divisive.
What is beyond dispute is that Sir Hassan Suhrawardy had no connection to those events. The avenue was named after him more than a decade before the riots. Conflating uncle and nephew represents a striking lapse for a government claiming to be correcting the historical record.
Critics have not been gentle. Former Rajya Sabha MP Jawhar Sircar described the rationale behind the renaming as “patchy, half-history”.
“The BJP and many Bengalis have a valid reason to hate Huseyn, the Premier of Bengal in 1946, but unfortunately they picked on the wrong Suhrawardy,” he said.
Other historians and researchers have pointed to municipal records and P Thankappan Nair’s work on Kolkata’s streets, all of which identify Sir Hassan as the person honoured by the avenue’s original name.
The controversy also raises questions about the politics of memorialisation. Across India, governments have increasingly turned to renaming roads, stations and public institutions as a way of reshaping historical narratives. Such exercises inevitably involve political choices. But they also demand factual accuracy.
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