Several members of the film and music fraternity in Bengal have taken exception to a purported Delhi Police letter referring Bengali as the “Bangladeshi national language”, calling it an affront to a constitutionally recognised Indian language.

The outrage stems from an official communication, reportedly sent by a Delhi Police officer to the in-charge of Banga Bhawan, West Bengal’s state guest house in New Delhi. The letter sought the services of a translator “proficient in Bangladeshi national language” to assist in an investigation involving eight suspected illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

The Telegraph Online has not independently verified the authenticity of the letter.

The reference to Bengali as a “Bangladeshi” language has touched a raw nerve in Bengal, with artists, musicians, and filmmakers terming it a deliberate slight.

Filmmaker Srijit Mukherji posted on X, “That's not Bangladeshi language, morons, that's Bangla or Bengali — the same language in which your national anthem was originally written, and one of the 22 official languages of India.”

Singer-songwriter Rupam Islam wrote, “What is this? Isn’t BANGLA one of the 22 official languages of India? Why must it be mentioned as BANGLADESHI LANGUAGE? Height of ignorance and stupidity.”

Musician Surojit Chatterjee added, “Bangla referred [to] as Bangladeshi language… Exactly the kind of ignorance I expect from the people responsible... Not surprised at all.”

“Stupid Bigots of Delhi Police call Bengali or Bangla as “Bangladeshi Language”. Is Hindi a Nepali language,” quipped former MP Jawhar Sircar.

Filmmaker Abhijit Chowdhury asked: “How much further will the Bengali language be belittled?” while director Samik Roy Choudhury called it “an egregious exhibition of intellectual bankruptcy.”

Even ‘probashi’ Bengalis protested at Delhi Police’s actions. “Sir, that language is Bangla or Bengali, not Bangladeshi. Its the language in which Rabindranath Tagore wrote our National Anthem, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote Vande Mātaram, Satyajit Ray made films & Kishore Kumar often sang. It's the language of Netaji, Khudiram, Mahasweta Devi, Sarat Chandra & approximately 97 million Indians. Please don't call it a foreign language,” quizzer and sports producer Joy Bhattacharya posted.

“Not just laughable, it shows just how much vile "othering" has seeped into officialdom. Systematic hounding & lumping of all working class Bengalis in other states as illegal aliens is yet another attempt to enlarge linguistic apartheid & browbeat a popular state government,” quizzer Siddhartha Basu wrote on X.

The Trinamool Congress has seized upon the controversy to attack the BJP-led Centre. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday called the letter “scandalous, insulting, anti-national and unconstitutional”, and demanded that the Centre apologise for what she described as a “deliberate and dangerous insult to Bengali-speaking Indians”.

“The language in which Rabindranath Tagore, Nazrul Islam and Sarat Chandra wrote cannot be reduced to a nationality. Bengali is Indian, and so are its people,” she wrote on X.

In its defence, West Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya said: “The police have rightly referred to it as Bangladeshi language. It’s about dialect, not disrespect.”

Article 343 of the Indian Constitution recognises Bengali as one of India’s 22 scheduled languages under the Eighth Schedule. It is the official language of West Bengal and Tripura, and widely spoken in parts of Assam, Jharkhand and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.