West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday questioned the Delhi Police for referring to Bengali as “Bangladeshi language” in a purported letter to the Banga Bhawan in the national capital.

“This insults all Bengali-speaking people of India,” the Trinamool Congress chief said on X. “They cannot use this kind of language which degrades and debases us all.”

Banerjee was referring to a letter purportedly written by the station house officer of the Lodhi Colony police station to the Banga Bhawan, in which the officer asked for identification documents to be translated from Bengali to Hindi and English.

The letter was written in the context of a case in which eight persons suspected to be Bangladeshi citizens living without valid documents in India were arrested. “…For the investigation to proceed further, it is requested that an official translator/interpreter proficient in Bangladeshi national language may kindly be provided for the aforesaid purpose,” the letter said.

Banerjee said that the letter was “scandalous, insulting, anti-national, unconstitutional”.

The Trinamool Congress chief called for protests against the Union government for using “anti-Constitutional language to insult and humiliate” the Bengali-speaking citizens of India.

“Bengali, our mother tongue, the language of Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda, the language in which our National Anthem and the National Song [the latter by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay] are written, the language in which crores of Indians speak and write, the language which is sanctified and recognised by the Constitution of India, is now described as a Bangladeshi language!” she remarked.

In recent days, the Trinamool Congress has been expressing its disapproval of Bengali-speaking workers outside the state being detained on suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals. At the party’s Martyrs’ Day rally on July 21, Banerjee alleged that Bengalis in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states were being harassed, detained and removed from voter rolls.

The Trinamool Congress chief accused the BJP of “unleashing linguistic terrorism” against Bengalis.