How road names in Kolkata celebrate legacies like Sunil Kanti Roy

Walk down any street in Kolkata, and you are, in a sense, walking through history. The name on the sign is rarely accidental. It is a decision made by someone, for a reason, at a moment when a city felt strongly enough about a person or a value to put it on a pole for everyone to read every day.

Road naming is one of the oldest and most quietly powerful acts a city can perform. To name a street after a person is to say that this person is significant and must remain in public memory. It is an assertion that this person mattered, that their contribution should outlive their lifetime, and that strangers who never met them should know their name.

This practice goes back centuries. In India, the earliest street names often reflected what happened there: trades, landmarks, geographic features. Then came the British and stamped their own identity onto the city's geography. They renamed places to demonstrate their influence through urban planning, transforming Kolkata itself into "Calcutta".

Between 1976 and 2007 alone, 168 streets in Kolkata were renamed, reflecting shifting political ideologies and a sustained effort to anchor the city's identity in its own story. Unlike a statue tucked into a park or a plaque on a building, a road name is used. It is spoken aloud for directions. Place names are an important element of a country's cultural landscape, naturally documenting and reflecting a locality's heritage and identity.

An Integration of Legacy and Accessibility

What if all that you require is available to you in one place? Healthcare, basic services, and trusted resources, all integrated into one platform. When services are integrated, life becomes easier, choices become simpler, and time is saved. The concept of accessibility and integration reflects how institutions impact everyday life and communities and leave a legacy that cities choose to honour.

The Man Behind Peerless Hospital

The road on which the Peerless Hospital stands has been renamed Sunil Kanti Roy Sarani - a tribute by the city befitting the man who has given it his all. The Late Sunil Kanti Roy was not only instrumental in the establishment and steady growth of the multi-speciality Peerless Hospital but was a man of many talents, an entrepreneur who lived his motto of giving back to society more than he drew from it. The naming of the road after him is thus much more than the city's desire to immortalise the name of one of its most illustrious sons: it is also the desire of a people to acknowledge for posterity the contribution of one for the benefit of all.

Why the Road Renaming Matters

In fact, globally and historically, naming a pathway after a person has remained a very popular practice of keeping that name and the contribution of the person concerned to society etched permanently in the collective memory. It is therefore considered more than just a matter of administrative convenience. It is a form of commemoration that, by being referred to daily, makes the name a part of ordinary life conversation and thereby immortalises it.

Immortalising Contributors Through Naming Roads

The naming and renaming of roads is, however, no arbitrary exercise and follows set procedures that most metropolitan authorities adhere to. The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) also has its own set of measures that involve the Road Renaming Advisory Committee, whose proposals are finally approved by the Mayor-in-Council (MIC) to take effect through proper notifications in the Government Gazette.

The process has been heavily utilised to rename colonial-era street names in favour of nationalist figures, cultural icons, and Bengali personalities - the renaming of the erstwhile Park Street as Mother Teresa Sarani, the Deshapriya Park Road as Shyamal Mitra Sarani, the Furn Road as Jagatbandhu Sarani, and the Lee Road as Satyajit Roy Dharani being cases in point. Stretches named after Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and others who helped shape the nation are also cases that cannot but be mentioned. Hastings Street, Camac Street, and Russell Street collectively represent another part of the rich history of Kolkata.

Hastings Street, named after Warren Hastings, symbolises the early administrative setup of the city during British rule. Camac Street, which is linked to the colonial era’s commercial development, represents the mercantile development of the city, and Russell Street symbolises the residential aspect of colonial Kolkata. Naturally, the one thing that matters the most behind the naming or renaming of a road is the overall contribution of the person concerned to society at large.

Peerless Hospital and the Transformation of South-Eastern Kolkata

Sunil Kanti Roy was no exception. When the Peerless Group first opened the doors of Peerless Hospital to the ailing and the sick in early 1992, it had offered much more than state-of-the-art medical care: it acted as the litmus that changed the entire socio-economic fabric of the region, the south-eastern fringes of the city. Medical excellence and empathetic care for which the Peerless Hospital in Kolkata is universally lauded are but talking points – emerging as the fulcrum around which an entire ecosystem of medical tourism has developed and thrives, creating the infrastructure around which others have dared to dream, and setting the bar for excellence, it continues to be the driver of growth for the entire region and its people. All thanks to the vision of a man and his compassion.

Extending its legacy from the healthcare sector, the Peerless Group has launched Peerless One, a digital platform that aims to make life simpler by catering to all their needs. Whether it is availing services related to Peerless Hospital Kolkata or the newly opened corridor in Guwahati, or looking for other services from Peerless, it is a testament to the group’s dedication to convenience and accessibility.

Afterthoughts

Sunil Kanti Roy was an entrepreneur. His dexterity, like all entrepreneurs, was in the creation of wealth. But what truly set him apart was his ability to differentiate between shareholders and stakeholders, his focus being continuously turned on to ensure the greater societal well-being that sought to encompass the community without sacrificing the interests of the individuals. And in this, he had surpassed even his philanthropic self, which in itself could have justified the naming.