{"id":3660,"date":"2016-03-31T03:38:33","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T22:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3660"},"modified":"2016-03-31T03:38:33","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T22:08:33","slug":"history-politics-allahabad-prayagraj-ahmedabad-karnavati-faizabad-ayodhya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3660","title":{"rendered":"History or Politics, What\u2019s the Real Reason for Changing City Names?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span><\/p><\/div>

f <\/span>Shakespeare<\/span><\/a> thought like the Indian government, he\u2019d have never written the immortal words \u201cwhat\u2019s in a name?\u201d For the BJP, names of cities and monuments are of utmost importance, almost as vital to our nation\u2019s welfare as making sure <\/span>cows<\/span><\/a> are better protected than humans. Allahabad has had its name changed to <\/span>Prayagraj<\/span><\/a>, Faizabad has become Ayodhya, and Ahmedabad might soon be known as Karnavati. We\u2019ve all heard the saying \u201cif it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it\u201d but the Centre and state governments seem to be going a step further and following a policy of \u201cif it\u2019s broken, just call it something else.\u201d<\/span>\n\nApologies to the residents of the three cities for suggesting that their hometowns are \u201cbroken\u201d. They might be wonderful, warm, and welcoming places to live, but to those who think the <\/span>Taj Mahal<\/span><\/a> should be renamed Tejo Mahalaya, there is a fundamental flaw in their nomenclature. The problem is that the cities\u2019 names didn\u2019t sound Hindu enough, or rather, sounded too Islamic. Never mind that thousands of Indian Muslims reside in each of those cities, or that those Muslims\u2019 roots to the region can be traced back centuries, having names that point to India\u2019s real history is an embarrassment to those who wish to rewrite the past.<\/span>\n\nThe fact that Muslims have been living in India since as far back as 692 AD at least is an inconvenient truth for the <\/span>Hindutva agenda<\/span><\/a>, an agenda that the BJP tacitly leans on when their tall talk of development and vikas fails to yield tangible results. They can\u2019t change the fact that some of the greatest monarchs in India\u2019s history were Muslim by faith, so they turn to calling rulers like Akbar and Shah Jahan invaders and foreigners in an attempt to erase their contributions to Indian culture. Their dream of a Hindu Rashtra has no room for towns named after Islamic kings, so the names have to go.<\/span>\n\nHowever, to pin the blame for the name changes solely on an anti-Muslim bias would be to miss the woods for the trees. <\/span>\n\n

The name changes we are seeing across the country are not just an act of erasure of history, but also an attempt at replacement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nDifferent regimes leave behind differing legacies. Nehru\u2019s was the Five Year Plans, Indira\u2019s was the Emergency; the current government will be remembered in the future by the new names it gave our cities and the <\/span>new notes<\/span><\/a> it put in our wallets. Which reminds me, our ministers are all too happy to crow about what a great achievement renaming a city is, but nobody wants to mention <\/span>demonetisation<\/span><\/a>, two years after it was supposed to end the scourge of black money in this country. Another supposed miracle fix to our still-developing economy was the <\/span>introduction of GST<\/span><\/a>, but even that didn\u2019t prove to be the crowd-pleaser the government thought it would be. Even its new method of calculating GDP, introduced three years ago, through which the BJP government claimed positive growth, became a thorn in their side. On Monday, a press conference to share details about previous years\u2019 GDP using this methodology was <\/span>cancelled<\/span><\/a>, perhaps because the figures also showed the previous UPA regime doing better than the current government.<\/span> \u00a0<\/span>\n\nRunning out of time before next year\u2019s election, renaming cities and <\/span>building extravagant statues<\/span><\/a> feels like a relatively low-risk, high-reward approach to leaving a lasting impact. Remember the policy \u201cIf it\u2019s broken, just call it something else\u201d?<\/span>\n\nGiven how much media coverage the name changes have attracted already, expect this to become a viable political strategy going forward into 2019. Sambit Patra has already threatened an AIMIM spokesperson on television with renaming mosques after Hindu gods, so clearly this idea has already taken root in the minds of those in the establishment. In the future, we might see Hyderabad renamed as Andhrapur, Aurangabad referred to as Santranagar, and witness biryani suffer the indignity of being called non-veg pulao.<\/span>\n\nThe name changes we are seeing across the country are not just an act of erasure of history, but also an attempt at replacement.<\/span>\n\nWhen <\/span>Bombay<\/span><\/a>\u2019s name was changed to Mumbai in 1995, citizens took their time to adjust. While there will always be those who remember the city as Bombay, but younger people, especially those born after the name change, think nothing of saying they\u2019re from Mumbai. Similarly, though there might be a hue and cry over the current round of name changes, with enough time Prayagraj, Ayodhya, Karnavati, and whatever else our politicians can come up with will sink into the public consciousness, and these new names will become a lasting legacy of this government.<\/span>\n\nThe Bard wrote <\/span>Romeo and Juliet<\/span><\/i><\/a>, with the famous line \u2013 \u201cwhat\u2019s in a name?\u201d \u2013 in 1597, a year when Akbar was sitting on the throne in Delhi. Clearly, in the centuries since then, that line has lost its weight. Because today, names matter much more than history.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cities with names that point to India\u2019s real history are an embarrassment to those who wish to rewrite the past. Running out of time before next year\u2019s election, renaming cities and building extravagant statues feels like a relatively low-risk, high-reward approach for the government to leaving a lasting impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":3661,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[1149,6860,6861,908,1807,2256,6862,19,3154,6863,180,1382,33,6864,1030,1031,1543],"class_list":["post-3660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-ahmedabad","tag-akbar","tag-akbar-the-great","tag-allahabad","tag-ayodhya","tag-bjp","tag-faizabad","tag-india","tag-indian-history","tag-karnavati","tag-modi","tag-muslim","tag-politics","tag-prayagraj","tag-up","tag-uttar-pradesh","tag-yogi-adityanath"],"yoast_head":"\nHistory or Politics, What\u2019s the Real Reason for Changing City Names?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Cities with names that point to India\u2019s real history are an embarrassment to those who wish to rewrite the past. 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