Indian renaming controversy
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The Indian renaming controversy is a result of a movement to rename cities and other locations to regional or Indian names from their anglicised British names.
There are two reasons behind renamings: to remove an imperial name and give a local name, or to change pronunciation and spelling.
The debate is not unique to India as other former colonial territories also seek to reclaim part of their heritage by opting for traditional names. However, the opponents of this move argue that, given that India is multi-cultural, and was a British colony until relatively recently, the renaming is not appropriate.
Major cities that have been renamed after independence include Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Chennai (formerly Madras), Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), Pune (formerly Poona), Thiruvananthapuram (formerly Trivandrum) and Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore).
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[edit] Controversy
The renamings refer to English language usage, and it is not clear that Indian municipalities have the authority to enforce this, or that there was anything 'colonial' about the former mispronunciations and mis-spellings of local names which existed in English (as with the English 'Florence' and 'Venice', rather than the Italian Firenze and Venezia; Moscow rather than the Russian "Moskva"; Copenhagen rather than the Danish "København"; Athens rather than the Greek "Athina"; etc).
In the case of Bombay and Madras the derivation of the name is thought to be from Portuguese, not English. The name changes in Bombay were carried out in response to the demands of the Hindu Nationalist Shiv Sena party. 'Mumbai' is probably derived from the temple of Mumbadevi in Bombay, and although there is no evidence that it was the name of a settlement before the arrival of the Portuguese, who called it Boa Baía (good bay)[dubious — see talk page], it has long been the name of the city in Marathi and Gujarati, whilst Hindi-speakers called it Bambai.[1] However, some argue that as the renaming was part of the Shiv Sena's Bhumiputra (son of the soil) policy, it is an attempt to erase evidence of the city's cosmopolitanism and multi-lingual character.[2]
On December 11, 2005, chief minister Dharam Singh announced that the Karnataka state government accepted Jnanpith awardee U R Ananthamurthy's suggestion to rename ten cities to their Kannada names. The new names became effective from November 1, 2006. In most of these cases the 'new' names are simply the names by which these cities have always been known in the native language. Thus local Kannada language newspapers announced that "Bengaluru (Bangalore) is to be renamed as Bengaluru".
[edit] Usage of new and old names
In many cases the older names continue to be used informally, or survive in the names of universities and other institutions. The Bombay High Court and Madras High Court were named after the erstwhile Bombay and Madras presidencies, and have not been renamed. The Indian Institutes of Technology at Chennai and Mumbai continue to be called IIT Madras and IIT Bombay.
In certain cases, the effort has extended to buildings and institutions named by the former colonizers. For example, Mumbai's Victoria Terminus railway station has been renamed Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus after the 17th century Maratha Emperor. Many colonial-era street names, particularly in Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai have been changed, but many, particularly in southern cities, continue to have British-era names.
[edit] Proposed future changes
Other name changes that have been proposed include Ahmedabad to Karnavati, Lucknow to Lakshmanpuri or Lakhanpur, Patna to Pataliputra, Aurangabad to Sambhajinagar, Allahabad to Prayag, Faizabad to Saket and Delhi to Dilli, Hastinapur or Indraprastha. Several of these name changes would reflect a change not from British to Indian, but from Muslim to Hindu. Ahmedabad, Allahabad and Faizabad are all Muslim names; Aurangabad is named for the Muslim Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. The policy has been promoted by India's right wing Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Samuel Sheppard Bombay Place-Names and Street-Names (Bombay: The Times Press) 1917 pp104-5
- ^ Sujata Patel "Bombay and Mumbai: Identities, Politics and Populism" in Sujata Patel & Jim Masselos (Eds.) Bombay and Mumbai. The City in Transition (Delhi: Oxford University Press) 2003 p4; Suketu Mehta Maximum City. Bombay Lost and Found (New York: Alfred Knopf) 2004 p130
