Recently the name of the city Gurgaon was officially changed to Gurugram and the area Mewat will now be called Nuh. The changing of names of states, cities and towns has been a continuous phenomenon in our country. I remember hating this phenomenon as a kid because of one particular name change that completely tortured me in my school days. The day the government changed Trivendrum to Thiruvananthapuram I lost one mark in almost every geography exam. I hated it so much that it was precisely 1991 when Thiruvananthapuram entered this world and when I started questioning the government’s affinity towards changing place names.
It tortured me then, made me roll my eyes everytime it happened after that and now I was horror struck and decided to write about it when the very next day of Gurgaon and Mewat renaming the newspapers flashed the idea that the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) is demanding that Shimla, my hometown, should be renamed Shyamala!!
The question that remains unanswered for me is why does the government change a place’s name? There have been various examples in the past in our country when names of places ranging from major metropolitan cities to small towns have been changed. The change is either drastic based on some ethnic reason or its just a spelling change based on phonetic reasoning. My query is not regarding the type of change but what drives this change. It is a great mystery to me as to how a group of people decide what is right for an entire area and then the newspapers carry statements like, “the people of the area had been long demanding that Gurgaon be renamed as Gurugram” (from a news piece in The Hindu). Really? The people of the area demanded? It is not even 5% of the population that raises such issues and ‘demands’. The majority of the ‘people of the area’ are actually agitated because the name of the city that they related to suddenly has changed overnight.
I believe that the renaming of a city is not even a valid political agenda. I will not speak for every city because the example of Bombay/ Mumbai, Calcutta/ Kolkata and in the recent past renaming of 12 cities in Karnataka including Belgaum/ Belagavi which even witnessed a good amount of protest from the ‘people of the place’, must have served some political egos. But it’s a fact that our country has bigger problems than obsolete or supposedly wrong names.
If I try to take a flexible and a pro-name-changing look at this phenomenon, I can support the examples of Cawnpur to Kanpur, or Calcutta to Kolkata or even for that matter Simla to Shimla. The changing of the anglicized versions to more phonetically indigenous version is in a way locating the place in its present context; which is justified. But that is how far I go in being comfortable with these changes. All the other changes seem unreasonable mostly because there is almost no logic. The reasoning given is just put forth with such confidence that it seems logical whereas in reality its a complete waste of precious time and money. For instance, take the example of Shimla. As per the articles the VHP has put forth the proposal to rename Shimla as Shyamla based on the so called fact that the history books state Shyamla as the place named after an incarnation of Kali ma. After reading these ‘history books’ and various articles on Shimla I can confidently state as a fact that Shyamala has been pondered upon as the PROBABALE WORD-ROOT of Shimla. Moreover, even if Shyamala was the past name of Shimla, what sense does it make to uproot the entire regional, national and international context of a place? Thankfully Shyamala is still closely related to Shimla. The other completely absurd proposals are Dalhousie to be named Subhash Nagar and Nurpur to be named after Ram Singh Pathania. The buildings have also not been left alone. As a Shimla resident the proposal to rename Peterhoff as Valmiki Bhawan comes across more like a joke than a shock. The reason that is given for these proposals is ‘the need to shun British legacies - a sign of slavery and to follow the trend of renaming towns and cities.’ (from a newspiece in The Indian Express). At this point, for Shimla’s sake, I would like to bring to the notice of the proposal makers that places like Shimla and Dalhousie ARE British legacies. Ninety percent of the government buildings in Shimla are British buildings. The architecture in Shimla that gives the city its character is Colonial. From the tourism point of view, the major earning point of Shimla is that it is a hill station which was the Summer Capital of the Britishers. If you think that we need to shun British legacies from Shimla, you need to abandon all this. And I’m sorry to say, but the moment you do that, you have nothing but an unaesthetic heap of concrete blocks marring several hills somewhere in a state called Himachal Pradesh in India.
What I’m trying to emphasize here is that the name of a place is something the population of the place relates to and the history of the name is a part of the living memory. A change, whether of a name or of a tangible nature, makes sense only when it harmonizes with its context. And if a proposal has come up regarding a city, that puts forth the idea of a group of people, the residents of the city must have a say. The ‘people of the place’ should literally be made a part of the decision making. Do a survey and judge what the ‘people of the place’ really want. Till then I request the authorities to kindly respect all the nuances of a city before planning to change its identity for good based on a notion.
It tortured me then, made me roll my eyes everytime it happened after that and now I was horror struck and decided to write about it when the very next day of Gurgaon and Mewat renaming the newspapers flashed the idea that the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) is demanding that Shimla, my hometown, should be renamed Shyamala!!
The question that remains unanswered for me is why does the government change a place’s name? There have been various examples in the past in our country when names of places ranging from major metropolitan cities to small towns have been changed. The change is either drastic based on some ethnic reason or its just a spelling change based on phonetic reasoning. My query is not regarding the type of change but what drives this change. It is a great mystery to me as to how a group of people decide what is right for an entire area and then the newspapers carry statements like, “the people of the area had been long demanding that Gurgaon be renamed as Gurugram” (from a news piece in The Hindu). Really? The people of the area demanded? It is not even 5% of the population that raises such issues and ‘demands’. The majority of the ‘people of the area’ are actually agitated because the name of the city that they related to suddenly has changed overnight.
I believe that the renaming of a city is not even a valid political agenda. I will not speak for every city because the example of Bombay/ Mumbai, Calcutta/ Kolkata and in the recent past renaming of 12 cities in Karnataka including Belgaum/ Belagavi which even witnessed a good amount of protest from the ‘people of the place’, must have served some political egos. But it’s a fact that our country has bigger problems than obsolete or supposedly wrong names.
If I try to take a flexible and a pro-name-changing look at this phenomenon, I can support the examples of Cawnpur to Kanpur, or Calcutta to Kolkata or even for that matter Simla to Shimla. The changing of the anglicized versions to more phonetically indigenous version is in a way locating the place in its present context; which is justified. But that is how far I go in being comfortable with these changes. All the other changes seem unreasonable mostly because there is almost no logic. The reasoning given is just put forth with such confidence that it seems logical whereas in reality its a complete waste of precious time and money. For instance, take the example of Shimla. As per the articles the VHP has put forth the proposal to rename Shimla as Shyamla based on the so called fact that the history books state Shyamla as the place named after an incarnation of Kali ma. After reading these ‘history books’ and various articles on Shimla I can confidently state as a fact that Shyamala has been pondered upon as the PROBABALE WORD-ROOT of Shimla. Moreover, even if Shyamala was the past name of Shimla, what sense does it make to uproot the entire regional, national and international context of a place? Thankfully Shyamala is still closely related to Shimla. The other completely absurd proposals are Dalhousie to be named Subhash Nagar and Nurpur to be named after Ram Singh Pathania. The buildings have also not been left alone. As a Shimla resident the proposal to rename Peterhoff as Valmiki Bhawan comes across more like a joke than a shock. The reason that is given for these proposals is ‘the need to shun British legacies - a sign of slavery and to follow the trend of renaming towns and cities.’ (from a newspiece in The Indian Express). At this point, for Shimla’s sake, I would like to bring to the notice of the proposal makers that places like Shimla and Dalhousie ARE British legacies. Ninety percent of the government buildings in Shimla are British buildings. The architecture in Shimla that gives the city its character is Colonial. From the tourism point of view, the major earning point of Shimla is that it is a hill station which was the Summer Capital of the Britishers. If you think that we need to shun British legacies from Shimla, you need to abandon all this. And I’m sorry to say, but the moment you do that, you have nothing but an unaesthetic heap of concrete blocks marring several hills somewhere in a state called Himachal Pradesh in India.
What I’m trying to emphasize here is that the name of a place is something the population of the place relates to and the history of the name is a part of the living memory. A change, whether of a name or of a tangible nature, makes sense only when it harmonizes with its context. And if a proposal has come up regarding a city, that puts forth the idea of a group of people, the residents of the city must have a say. The ‘people of the place’ should literally be made a part of the decision making. Do a survey and judge what the ‘people of the place’ really want. Till then I request the authorities to kindly respect all the nuances of a city before planning to change its identity for good based on a notion.
maybe you need to write more :)
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