Allahabad To Prayagraj: The Politics Of Name Change
BJP’s renaming frenzy—Hindu-friendly names in war against Islamic ones
Shakespeare be damned, the rose would never smell as good by any other name. Not for India’s right-wing. Not till the 2019 general elections, at least. Across India, in most BJP-ruled states, governments are changing names of cities, streets and railway stations, stripping hundreds of years of history to “reclaim” Indian culture and heritage. It’s as simple as that. Soon after the BJP-led government came to power in 2014, ‘ghar wapsi’ dominated the political discourse as Hindu fringe groups went about reconverting Muslims to their “original” faith, allegedly even forcibly. With the country set for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, now the spotlight has veered towards ‘naam wapsi’.While the phenomenon of changing names of cities is not new, the raison d’étre is definitely different. Major cities were earlier renamed to wipe out signs of the British Raj—Bombay became Mumbai, Madras changed to Chennai, Calcutta became Kolkata and Bangalore was renamed Bengaluru. The reason given by BJP leaders for the latest name-change spree is to cleanse what the Mughals had sullied. The intent is definitely political as the BJP tries to pit “Hindu pride” against Muslim invaders ahead of the elections.
Allahabad would be officially renamed Prayagraj before lakhs
of devotees descend at the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna for the Kumbh
Mela in January. The legal process may have hindered the government’s plans for
construction of the Ram Mandir, it has not deterred CM Yogi Adityanath—who
answered to the call Ajay Singh Bisht before he became a monk—from renaming
Faizabad district as Ayodhya. In August, the iconic Mughalsarai junction was
rechristened Deendayal Upadhyaya junction. Before that, Mughalsarai town itself
was renamed after Upadhyaya, the co-founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.
Emboldened by the government’s willingness to change the names of cities, towns
and roads—Aurangzeb Road in Delhi was renamed A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road in
2015—demands from lawmakers and organisations are growing to rename other
places.
If those demanding ‘naam wapsi’ have their way, Ahmedabad
will be renamed Karnavati, Agra will be called Agrawal, Patna will be
Patliputra and Pune will go by the name of Jijapur after Chhatrapati Shivaji
Maharaj’s mother Jijabai. Shiv Sena wants the names of Aurangabad, Osmanabad
and Khultabad in Marathwada region to be renamed as Sambhaji Nagar, Dharashiv
and Ratnaprabha, respectively.
BJP legislator Sangeet Som wants Muzaffarnagar to be named
Laxminagar and blames the Mughals for destroying India’s culture. “The Mughals
destroyed things related to Hindu religion. In 1633, a nawab named Muzaffar Ali
changed the name of the town. We have to reclaim and retain our cultural roots,”
Som says. Last year, he waded into a controversy, saying the Taj Mahal was
built by “traitors”.
Delhi-based historian Syed Irfan Habib has no doubt that the
move to change names is politically motivated. “The purpose is clear. It is to
polarise the majority. Demands are being made to change Muslim names. They want
to show Muslim rulers and the Mughals as symbols of oppressive rule; as raiders
who indulged in genocide,” he says.
BJP spokesperson G.V.L. Narasimha Rao denies that this
name-change is symbolic. He calls it an effort towards a “cultural
renaissance”; an attempt to “connect the current generation to our glorious
past, and to erase the deep scars of subjugation that have badly injured our
cultural psyche”.
Habib finds the argument flawed. Explaining presentism in
historiography as the way of looking at the past with one eye on the present,
he says, “At present, both eyes are looking at the past.”
He finds the demand to change Muzaffarnagar to Laxminagar
absurd. “Muzaffar Khan was not even a king. He was just a noble who had been
given the land as jagir, like many Rajputs. It’s a small sleepy town in the
Doab that became important because of its rich fertile soil and proximity to
Delhi, the capital even then. It was important for revenue generation,” he
explains,.
About Agra—the one place that draws millions of tourists
because of the monument of love—Habib says it was founded by Sikandar Lodi and
has nothing to do with the Agarwal community. The Agarwal community, he adds,
originated in Agroha which is in Haryana. The BJP legislator for North Agra has
asked Adityanath to rename it either Agrawal or Agravan.
The historian is, however, not sure if it will reap any
political benefit for the BJP as only a small section of the electorate may be
swayed by such a move. Nayanjot Lahiri, professor of history at Ashoka
University, believes people are not going to vote a party just because it
changed some names.
“Though the name-changing is being done with a political
purpose, I don’t think it will work electorally. It’s just that it will go down
as part of their legacy. They are trying to remove from public domain names of
places that are an integral part of our country’s history. It’s a pity. They
will be judged poorly by history. They will be seen as insecure for trying to
alter the historical landscape,” Lahiri says.
According to her, rather than tackling real issues and
problems, the attempt is merely to grab headlines. Lahiri says if the intent is
actually to right the historical wrongs, politicians seeking ‘naam wapsi’ would
do well to improve the lot of Dalits. “The atrocities against Dalits are
well-documented. Will they correct that at the cost of upper castes?”
It is not just historians who are uncomfortable. One of the
BJP allies in Uttar Pradesh, OBC leader Om Prakash Rajbhar, who is also a
minister in the state cabinet, has accused the Yogi government of doing little
about real issues. “This changing of names is being done to divert the minds of
backward and oppressed classes who are demanding their rights from the
government,” he says. The Muslims also gave us the Grand Trunk Road, the Taj
Mahal and the Red Fort, he points out. “Should we do away with them too? There
are a handful of Muslim leaders in the BJP. Will the party also ask Shahnawaz
Hussain, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Mohsin Raza to change their names?”
The minister doesn’t see anything wrong in AMU historian
Irfan Habib—not the same person quoted earlier—questioning BJP president Amit
Shah’s name. Habib is reported to have said that the ‘Shah’ surname is of
Persian origin and not Gujarati, so he should consider changing it. He further
added that Gujarat itself is of Persian origin and it was earlier called
Gurjaratra.
The founder of the Ahmedabad Community Foundation, Bhavna
Ramrakhiani, also vouches for the plurality of Ahmedabad under the Sultanate.
The cultural activist says members of the Hindu community held the most
important position in the courts of the Muslim rulers, as has been documented
by the Nagars themselves. According to her, there was a lot of assimilation of
Farsi and Gujarati languages during this time. “The Gujarati language has
assimilated maximum Urdu words into it.”
In fact, says Delhi historian Syed Irfan Habib, this
heterogeneity of culture is India’s strength. “To expect homogeneity in
culture, food, religion, dress is dangerous,” he says, underlining that attempt
is at homogenisation of Hinduism itself and this is unfortunate. “Hinduism is
vast. You can go to a dargah and still be a Hindu. However, this liberty is not
allowed in other religions. It is a monochromatic world for them, while there
are shades in Hinduism, and that is the beauty of it,” he adds.
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