What's in a name! Well, Shakespeare can say so. But for Indians everything is in the name. If a name is given, there's a reason for it. If it is changed, again there's a rationale behind it.
If Maharashtra Government changed its capital's name from Bombay to Mumbai, there was a reason for it. The city was renamed after Goddess Mumbadevi, the protector of fishermen who were the area’s original inhabitants. “Bombay” was an anglicized take on the Portuguese colonial name “Bom Bahia”, or “good bay”.
In case you are wondering what this is all about. The story goes like this. A few days ago Editor of British newspaper Independent, Mr Amol Rajan, dropped a bomb by saying that his paper will refer to India's financial capital as Bombay, and not Mumbai. This bit of news has spread like wildfire, especially it hasn't gone down well with Indians. Social media is abuzz with choicest abuses hurled at him.
Mr Rajan said the move was a stand against what he said was the closed-minded view of Hindu nationalists.
“The whole point of Bombay is of an open, cosmopolitan port city, the gateway of India that’s open to the world. If you call it what Hindu nationalists want you to call it, you essentially do their work for them,” Rajan told BBC radio.
“As journalists, as someone who edits The Independent, it’s incredibly important to be specific about our terminology. I’d rather side with the tradition of India that’s been open to the world, rather than the one that’s been closed, which is in ascendance right now,” he said, referring to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in India.
According to a report in DNA, the Indian-born editor said the move was the newspaper's stand against a “nastier strain of Hindu nationalism”.
Incidentally, 32-year-old Rajan was born in Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, and raised in London. But it's not known whether he has an issue with the name Kolkata, unlike Mumbai.
The name change hasn't affected Mumbai's residents. Speakers of Marathi and Gujarati, the local languages, have always called the city Mumbai.
In 1995 'Bombay' was renamed 'Mumbai' by the far-right regional party Shiv Sena, an ally of the BJP. Shiv Sena advocates the use of Marathi language, which is dominant in Maharashtra. Shiv Sena had argued that 'Bombay' was an unwanted relic of the colonial rule in India.
“Shiv Sena pushed through the renaming against the will of the national government,” Mr Rajan said, according to the DNA report.
Several other Indian cities have changed their names. Madras became Chennai, Calcutta became Kolkata, Trivandrum became Thiruvananthapuram, Pondicherry became Puducherry, Orissa became Odisha, Bangalore became Bengaluru and so on.
So why is he restricting things to Mumbai alone? What about Chennai, Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram, Puducherry and Odisha? Is he going to do the same with Madras, Calcutta, Trivandrum, Pondicherry, Orissa and others?
Well, Mr Rajan is entitled to his view, so is this paper.
