“You are welcome here in this city of Delhi, which has been a city of kings and emperors but which today is the capital of the Republic of India, and I think no king or emperor could give you the welcome which the republican citizens of Delhi have given you.”
— Jawaharlal Nehru welcoming Queen Elizabeth II to New Delhi on January 28, 1961. Extracted from Jawaharlal Nehru, Selected Speeches, Volume Four, Publications Division, April 1996.
What do name changes do? Are they a way of ‘correcting’ history? Can history be ‘corrected’? Do they rid individuals of a way of thinking? Are name changes about ideological mind games in the heads of powerful people who have the power to name and re-name? Finally, do name changes actually alter usage?
For many years after my history teacher, Dilip Simeon, read out Saadat Hasan Manto’s ever-relevant short story about Partition, “Toba Tek Singh”, I simply believed that it was a mythical place. Much later, when reporting from Islamabad, a dateline in the Dawn newspaper torpedoed my ignorance of reality – Toba Tek Singh was a real place in Pakistan. (It is now a district.) Many, many efforts were made to alter its name, but Toba Tek Singh would have none of it.
Names have a way of sticking.
Many years ago, a Congress leader pressed home a name change – Connaught Place in the heart of New Delhi would be called Rajiv Chowk. But Connaught Place is still how it is referred to, unaffected by another name bereft of history. After the Delhi Metro became operational, a concession was made – the metro station is, indeed, called Rajiv Chowk.
The story of Delhi
Growing up in Delhi, one has lived through Willingdon Crescent becoming Mother Teresa Crescent or Cornwallis Road becoming Subramania Bharti Marg. In 2015, with an ideologically-fired Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre, the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) changed the name of Aurangzeb Road (named after a ‘bad’ Mughal-Muslim ruler) to A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road (named after a ‘good’ Muslim a previous BJP government had propelled to the post of President).
But history and the figures who peopled it have a way of living on. So, Aurangzeb no longer has a Road attached to him in Delhi, but officially survives as a Lane off A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road. The NDMC perhaps forgot about the Lane as it had concentrated all its energies on Aurangzeb Road.
A little away from Delhi, in Bhopal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the spanking new, airport-style Rani Kamlapati railway station in November 2021. It’s a clean, efficient station, with broad platforms and eateries. But there is a problem. If you ask a Bhopal auto driver to take you to Rani Kamlapati station, he will know that you have never visited the city before. The name-on-tongue is Habibganj station, not Rani Kamlapati, the new name given to the railway facility just before the inauguration. The confusion for the visitor is real though some websites helpfully add Habibganj (in brackets) to Rani Kamlapati.
A Hindu-majoritarian blinkered view of the past is behind some of these name changes. And, this is not a mind game confined to the capital of India. Beyond Habibganj and Kampalati, there is the Mughalsarai-Deen Dayal Upadhyay railway junction in Uttar Pradesh. The evidence of an ideological driver for name changes is too stark to ignore.
Now, there is a new name change. Kartavya (duty) Path trumping Rajpath, the site of India’s majestic 26th January Republic Day parade. It had earlier been changed to Rajpath from Kingsway after Independence. On September 8, Mr. Modi said, “Rajpath was for the British Raj, to whom the people of India were slaves. The spirit and structure of the Rajpath were also a symbol of slavery. Today its architecture, as well as its spirit, has also changed.”
The word “raj” in Hindi means “rule” and the fact remains, right or wrong, that Rajpath demonstrated on Republic Day the full glory of armed India – atmanirbhar or otherwise – on an annual basis. No other road, path or marg in the country was so privileged.
One can also join issue about the nature of governance in the country, down the Congress decades and now 14 years under a BJP-led government, with no Prime Minister or party showing any inclination to confer more rights to the people, in an age when personal liberties in many countries have advanced manifold.
The ethos of governance
In his speech, Mr. Modi also referred to the fact that his two-term, eight-year-long government had also abolished so many colonial laws to rid the country of its slavish approach.
A response came from an unlikely quarter. In a letter from jail, Umar Khalid, formerly of Jawaharlal Nehru University, had this to say, “Lately, there has been a lot of talk of doing away with colonial symbols of slavery. This, while several draconian laws reminiscent of the colonial era continue to be weaponised against activists, students, dissidents, and the political opposition. Do people not see any similarity between the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) – under which we are languishing in jail – and the Rowlatt Act, which the British used against our freedom fighters?”
If the Congress created the UAPA, the BJP embraced it even tighter. People like Umar Khalid, who led the ideological battle against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), are paying the price for protest.
So, we now have Janpath (“people’s path”) crossing Kartavya Path in New Delhi along with Man Singh Road and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Marg.
But, perhaps, the all-important road name that should be remembered not just by India and Indians but all those who work along it is – Shanti (peace) Path – a couple of kilometres away from all the Delhi roads in the news.
