Ultra nationalism does serious damage to history. And when we have nationalism based on religious bigotry before us, the damage done by it to established historical realities is incalculable. In the recent past, in countries like India and Pakistan, the names of places, specifically towns and roads, have undergone changes. Of course, one does not argue with the idea of changes being made to names that have come down from colonial times.
That is perfectly understandable, but even in such cases there ought to be some form of circumspection where renaming places is concerned. Generations of people in the subcontinent have grown into adulthood with the familiar feel of towns and cities which acquired their names under the British.
Many of those names have gone through changes. In Bangladesh, in recent times, certain cities have had the spellings of their names changed to conform to the proper pronunciation to be applied to the names. Dhaka was once Dacca. Comilla is now Cumilla. In India, entire names have been replaced with new ones. Bombay is now Mumbai, Calcutta is Kolkata and Madras is Chennai.
Pakistan has not lagged behind. Lyallpur is now known as Faisalabad, while Montgomery was given the name Sahiwal. It all depends on how one takes these changes. There are always the positive and negative aspects involved in place names being reconfigured. And, to be sure, the end of colonialism in such regions as Africa logically led to a renaming of the old colonized territories.
Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, while Tanganyka and Zanzibar emerged as Tanzania. Where street names are concerned, one can only look upon the changes in names from one's particular perspective. Again, there has been the certain prejudice which has prevented countries from demonstrating the liberalism commensurate with the times.
Delhi has a surfeit of streets with Muslim or Mughal names, which is not what one can say about streets in Pakistani cities. Streets named after prominent Hindus and colonial-era Englishmen have maintained the old form in Dhaka, examples being Hare Road and Rankin Street and Bhojohari Saha Street.
The problem comes in when fierce religious nationalism is employed in forcing a change in names. The state government in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has now decided that Allahabad, a name going back to the Mughal era, will henceforth be known as Prayagraj.
Hindu nationalists like Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of the state, have consistently advocated the idea of Muslim and Mughal rule in India as periods of foreign occupation when the fact is that India has been a composite culture assimilating the people who have through various periods in history come to it, mingled with the local population and given the Indian national ethos a new dimension.
The move on Allahabad is an ominous sign of things that could yet well be on the way. Who knows whether places like Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Murshidabad will not face a similar axe in future?
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