Renaming of the largest cricket stadium in the world at Motera has set many a loose tongues wagging. Sycophancy is an old and hugely successful art form and it wouldn’t be fair to blame the PM for the tasteless ceremony. He has already acquired a stature that doesn’t require such props. This, however, has provided the nation with an opportunity to initiate a much delayed national debate—“Should there be a national policy on naming and renaming public buildings, institutions and schemes?”
Fairness demands that we acknowledge that the naming and name-changing game began long before the BJP-NDA came to power. It was Deb Kant Barooah, the then Congress president, who became butt of jokes for pompously declaring “Indira is India” during the infamous Emergency. Years before this there was no lack of gushing admirers of her father who thought that the undeniable great man was indispensable and irreplaceable.
Both the father and the daughter were conferred Bharat Ratna while in office while many others no less deserving of adulation and honour were airbrushed out of the historical picture. Nor can it be overlooked that the ‘First Family of Indian Politics’ has had more than its fair share of institutions, buildings, roads and bridges, developmental schemes named after its members. But can ‘renaming’ be justified on the grounds that imbalance must be rectified lest the nation forgets the contribution of others who have made it?
Not long ago a world famous test cricketer had petitioned the powers that be to erase his name from the stand named after him at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium as installing a politician’s statue reeked of nepotistic idol worship, had little to do with achievements on the pitch and in short was in bad taste. The question, to our mind, raises other issues broader and more complex than the loyalty to the leader or love for family. We Indians seem to be fascinated by the naamkaran ceremony. Rather than build something grand and leave our imprint on it, we prefer to take the easy way out of renaming what exists.
Many such exercises are assertions of parochial pride or linguistic chauvinism.
That is why Bombay must be identified as Mumbai and Madras becomes Chennai. Calcutta follows suit to reclaim the title Kolkata. Benaras is now Varanasi and Allahabad Prayagraj. Then it’s the turn of city roads and public spaces. Curzon Road in a blink is converted into Kasturba Gandhi Marg. Race Course Road has been replaced by Lok Kalyan Marg. Aurangzeb, the most vilified of the Moguls, had his name erased to yield ground to the beloved President of the People, the rocket scientist APJ Abdul Kalam. Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg has survived such onslaughts due to the Last Mogul’s association with the 1857 War of Independence.
The fate of roads named after Babur, Sher Shah, Humayun, Akbar and Shahjahan hangs in balance. Kolkata appears a wee bit more tolerant about colonial heritage—existing monuments and pathways in the city. Calcuttans take pride in Victoria Memorial and have shown no hurry to rename Lord Sinha Road. The more important question is what purpose does naming and renaming serve? Are great men really honoured when they are reduced to appreciations like MG, KG or MI? People continue to use CP as RC (for Rajiv Chowk) has failed to gain currency.
Be it a magnificently renovated railway station (once called VT), a medical college KGMC (now known as KGMU), or university (dare I utter JNU?), the alphabet soup helps the spread of collective amnesia. You are only reminded of the full awe-inspiring name as the plain descends to land or the fancy train reaches its destination. Gone are the days when you could mutter, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. Life is full of unforeseen hazards nowadays. Calling the sweet-smelling flower or for that matter anything else by any other name may pierce your flesh with painful, intractable thorns.
Claiming poetic licence isn’t likely to save one from charges of contempt, hurting the sentiment of an individual or community. It is becoming increasingly difficult to agree upon what the words mean. Dictionaries are no longer the final arbiter. Life is becoming stranger than the fictional Alice in Wonderland. Recent court orders have only bewildered the citizens. Interpreted literally, they seem to suggest that no villain in a film or serial should have a deity’s name. Nor should the title of any work of imagination refer to divine dance of destruction and creation.
Only those driven by a self-destructive impulse may dare to test the limits of free speech. Now, no one disagrees that the fundamental right to expression is not unfettered. Like all other rights, it can be reasonably restricted. Unfortunately, it’s never been easy to define ‘reasonable’. We live in an age when vigilantes can give any poodle a bad name and damn it to jail without bail.
Pushpesh Pant pushpeshpant@gmail.com
Former professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University