Names can be as unexceptional as symbolic. However, politics takes the ritual of christening to another level, where nomenclatures are imbued with messaging, consonant with ideologies, roots and beliefs. When the Modi regime renamed the Union government’s citadels of power vested for nearly eight decades in the South and North Blocks respectively as Seva Teerth and Kartavya Bhavan, the names signified the ruling BJP’s grandiose sense of purpose—at least for popular consumption. Seva Teerth, which houses the Prime Minister’s Office, National Security Council and the Cabinet Secretariat, translates as a place sanctified by ‘service to citizens’, while Kartavya Bhavan, which means ‘house of duty’, is home to several key ministries including finance, defence and information & broadcasting.
The etymologies are entrenched more in Sanskrit than colloquial Hindi. From the start, the BJP and some of the newer parties in the Hindi heartland such as Samajwadi Party were inclined towards purging the Hindi language of the influence of Urdu, Maithili, Awadhi and Bhojpuri, and bringing its usage as close to Sanskrit as was conceivable. To the BJP, the change represented unshackling names that originated in the colonial era. But honestly, were South and North Blocks difficult to pronounce? Drivers in the national capital, who understood the earlier names perfectly well, might take time to internalise their earnest-sounding replacements. But that’s how the BJP wants the new order to be.
In 2016, two years after Narendra Modi was first sworn in as Prime Minister, Race Course Road, which housed the PM’s official residence, was renamed Lok Kalyan Marg to convey a sense of openness and accessibility because the phrase means people’s welfare. For all intent and purpose, the sprawling housing complex is one of the most tightly-guarded areas in Delhi, and with good reason too. In 2022, Rajpath or King’s Way (music to the erstwhile colonialists’ ears), the premier ceremonial boulevard that runs from Rashtrapati Bhavan to National Stadium via India Gate, was rechristened Kartavya Path (to signal duty-based governance). This 3-km stretch hosts the Republic Day pageant and was part of the ambitious revamped Central Vista Avenue.
The renaming project was not simply intended to obliterate the vestiges of British colonial rule. If that was the case, the target would be confined to the elite zones containing the repositories of power. Remember, the palimpsests holding together Indian history are voluminous and have been rewritten over and over again.
The BJP’s aspiration to stamp its own version of history will be realised if and when Delhi gets the name some want: Indraprastha. So far, it’s the Delhi MPs and MLAs who have flagged this demand, claiming Indraprastha was the capital of the Pandavas. They urged the Centre to rename the Old Delhi railway station and the international airport as Indraprastha. But historians such as Swapna Liddle, who have researched and written about Delhi’s history, maintained it was not supported by archaeological evidence.
Facts—or their absence—do not deter the BJP’s elected representatives in their crusade, if it can be called that, to change names. Senior Delhi minister Pravesh Sahib Singh insisted that Talkatora Stadium should be called Bhagwan Maharishi Valmiki Stadium, ostensibly to wipe out a ‘Mughal’ resonance. Talkatora is a portmanteau of ‘tal’ meaning tank and ‘katora’ indicating a bowl. During Firoz Shah Tughlaq’s reign, it was a natural depression that functioned as a water harvesting system fed by different streams. The BJP remembers it as a battlefield where the Marathas clashed with the Mughal army when they raided Delhi. Singh’s choice of name was dictated by politics: Valmiki was the author of the Ramayana and a Dalit.
The polemics over name-changing cannot simply be framed as an instrument to ‘correct historical wrongs’, which then inevitably becomes a BJP versus others, or a ‘secular’ versus ‘communal’ debate.
What was the Congress regime’s agenda but to enable one family to appropriate India’s post-1947 history as though the multiple strands that weave together the complex narrative of an ongoing story didn’t matter? According to an RTI query, by the early 2000s, as many as 12 central and 52 state schemes, 28 sports tournaments and trophies, 19 stadiums, five airports and ports, 98 educational institutions, 51 awards, 15 fellowships, 15 national parks and sanctuaries, 39 hospitals and medical institutions, and 74 roads, buildings and places were named after Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Of course, to impart a semblance of neutrality, every city has a road named after Mahatma Gandhi, which invariably triggers a controversy on who was a bigger catalyst in the freedom struggle: Gandhi, Nehru or someone else.
In 2016, the Modi government re-titled the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Society, set up in April 1966, as the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library, to display the lives, contributions and visions of all the PMs. From the BJP’s viewpoint, it was a way of righting a historical wrong—a point that went undisputed, excepting for dissenting murmurs from the Congress.
However, when the present regime changed the historic Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act with Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission Gramin—abbreviated as VB-G RAM G—what was the purpose, except to deny the Congress ownership of a legislation whose benefits to the rural populace were undeniable? Does the insertion of Ram, even as a clever acronym, have nothing to do with religion?
In her essay titled Renaming Places in India: Conjuring the Present by Exorcising a Past, academic Rachna Mehra cites the example of replacing a road in Lutyens’ Delhi named after Aurangzeb, “considered to be a bigot by many scholars”, with the more benign A P J Abdul Kalam in 2015. “Both figures belonged to the same minority community, but replacing Emperor Aurangzeb with Kalam’s name indicates the kind of loyalty expected from a citizen who in today’s day and age needs to prove his credentials by contributing to the welfare of the country,” writes Mehra.
Changing names is embedded in the RSS’s political worldview. So, the spree—which has had the most traction in Uttar Pradesh—is unstoppable. However, the gains to be reaped from renaming are indeterminate, unlike the more visible displays of minority-bashing and persecution that deepen communal polarisation.
Radhika Ramaseshan | Columnist and political commentator
(Views are personal)