When governments rename places to 'promote' their ideologies

The Rajasthan government on Thursday formally notified the rechristening of three villages in Rajasthan, three days after approval from the Union Home Ministry came through.

From now on, Miyon ka Bara village in Barmer district will be known as Mahesh Nagar; Narpada in Jalore district as Narpura and Ismailpur, which falls under Jhunjhunu district, has been renamed as Pichanwa Khurd.

Although the state government hasn’t cited an official reason for renaming these villages, sources have suggested that the locals were facing issues because of the seemingly ‘Islamic sounding’ names.

For instance, Miyon ka Bara (now erstwhile) is a small village with about 2,000 people. The village is dominated by Hindus with barely four families belonging to the Muslim community. An official reportedly told the press that youth in the village had stopped receiving marriage proposals from neighbouring villages due to the “Muslim sounding” name of their village.

However, BJP MLA from Barmer, Hameersingh Bhayal, told The Indian Express that the demand to rename Miyon ka Bara was a decade old and that it has been renamed Mahesh Nagar due to the presence of a Shiva deity in the village.

This development comes on the heels of renaming of the iconic Mughalsarai railway junction in Uttar Pradesh to Deen Dayal Upadhyay junction.

Last month, the Yogi Adityanath-led-BJP government in UP announced that the Mughalsarai junction will be formally renamed after RSS ideologue Deen Dayal Uphadyay. (Upadhyay was found dead in mysterious circumstances near the Mughalsarai station in February 1968). BJP president Amit Shah, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath were present at the rechristening event. Later, the Mughalsarai Municipal Board was also renamed after the late Jan Sangh leader.

This is not the only time that Yogi Adityanath has commissioned renaming districts and villages in Uttar Pradesh. In fact, he had once told a TV channel, "Abhi toh aur naam badalne hai," The Economic Times has reported. In addition, most of these changes in name have been made only on vocal assertions of Yogi and haven’t been officially changed in the gazette.

Barely months after he was sworn in as the chief minister, Yogi Adityanath had already commissioned the following name changes: Urdu Bazar was changed to Hindi Bazar; Ali Nagar to Arya Nagar; Miya Bazar to Maya Bazar; Islampur to Ishwarpur and Humayun Nagar to Hanuman Nagar.

In an interview to a TV news channel, Yogi was seen defending his move, saying the current names were given by the Mughals after they invaded India and that now it’s time that these places were given their original names. In the same interview, he proclaimed that if required, he will not hesitate changing "Taj Mahal" to "Ram Mahal". The Opposition had castigated this move, calling it a brazen attempt to polarise the electorate.

However, it would be unfair to put the onus of changing names in UP only on Yogi’s shoulders. The state has seen places change their names with changing governments. In 2012, the Samajwadi government changed the names of eight districts which had been renamed by the previous Mayawati regime — Bheem Nagar was changed to Bahjoi; Prabuddha Nagar to Shamli; Pancheel Nagar to Hapur; Kanshiram Nagar to Kasganj; Mahamaya Nagar to Hathras;  Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj Nagar to Gauriganj; Rambai Nagar to Kanpur Dehat and JP Nagar to Amroha.