Kerala’s ‘m’ dash

But name change game costs no small change

So Kerala joins the League of Proudly Renamed Places. Such change is far from just nominal, merely naam ke vastey. There’s a grander impetus. The long and lengthening line of demanders insists that re-naming is a re-claiming – of tradition, heritage, parampara (paramparam in Kerala’s case?). Sure. But the bigger agenda is freeing ourselves from ‘slave mentality’, though many of us may not have known we had one till the advent of the now-not-so-new nationalistic re-minder.

Some names no longer needed to be made easier for un-nuanced Brit tongues. So festering Mysore or noisy Bangalore went back to ‘Mysuru’ and ‘Bengaluru’. ‘Keralam’ too is a return of the native. A hardy breed, having survived centuries of suppression. Increasingly, renaming is yet another nail in the kafan of our even-more vilified masters. Eg, Allahabad to ‘Prayagraj’, and, with no whiff of blasphemy, Aurangabad to ‘Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar’.

Mamata expectedly condemned the latest name-change as one more SIR, special instigative revision – this time to influence Kerala’s imminent assembly election. As proof she pointed to the Centre’s rejection of her long-standing demand to transmute West Bengal to ‘Bangla’. This state too is poll-bound in April/May; but it would be counterproductive for BJP-Dilli to play the same game there. That’s a different khela.

Speaking of Dilli as city not symbol of politi-potence, the ‘Keralam’ approval promptly prompted saffron MP Praveen Khandelwal to revive the call to rewind centuries and revert torevered ‘Indraprastha’. Nishchayah, thus ‘reclaiming’ of its ‘civilisational identity’ would reaffirm Bharat’s maha past and, more important, rebuff odious in-between interlopers. But there’s an awkward detail. The long-standing current name stems from a kosher king, Raja Dhilu who lived about 2,000 years ago. An 1170 AD inscription mentions ‘Dhilika which lay in the regions of Haryanaka’ (today’s ‘NCR’?).

Kerala could counter ‘anti-wallas’ with a more contemporary expression from above region. It could angrily exclaim, ‘What goes of your achan?’ Well, any renaming of public places means 200cr-500cr ‘goes’ from our amma-land.

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Alec Smart said, “It may not be that easy to make Khamenei a gaya-tollah.”

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