Nwo thye wnat ot renmae Delhi (via PPP):
The Indian capital should be renamed Dehli to correct a 150-year-old mistake, according to historians in India. They have launched a campaign to correct the “mis-spelling”, which they say happened during British rule because the colonialists could not pronounce Hindi names.
K M L Misra, a former head of history at Agra College, said: “For 800 years Delhi was called Dehli but the British couldn’t manage the breathy sound of Hindi and the spelling of the city later came to reflect this.”
I presume the city would be called Newer Dehli. It isn’t a new idea:
What the British knew as Cawnpore is now Kanpur, the northern city of Muttra is Mathura, and the Ganges is known once more as Ganga… In 1995, Bombay became Mumbai after pressure from Hindu-nationalists to reinstate the original Marathi name. Contrary to popular belief, this was not a corruption of the British name but almost certainly derives from the Portuguese Bom Bahia, meaning Good Bay.A year later, the southern city of Madras – possibly a corruption of the Portuguese Madre di Dios – reverted to Chennai, the name that had been used by Tamils throughout the British period. Then, in 2000, the spelling of Calcutta was officially changed to Kolkata after pressure from the Communist state government to revert to a spelling that more closely reflected the Bangla pronunciation.
I’ve got no fondness for badly Anglicized names. Even old New York was once Nieuw Amsterdam. But the new name wouldn’t be entirely accurate either:
… even Dehli was a corrupted word. The pre-Mughal name was Dilli, which was derived from Dhillika, a Rajput name for the area which dates back to the 8th century.
I have the rename to trump all renames: let’s call everything Gondwanaland. It’s an Indian name after all. Problem solved.
U hit the nail on the head.
The names of places are as much a part of heritage as the brick and mortar.
Using names given by the British is not pandering to slave mentality, as many put it.
Changing names shows a certain sense of insecurity in who we are in the present
At the same time, changing things for the convenience of politicians and their antics is immaturity on the part of society.
I hate the word mumbai. For me its always BOMBAY.
damn straight.
Bombay Zindabad!
the name game is so filled with bullshit. i mean, i can understand if a predominantly black high school would not want to be called ‘jefferson davis high school.’
I agree.
For me, it will always be Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta.
Changing names is far, far easier than tackling tough problems and gets votes.
I don’t understand why Indians, and those in America who recently came from India, refer to Delhi as “deli” as in the place that sells sandwiches. Why do they try to make the city sound so amreekan? I felt like a fob in India pronouncing it “dhili.”
Nayee Dilli?
I am for the name change.
Naming something is to exercise power. The British had the power once and now the Indian people have it. Those politicians who support this were elected by the people, were they not? As far as I know it was a free and fair election.
To insist that the world call you by the name you prefer is a fundamental right.
-tef
The British did it and so should we ?? They were stupid, so should we…because we can
They were assholes, ruthless rulers, and now since we are free and so should we.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
As i said, just changing names because we can, is smack insecurity. It does not remind me of the British everytime i say Bombay.
On the same stupid politician logic….should we rename INDIA itself ?
Historically, we were always Bharat, and then Hindustan. The name India has gone through various foreign reiterations as explained here
So now what should we call it ??
Is it ok for some one to be called by the name given by a bully in middle school, even when, they are grown up?
I do not think it is a matter of stupidity or non-stupidity. A name in the end is arbitrary. I believe people have a fundamental right to name themselves.
I am not aware of any major adverse effect of name changes. Would like to hear your thoughts., though.
And this is not just an Indian phenomenon. There is St. Petersburg and then there is Sri Lanka and I believe Niger used to accept two pronounciations, French and English, but I think now insists there is only one way – the French sounding way.
Why not just leave the names as they were?
The names of cities have been changing as each new nation (Mughals before the Brits) came. Also, like it or not, the British are a part of India’s history. So why get all knitpicky and change the names? For all intents and purposes, I still say Madras and Bombay, albeit unconsciously most of the time. But the point remains: these names are familiar to most of the population as well as most of the world; changing them is simply petty.
Among the costs of name changes:
Businesses have to reprint their stationary and letterhead. They have to inform all their clients about their new address, even after not moving.
Postal services and shipping companies have to update their directories. Consider the huge Fedex sorting center in Memphis. If some new guy on the job sees a package addressed to “Madras”, but does does not yet know it is now “Chennai”, he has to take time (which costs money) to make sure it gets to the right place.
Airlines have to reprint their schedules and baggage tickets.
City governments incur costs on putting up new street signs, or updating government websites.
This is just a few. I’m sure there are other costs I’ve overlooked.
This sounds like megawatts of BS, tonnes of crap and gigaloads of stupidity rolled into one. What’s worse it’s coming not from chauvinistic political parties, but from (so-called)academia.
This takes it back to the same debate. I am sure when people are speaking in Hindi, they call it Dilli, and when they are speaking in English, they call it Delhi. Same was the case with Bombay/Mumbai. When speaking in Marathi, we always referred it as Mumbai, in English Bombay, and when speaking in local Bambaiiyya(slangish), we used to call it “Bambai”. It was just natural to call it that way.
tef, You obviously are not aware of the costs that goes in changing these names, especially big metro cities.(all official documents, legalese, letterheads, govt notifications…blahblah). When Bbay’s Sahar airport was changed to “Chatrapati Shivaji Airport”, there was a story that just changing the main neon sign of the airport took 2 crores!! BLODDYTWOCRORES spent on a neon sign, when Bbay’s local municipality’s budget deficit was 700 crores.
Reminds me of a funny incident: When B’bay was renamed M’bai, Bombay Port Trust(BPT) changed to Mumbai Port Trust(MPT). Now BPT staff quarters had these intricate BPT logos carved on the outside of their cement structure balconies. ie. the logo is part of the balcony structure. Stupid officials even went upto the extent of assessing whether those balconies need to be pulled down and new MPT logo carved in. And mind you, these are all two-storey(in US it will be 3-storey) buildings, not ground floor individual houses. Ultimately sense prevailed due to some sorta staff intervention itself. So, there you have it. All Mumbai Port Trust employees now live in Bombay Port Trust housing colonies 🙂 (Not sure, if they’ve really changed it to MPT in recent times).
In my family everybody calls it Dilli. Its called Delhi only in the presence of non desis.
Sandeep,
I don’t think it is “petty”. I am not sure of Delhi, but name changes in other cities were made by politicians who represented the will of the majority.
Would you say that most of the opposition to name changes comes from upper middle class residents? Is there something else to the story?
KXB,
Businesses have to reprint their stationary and letterhead. They have to inform all their clients about their new address, even after not moving. I think a name change will not lead to mailmen forgetting to deliver mail addressed to a “Delhi” address. Letterhead gets replaced eventually. You change the name on the letterhead once the stationery runs out.
I believe they donÂ’t actually read the address. Packages are scanned for an alphanumeric code. Partial based on city name. As I said no one will stop delivering because the city is spelled differently. Both city spellings could be accepted. I am sure a quick update to the their website will result in accurately printed labels.
Same as stationery. Even if you change it all at once; how many airlines are flying into Delhi. Lets say a 1000. Even then I think all told the total cost would be less than 50K USD.
City can change the signs gradually. I doubt most of the street signs have the state name on them.
Updating govt websites can be done whenever the site gets updated, once a month perhaps. And I hear the cost is minimal, I mean really really minimal : )
Suhail,
Would the sign have been replaced at some point in the future? I would advocate a phased change of signs. And what the heck are you doing with a 500K USD sign? : )The money should be better spent.
I am not generally up for name changes, but once a name has been changed, ones got to respect it – so no more Bombay and Madras for me. I kind of feel that Mumbai and Chennai infact sound a lot cooler! So does a name change have any significant positive impact? Sure it does – it gives a city a new identity. Just as changing the name of a consumer product would (Brand Management anyone?). To me the name Mumbai and Chennai are more synonomus with so the called ‘India Shining’ era; and Bombay and Madras just bring back memories of the ‘License Raj’ era !!
As for the cost factor – cost to one, is revenue to another ! In any case, those signs and boards probaly needed to be replaced 🙂
Now, not to pick on you Al. But why is this so??? Why do we desis change pronounciations of desi proper nouns when speaking to non-desis? No offense to the 2Gs (2nd gens) here, but why do a lot of you pronunce your first name in a very anglocized/american way, even when you very well know how to pronounce it the right way? Complex ?
Got to learn from the French !!!
You change it depending on which language you’re speaking. Like how it’s London in English and Londres in Spanish, unless you want to be extra-authentic.
To complete the They Might be Giants reference, why they changed it I can’t say, maybe they just liked it better that way. Elsewhere the singer admits “Its nobody’s business but the turks”
We could learn a thing or two from this. If people in India want to change the name to Dehli or Deli or even Bodega, it is their (loosely, our) right to do so. If the people (through their representatives) want it let them have it.
It would cost money, so what? Money is spent on sports and museums. Doesnt make them any less worthwhile expenditures on that basis alone.
Geography is just another layer of the palimpsest that is colonial history. If the janta wants to reclaim one aspect of it, even if for purely nominal or symbolic reasons, I say go ahead. The value is symbolic, but symbolism is important.
Thats democracy. See above.
Lastly, cities can have multiple names, such as New York/Nueva York (a nontrivial amount of mail is addressed to addresses in Nueva York, especially uptown), London/Londres, Tokyo/funky characters not displayable here, etc.
There’s something charmingly pre-modern about the way Indians keep changing the names of cities. I can’t say I like all the reasoning behind these name changes (I generally loathed the change to Mumbai), but it’s unfair to dismiss the underlying sentiments as mere insecurities. I think the issue is more accurately described as a culture clash between traditional and modern India. Many Indian women change their first names after marriage; people who adopt sadhuhood change their names – it’s quite a traditional Indian concept, really – the name change. It’s telling that those who think this sort of thing is utterly pointless are the urbanized or modernized, for whom a name involves tangible importance (letterhead, passports, etc.), or those who think that “today” is the penultimate point in human progress and going “backwards” (to any point in the past) is pointless. For the majority of Indians who still remain un-modernized however, “today” holds no special significance. It goes without saying that passports and letterhead are of little concern to them too. For the vast majority of Indians, India itself and different places in India can be known by a variety of names with no consternation – Bharat/India/Hindustan, Bombay/Mumbai/Bambai, Dilli/Delhi/Deyhli, Varanasi/Benares/Kashi, Prayag/Allahabad etc.
It simple. Assertive people have assertive leaders.
Assertive people want to do things their way. They want to NAME not get named. (There is a difference ..assertive people know it)
tef
You do make some good points and you have given me some things to think about. However, I wonder why we take pride in say, the Palace of Tipu Sultan in Mysore, but ache at the sights of the old British Garrisons and Catonments. I mean, each represent some form of subjugation in the past.
vurdlife:people in India want to change the name to Dehli or Deli or even Bodega, it is their (loosely, our) right to do so. If the people (through their representatives) want it let them have it.
Well said. Let the locals decide whether to call it Chennai or OOBDYEHBDFF.
M. Nam
Actually tef,
Nevermind. I see the error of my comment. The Mughals did mix with their subjects to some extent and had religious and cultural values that weren’t completely foreign. The majority of Indians have at least some mughal blood in them. I understand this in the same way Goans and Malayalis from Northern Kerala and Calicut have pride in their Portuguese blood/culture.
VM
This 2nd gen’er uses the anglicized way of pronouncing her first name because she can’t properly pronounce it the, er, proper way. Never learned to speak Hindi. Not planning to. Not a complex, just the way it happened. Never gave it much thought.
The whole naming this strikes me as the kind of thing beaurocrats love because it is basically busy work. But, I’m not Indian, so it’s not for me to say. Bombay, Mumbai. Whatever. It’s your choice. Knock yourselves out.
*This kind of reminds me of the Friends where Phobe learns she can legally change her name to anything she wants and chooses Princess Something something (can’t remember anything besides the Princess part). Heck, who wouldn’t want to totally change the name of a city? It’s fun. I personally think Boston, my (ugh) current home, should be renamed something closer to the reality of the place. Like: “Billions of Dollars for a Leaky Tunnel; meanwhile the T runs like Crap and Wanna Pay Manhattan Prices for that Hovel?” Or not.
MD
If have I to read more into it, I sense TOTAL indiffernce – yet how ironic – ek cup chai 🙂
There are Malayalis with Portugese blood/culture ?!
Everything comes from Portugal. Don’t you listen to your uncles? 🙂
Heck yes there are. Northern Malayali states like Kannur as well as cities like Calicut were Portuguese settlements as well as a refuge for Goans escaping the Inquisition. I’m half Malayali on my dad’s side and upon a recent visit to India, I found out my great grandpa on my Malayali side was named Rosario since he came from Cananore aka. Kannur(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannur)
As for Calicut, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozhikode
Because Anglo-Indians are a minority few Indians even think of. Muslims on the otherhand are an integral part of India now. To call the Mughal rule subjugation today, will result in 150 million Indians’ displeasure .
This is a part of the reason why Indian history textbooks today, carry a more white-washed version of events from the time of Islamic invasions and rule .
Anybody know hoe much of the tax payor money was spent in the renaming expenditure?
Chris
“Kolkata” ? I had no bloody idea that they had changed that too.
Sorry, to me it’s still Madras, Calcutta and Bombay.
If you want to change the name of something, why not change the official name of India? Burma became Myanmar, why doesn’t India demand that all official references to it call it “Bharat” or “Hindustan” ? After all, the cost of changing all of the official papers, seals, flags, emblems, etc is but a pittance, right?
I can see it in my family history now. My parents immigrated from Gondwanaland (then known as India) in …
F it, just call it Newark and have it over with 😉
It’s how the Bongalis say it, mon.
Theo, what rock have you been under?
I’m not fussed either way really. So what if it’s had the British name for the last few hundred years? Delhi has had about 8 names through its history, Mumbai perhaps as many. A city’s name is only one part of its identity. Did Mumbai become a different place to live when it became Mumbai? None of the changed names, nor the proposed names are new, the names are being returned to what they were.
Kolkata is the Bengali pronounciation, so I for one am glad it’s been changed. You are all quite entitled to your view that “FOR ME IT WILL ALWAYS BE BOMBAY!” but once you’re dead, few will remember your valliantly stubborn intransigence.
I’m not saying I am campaigning to get any cities to change their names, but if it happens I’m fine with it. I certainly don’t think it reflects any insecurity.
About changing India’s name…well perhaps it’s a valid point if cities’ names are changing, but I think 200 million-odd people might have something to say about ‘Hindustan’.
ms,
i share your reaction. there’s no port in my veins, except for when i drink it. the only people i’ve met with portuguese ancestry are people from Goa. i thought most malayalees were the similarly endogamous, especially a few generations ago.
i’ve never been to calicut/kozhikode, does anyone have examples of portuguese culture/remnants thereof?
note well: my 100% malayalee family raised me to be a good orthodox penne, i.e. to be irrationally irritated at the presumptuous portuguese, three-hundred and-fifty some years after they initially pissed off my relatives (what? there are OTHER christians besides those who are loyal to the pope? NO!), so i’m a wee bit biased.
Kolkata didn’t exist as such before the British, but that’s besides the point 🙂 All these name changes happen in a political context, as described in the excerpt above. e.g. Burma–>Myanmar was done by the SPDC–the dictatorial military junta that rules Burma; I’m not going to legitimize their rule by going along with their pronouncements. I know other people who take the position that they don’t want to legitimize British imperialism by continuing to call it Burma.
I agree it’s not a big deal (to me, anyway, as an outsider), but just wanted to point out that there’s usually a backstory that helps you understand what’s going on.
I know at least one Portuguese-descent Bong Christian.
ahahaha! Nicely put. Interestingly, although I’m cool with name changes, for me my hometown will always be Bombay. Now all I need is some way to solidify my intransigence in the collective memory….hmmmm….sounds like a Sunday’s work.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I think the usage of Hindustan was actually a Gandhian compromise to appease Muslims, and that it is a more palatable alternative to the more Hindu-based Bharat.
I guess then if we track down to the great epic of Mahabharata, We can call Dehli (or Delhi) as Indraprastha. As we already know a twon near Delhi as Hastinapur is the same old capital city of Dhrutarashtra. Then Pandavas moved it to Indraprastha (Delhi)
The name changes are stupid, I live in mumbai and I have the right to say that changing this name is not correct. This is my city where i live. My views should also be taken for consideration. Politicians think they can change anything let them change their own names and not the names of cities. The world knows Bombay for its talent and being the Financial hub for India little do they know of Mumbai. I still like the sound of Bombay and yes its a Portuguese name which was gifted to England pre independence so the british has nothing to do with the name. They left the city clean and what we have now is totally Indian cleanliness (Bags and people spitting like its no business, and making the roads their public toilets. Let the people of india focus on hygiene rather than name changes… Now Dig this ……. Mumbai
How so! Individuals can change their name, every group has the right to determine what they call themselves and what they dont,same with their cities. countries have gone through name change. all these events have allways been political, what right does any one have to tell others not to be political?
Not to offend you my friend its not that you can change names everytime you have a new party elected. If you are a A party and are in power you may change the name to xyz to make you people happy. Tomorrow your rival B party comes into power they will change the name again to abc… Where are you heading…. Again it you look out of the trains you will see people making the railway tracks their public toilets they litter paper and plastics outside shops roads get dug up like no business…. Change this first and then decide to change the names. Change peoples lives and give them a better place to live. Then think about name changes. By changing names of cities and country you are not changing the mindsets of people they are still the same they were before the name change… SO WHAT HAVE YOU ACHIEVED… Dig that again… Mumbai
With all due respect to your views. I think you need to consider everyones views coz the very individuals you are referring to are members of the so called groups. I do not support change in names even if my group does and i have been open about it. This is our history. You cant wipe out the past. Just by a name change… What have you accomplished by doing that… Again Change peoples lifes who live in these cities and then think about name changes for cities. Dig that again…. Mumbai
yes but if a majority does it has the right to change it. DIG IT.
:”yes but if a majority does it has the right to change it. DIG IT.”
I think we need to suggest for a voter’s poll on this website. This should tell you if there is a Majority in the first place. Any suggestions for keeping the city clean or stopping people from urinating on the roads? Or for intruders entering into Mumbai from another country? U seem to have all the ideas. Atleast we can work on a consensus with this one… Now can you Dig this…. Mumbai
whats with adding urination on all this. Is that all you can dig? The point simply is names are going to change. dig it istambul
Who cares about a majority on a website? its the residents whose majority counts, dig it?
“The point simply is names are going to change. dig it istambul”
“Who cares about a majority on a website? its the residents whose majority counts, dig it?”
I think you need to wait for the next maharashtra elections things will be different. Dig this one for sure… My group now agrees with me. That is Majority. Dig it…