What is there in a name change???

Well the biggest issue to have rocked Bangalore in the past one week has been the suggested (or rather forced) name change to Bengaluru.

Now there have been cover stories, radio chat shows etc on this. An interesting argument by a college student during one of those live shows on radio was

"First of all improve the condition of roads here in this city. Then you call it whatever you want to."

Well that sums it up.

Now back to the name changing habit of our cities, which are obviously based on the social ethos of the local population.

Well with this change except for Delhi all the other major cities have undergone a name change.

Good old Madras has become Chennai
Swanky Bombay changed to Mumbai
Communist Calcutta became bengali Kolkata
Techno Bangalore will become Bengaluru

Whats left...
Hyderabad to Hyderabulu (i dont know whats the original suggested change)
Delhi to Dilli, else Nayi Dilli.

I do not have any issues with this name change. When Tri+Van+Drum changed to Thiruvananthapuram, none of us raised any issue in Kerala. But when Mumbai underwent the name change, I heard a lot of grumbling in Kerala, mostly because it was brought about by Shiv Sena. But I doubt if the Marathis had any problem with it.

An interesting thing is that when I travelled Kingfisher for the first time, the GPS in the flight was showing Bangalore as Bengaluru. Imagine, the techno savvy Vijay Mallya himself, calling his city by that name, thats something. I feel the local people would prefer it to be named in a manner thats suitable for their local language/dialect whatever. What is wrong in that?

The problem is with all non-kannadigas (in this case) who have difficulty in pronouncing the name now. I would say please adjust.

All said and done. There should be a limit to which you go about changing names. You may ask, who draws the limit, I have no clue. But it gets to you when you call Connaught Place as Rajiv Chowk (politically motivated) and VT station, Chathrapati Shivaji terminus ( religiously motivated). If you want to take off anything remotely British from India, its a tough ask.

~sujith