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So it’s done! City names in Karnataka have been finally changed to their native/local origins:
Bangalore = Bengalooru
Mysore = Mysooru
Mangalore = Mangalooru
Shimoga = Shivamogga
Hubli = Hubballi
Belgaum = Belagaavi
No offense to Kannada, but the first three names sound like the cute versions of the city names. Of course, it sucks to have things changing in India that have no substantial impact on anyone’s welfare whatsoever except the cultural jingoists perhaps. I wonder if we should have a referendum process in place for such drastic measures that affect everyone in a city.
How does it affect anyone, you ask? Well, take the example of a simple change in a road’s name. Ask the taxi driver to take you to Netaji Subhash Chandra Marg in Mumbai, he will give you a befuddled look. Correct yourself to say, Marine Drive and his face lights up. Chances are that a majority of city’s resident might not be aware of this renaming exercise. Imagine if we had a Google/Yahoo maps-like service in India (there is something similar, I know) and you want to locate a certain address. Now, being an ‘official’ service, you’ll have only official names in its database so punching in Marine Drive would probably give you ‘no results’. Probably you could get around by having both names but imagine the duplication involved. What if the name changes again? Anyway, technological solutions aside, its a big bureaucratic mess with no payoff.
Amidst the Chhatrapati Shivaji renaming exercise in Bombay..err..Mumbai during the Sena rule, I cracked up seeing a RK Laxman cartoon showing a boy pointing to a Shivaji’s statue and asking his mother, what was his name before they named him Chhatrapati Shivaji? Like that boy, we try to revert back to our ‘rich cultural past’ and just end up being confused about our present.
Update: Govindraj hits the nail on the head when he points out that the Karnataka government’s legacy is merely restricted to such superfluous political stunts that in no way have improved life in Bangalore. The ‘bankruptcy of ideas’ that he talks about shows a general apathy for the spirit of Bangalore that they ought to be more faithful to rather than indulging in superficial name changes. The same happened with Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. It is a shameless attempt of the natives to emphasize their presences in a rapidly-evolving cosmopolitan city.
[tags]Bangalore, Bengalooru, renaming, Karnataka[/tags]
by Patrix | on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 12:00 pm | 
India, Politicking . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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November 3rd, 2006 at 2:03 pm reply
Bloghopper, by that logic, how does renaming everything in sight serve anything? How about keeping things as they are and focusing on the real issue of class divide in Bangalore coz I think that is fueling this business.
November 4th, 2006 at 1:26 am reply
FYI, the new names are how one would write them in kannada. The english names have now changed to match their vernacular counterparts. I dont think anyone would write bombay in marathi. They would have written it as mumbai, no ? So whats the big deal ?
November 4th, 2006 at 6:21 am reply
The real motive behind all these name changes is to get cheap political mileage. This also helps to divert attention of the people from other pressing issues faced by people and hide incompetence of government authorities. There are many other issues including crumbling city infrastructure in Bangalore which hardly gets any government attention besides occasional lip service.
But Bangalore silk, Mysore Pak will retain their name and still be popular.
November 5th, 2006 at 8:41 am reply
im confused by all these name changes :(
November 13th, 2006 at 1:04 pm reply
i vote with bloghopper. that i am a kannadiga is secondary (and more likely, that is what keeps me from being more vociferous on this topic). after all, i have lived in mumbai through the ‘aamchi mumbai marathi mumbai’ phase! so at worst, we are no worse than you :-). karnataka is way behind in issues such as this, when you see the name changes in other southern states like tn, ap and kerala.
re: “how does renaming everything in sight serve anything?”
patrix, maybe you should revert back to pratik!
- s.b.
p.s.: brijesh, should it not be ‘mysooru paaka’?
November 16th, 2006 at 3:02 pm reply
Brijesh, You got it right! The whole point of the renaming exercise is to score some cheap political points that are at best short-term and do no good to the welfare of the people they argue for.
Neel, I bet everyone is.
Some body, for someone who is ’some body’, it is strange that you would lend so much importance to a mere name. By citing similar bad examples in other states, you are not answering the core question - how does this help the average Bangalorean? I had vehemently opposed the Mumbai change too, you would have heard about it if I had a blog then.
The patrix-pratik analogy is bloody hilarious! Thanks for that.