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Business News/ Opinion / Alexandria to Gurugram
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Alexandria to Gurugram

A brief history of re-nomenclature, a versatile tool that has served a wide variety of purposes, the first being personal glory

People move past a board bearing address of RSS office in Gurgaon on Thursday. Photo: PTI Premium
People move past a board bearing address of RSS office in Gurgaon on Thursday. Photo: PTI

Gurgaon has always had an identity crisis. The people I meet at parties say they live in DLF. The people I meet at places other than parties say they live in Gurgaon. This is because “I have a penthouse in DLF" has quite a nice ring to it, whereas “I have a penthouse in Gurgaon" sounds like a possible rural land scam.

On the day that their locality was renamed Gurugram, I tried calling up a few local friends to gauge their reactions, but they were weeping too bitterly to form coherent sentences. I don’t blame them. This changes everything. Their lives will be completely transformed. They have so much to ponder. Will real estate prices plummet? Will wearing dhotis become compulsory? Will Ramdev and Sri Sri get land at concessional rates? Will every residential complex have to reserve at least three parking spaces for cows? Will archery practice become the norm, and if so, who will pay for all the broken windows?

Only time will tell. Meanwhile, all we can do is try to place this action in its proper historical context, so that we can understand the underlying principles of governance. In this way, we will become better citizens.

Historically, administrative authorities in India have never focused much on actually building things, apart from palaces for themselves and memorials for their wives. Their primary purpose has been to issue orders or firmans, which are meant to classify, instruct or regulate the rest of us. As a result, throughout our history, there have been very few recorded examples of schools, hospitals or any other public facilities being built.

This was not always the case. In the very beginning, the Indus Valley civilization produced well-planned roads, public drainage systems and common bathing facilities. This is what led to their eventual disappearance. After a few centuries of this, the rulers and administrators of the Indus Valley civilization came to a fundamental realization. Far too much public money was being spent on the public, instead of on themselves. Steps were taken to rectify this, and the Indus Valley civilization disappeared soon after, giving way to the modern Indian state.

Since that time, this mistake has been avoided. If you go to your average district magistrate today and tell him, ‘Sir, now that villagers are installing toilets, why don’t you also construct an actual sewage system that connects the toilets to a series of pipes, the way you see in motion pictures of foreign countries,’ he will be genuinely hurt. ‘Me?’ he will say, while gesturing to a constable. ‘You except me to do this?’ As the constable takes you away in order to stuff a chilli up your backside, you will realize that you have misunderstood the scope of the district magistrate’s job. He is not here to do things for you. He is here to issue orders. The underlying principle of Indian governance is ‘Ask not what your government can do for you, ask what your government wants you to do.’

One of the simplest and most popular tools of this type of governance is re-nomenclature. Changing names involves very little work, except for painting a few signboards, and it shows that your heart is in the right place. It’s a versatile tool, which has traditionally served a wide variety of purposes.

The first and foremost purpose has been personal glory. The pioneer of this approach was, naturally enough, Alexander the Great, also the first person to think of adopting ‘the Great’ as a surname. His approach was simple. He named all his cities after himself. Other people found this very confusing (‘Where are you from?’ ‘Alexandria.’ ‘Me too!’), so they changed the names as soon as he was dead. This is why Alexandria Ariana, Alexandria Arachiosa and Alexandria Opiana, for example, are now known as Herat, Kandahar and Ghazni. Internationally, communists such as Lenin and Stalin have also been fond of this practice, which means that if Kanhaiya Kumar fulfills his early promise, there could be a Yechury City in our future.

Re-nomenclature has also been applied quite often to please the boss. When he took over as subedar of Bengal, Islam Khan changed the name of Dhaka to Jahangir Nagar, after his boss, the Emperor Jahangir. He was thwarted by disloyal Bengalis, who continued to refer to it as Dhaka. Meanwhile, over in Pakistan, Lyallpur was re-named Faisalabad in the hope that King Faisal of Saudi Arabia would give them money. It’s unclear how much this has yielded, but the Chinese are now putting in $2 billion, which means it should soon be renamed Jinpingabad.

Names also change as language and words evolve, which is why Gay Head, Massachusetts, changed its name to Aquinnah in 1997, while in 1991, a town in the Philippines decided that it would no longer be known as Sexmoan. However, Dildo, Newfoundland remains Dildo, as does Mianus, in the state of New York. One of the reasons why the US remains a great nation, which we all want to immigrate to, is that they stand by their principles.

Re-nomenclature is also a way of reinforcing ideologies and ethnicities. For example, during World War II, Hitler took an innocent German town and renamed it ‘The City of the Strength Through Joy Car near Fallersleben’ because they were producing the Volkswagen. Even for Germans, this was a bit of a tongue twister, but who was going to argue with Hitler? After the war, once they had confirmed that he was dead, it was renamed Wolfsburg. Volkswagen is still based there. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, they changed the name of Hindu Bagh to Muslim Bagh—because, obviously.

Closer to home, in 2011, West Bengal officially became Paschim Banga, which means every time someone says Bengal they are hurting my sentiments, especially because they never make this mistake with Odisha. Some of these efforts are also part of de-anglification, an ideological subroutine that involves wiping out the names of white people. Judging by our super enthusiastic response to the royal visit, these attempts have not been wholly successful.

We have to understand the efforts of the Haryana government in this context. By changing an already Indian name into an even more Indian name, the Haryana government has added another layer in the fight against colonialism. In this way, they are trying to cure deracinated sepoys and anti-national Porkistani sluts. This is fundamental. Without a strong base, nothing can be achieved.

The problem is, they are not pursuing this policy boldly enough. So many issues can be solved this way. Take the case of Murthal, where black-tongued people are saying women were raped and the police were criminally negligent, even though the police have already investigated themselves thoroughly. The public is upset. Arnab is shouting at people. Facebook is unnecessarily maligning them. As a result of this, governance is suffering and officers are getting demoralized. The solution to this is staring them in the face. All they have to do is rename Murthal.

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Published: 15 Apr 2016, 01:40 PM IST
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