Sandip Roy: The act of renaming places is a powerful tool in politics

But then I am not the President of the United States claiming to have brokered peace between Azerbaijan and Albania.

At a European conclave in Copenhagen held in early October, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama told French President Emmanuel Macron jokingly that he should apologise because he did not congratulate them “on the peace deal that President Trump made between Albania and Azerbaijan", while Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, chuckled.

The joke was there is no conflict between Albania and Azerbaijan. They don’t even share a border. Donald Trump had confused Armenia and Albania. Armenia and Azerbaijan were the countries that signed a pact in the White House this August promising to end decades of fighting.

Trump sometimes calls Armenia Albania. On another occasion at a press conference with the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer he bragged, “We settled Aber-baijan and Albania", mangling the name of one country and mis-identifying the other.

Trump’s geographical gaffe has caused much snickering even among those who themselves would not be able to point out Albania, Armenia and Azerbaijan on a map. But they also miss the larger point.

To Trump, the actual names of the countries aren’t as important as the peace deals he claims to broker among them. They are just shapes on a map, notches on his belt as part of his Mission Possible to garner a Nobel Peace Prize. The Albanian Prime Minister should be careful. If he pokes too much fun at the US President, Trump could well rename his country Armenia.

After all, one of his first acts to Make America Great Again was to decree that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America. Mexico rolled its eyes but the White House was serious. It issued a proclamation on “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness" and announced the Gulf of Mexico should be henceforth called Gulf of America “in recognition of this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation’s economy." It’s not just the Gulf of Mexico. He also said the sports team the Washington Commanders should go back to their old politically incorrect name, Washington Redskins.

Comedians might chortle, but for Trump, writes Congress member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor in The Week, “the act of renaming isn’t just about updating a map or a sports roster; it’s an art form, a branding exercise, and a power play." The power play bit is the part most of us miss in this game of geographical rebranding. Long before Trump, the British and other colonising powers renamed places across much of their colonies in India and Africa. “It was an act of linguistic conquest, asserting dominance and reshaping identity", writes Tharoor. “Today, many countries are still in the arduous process of shedding these colonial aliases, reclaiming their historical and cultural nomenclature."

India is one of those countries.

In fact, India could offer some renaming mentorship and guidance in exchange for tariff concessions as part of its ongoing negotiations with the US. This is an area in which India has considerable expertise.

An old journalistic hand once told me that he had discovered an entire department in the Left Front-led government in West Bengal in the 1980s whose job was to look into renaming places, to evaluate the pros and cons of new names and figure out the work involved. It sounded deliciously Kafkaesque. One can almost imagine a minister of state (independent charge) for “renaming roads, programmes and cities".

Tharoor once quipped that the NDA government was a name-changer rather than a game-changer. But sometimes changing a name is also about changing the rules of the game.

In India it’s usually been done for a few clear reasons. One is the decolonisation process Tharoor is referring to. Thus Kolkata’s Dalhousie Square, named after Lord Dalhousie, the former governor-general of India, became B.B.D. Bagh after independence to honour freedom fighters Benoy (Basu), Badal (Gupta) and Dinesh (Gupta) who assassinated the inspector-general of prisons in that very square in 1930 before killing themselves.

There are other reasons to propose renaming as well. Historical comeuppance—Maharana Pratap vs Akbar. Regime change—Nehru-Gandhis make way for the icons of the current party. Dreams of a golden past—Gurgaon to Gurugram. Local roots—Madras to Chennai. Local pronunciation—Calcutta to Kolkata. Even “bad" Muslims vs “good" Muslims—Aurangzeb to A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. And a personal favourite—name change can be a way to annoy overbearing superpowers. That’s why the Communist government in West Bengal cheekily renamed Harrington Street as Ho Chi Minh Sarani. It allowed them to honour a Communist icon and also get under the skin of the Americans and the British whose consulates were on that street. And remain so to date.

Trump has just added a couple more reasons to rename things. For him, it is an easy way to make America great again (Gulf of America) and show the finger to those he derides as the “politically correct woke left" (Washington Redskins). He also gleefully renames his political opponents, mocking them with nicknames that he hopes will stick. Thus Joe Biden became Sleepy Joe, Hillary Clinton, Crooked Hillary, and Ted Cruz became Lying Ted. Trump is not just making fun of them. He is cutting them down to size, sometimes literally, as when Senator Marco Rubio became Little Marco.

Of course it is true that just a change of name does not change the essence of things. The Amrit Udyan in Rashtrapati Bhavan is still Mughal Gardens in design and aesthetics despite the change in moniker. 7 Race Course Road might become 7 Lok Kalyan Marg but it will remain a bungalow designed by Robert Tor Russel, who was also the architect of Connaught Place aka Rajiv Chowk. And despite the best efforts of those who gave it that name, Rajiv Chowk never really caught on beyond the Metro station in it.

In her book Delhi in Thy Name, Adrija Roychowdhury writes that if Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar had had his way, Connaught Circus would have become Indira Circus and it would encircle Connaught Place aka Rajiv Chowk as if the assassinated mother’s arms were embracing her assassinated child, a bit of urban planning that managed to be both mawkish and macabre at once. But Connaught Place has stubbornly remained CP.

Whether the new name catches on or not, the act of renaming is a powerful tool in a politician’s arsenal. In one act, a politician can put one historical figure in its place and pay tribute to another. When the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Society (NMML) in Delhi was renamed Prime Ministers’ Memorial Museum and Library in 2023, Congress leaders cried foul, accusing the ruling party of trying willy-nilly to erase Nehru and his legacy. The ruling party dismissed those claims saying the Congress was only hell-bent on protecting the legacy of one family, while they were being inclusive by dedicating the building to all prime ministers, not just one.

The feisty exchanges just go to show that names do matter. What’s in a name, William Shakespeare famously asked. Sometimes it turns out, a lot. Perhaps that’s why in India we always say, “And what is your good name?"

And if the name is not good enough, no worries. We know that whether in America or in India, a good re-name might be a shortcut to get to Acche Din.

Cult Friction is a fortnightly column on issues we keep rubbing up against.

Sandip Roy is a writer, journalist and radio host. He posts @sandipr