Bombay or Mumbai? The Name Debate Goes On

[Guest guest]

You say Bombay and I say Mumbai. You say Calcutta and I say Kolkata.

 

The old song about pronunciation – "Po-tay-to, po-tah-to; to-may-to,

to-mah-to" – could be the refrain of most Indians, as well as other

citizens of former colonial territories who are bent on dropping the

Westernised versions of city names.

 

In 1995, the city council of Bombay renamed India's largest city

Mumbai, after the Hindu goddess Mumbadevi. Nine years on, the

financial and entertainment hub is still most commonly known as

Bombay, although most of the world including the US government and

the European Union officially accepts Mumbai.

 

Bombay's re-christening triggered the renaming of several Indian

cities in a show of muscle-flexing by municipal officials.

 

Madras in southern India – which gave its name to a cloth print

popular in the 1960s – became Chennai, a shortened version of the

name of an Indian who once owned the land on which the city grew.

 

The eastern city of Calcutta – famous in British history for the

imprisoning of colonials in the "Black Hole of Calcutta" – has

become Kolkata.

 

This renaming can create peculiar problems for some people. Take

tour operator Hameed Shahul, for instance. He noted that since the

southern state of Kerala renamed the old city of Calicut six years

ago, some tourists have insisted they want to visit both Calicut and

Kozhikode – which is the city's new name.

 

"I have to convince tourists that both cities are the same," says

Shahul.

 

But many top institutions have stuck with the old names. It's still

Bombay High Court, Madras High Court, Calcutta High Court and Cochin

High Court since altering these would require an act of India's

Parliament.

 

The Bombay Stock Exchange, Bombay Gymkhana club and the University

of Madras also have retained the old names on grounds of tradition.

When the Kerala city of Cochin was renamed Kochi, administrators at

the Cochin University of Science and Technology kept the old name

because they feared the school could be confused with Japan's Kochi

University.

 

"Some people argue that by changing names India is becoming more

patriotic," says K.V. Kunjikrishnan, the university's registrar,

referring to nationalist politicians' desire to do away with

colonial names. "But I strongly feel that it is a political smoke

screen to impress people and get votes."

 

Sharda Dwivedi, author of two books on Bombay, says revisions

distort history.

 

"You can't eradicate 300 years of history," she says. "I personally

think the collective memory of people is what really matters, even

in terms of heritage.

 

"The name Bombay immortalised a city that was Kipling's birthplace,"

she says of author and poet Rudyard Kipling, the first Briton to win

the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. The name, though, is of

Portuguese origin – bom bahia, meaning "good bay".

 

Sometimes renaming proposals are provoked by misplaced beliefs that

old names are linked to British or Portuguese colonial history.

 

A couple of years ago, downtown Bombay's Laburnum Road was to be

renamed due to the British ring to the name.

 

"Then someone said, `But that's a tree, not an Englishman'," recalls

Dwivedi. The road gets its name from the golden-yellow flowered,

Indian native laburnum trees lining it.

 

To be politically correct, some businessmen carry two sets of

visiting cards, presenting one with the city's new name to

government officials and the other with the older, better-known name

at international seminars.

 

"They don't want to upset protocol if they're dealing with any

officials," says Gul Tekchandani, chief investment officer of Sun

F&C, a Bombay-based brokerage.

 

There is reason for caution. In Bombay in the late 1990s, Hindu

nationalist Shiv Sena party workers blackened signs on businesses

and schools that did not revert to Mumbai. And in June, right-wing

activists vandalised signboards on cobbled streets in western

India's Goa state to demand the renaming of 14 roads with Portuguese

names.

 

India's colonial past included British, Portuguese and French rule

in different regions.

 

In a nation with 18 official languages and hundreds of dialects,

Indians are divided over renaming their cities.

 

In Calcutta, grocery shop owner Tapan Mondal says the renaming "made

no difference because we never used Calcutta. For us it was always

Kolkata in our conversations."

 

Calcutta was always pronounced Kolkata (pronounced COAL-ka-tah) in

the Bengali language. But with the new name the English

pronunciation and spelling switched to Kolkata, too.

 

Yet another city resident, consumer rights activist Mita Dutta, says

she uses Calcutta in most conversations. "To say Kolkata is a

conscious effort."

 

India is not alone in switching colonial names. South Africa,

Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are among many countries that renamed

provinces and cities. Sri Lanka, the island nation off India's

southern tip, changed its own name, dropping the colonial name

Ceylon in 1972.

 

The revised name, meaning "island", was used in early times and

derived from the ancient Sanskrit language. But the Bank of Ceylon,

the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation and even the Ceylon Tourist Board

have stuck with the colonial name.

 

Some countries merely corrected spellings based on Britons' faulty

pronunciation of foreign languages. Bangladesh changed the spelling

of its capital to Dhaka, instead of the British Dacca, in 1982.

 

Similarly in China, the government changed from Peking to Beijing in

the 1950s to bring the spelling closer to the Chinese pronunciation

and later turned Canton into Guangzhou – both changes adopted by the

rest of the world.

 

The military regime in Myanmar has had less success getting

acceptance for the ancient name for the country best known as Burma.

The United States still uses Burma, and it's Burma/Myanmar for the

European Union. Myanmar is derived from the Burmese name Myanma

Naingngandaw.

 

One important sign of acceptance is the use of the new name by

mapmakers, who usually act once the responsible government adopts

the change.

 

The mapmakers say they hear of changes from embassies, the US Board

of Geographic Names and international organisations such as the

United Nations.

 

The National Geographic has a Map Policy Committee that meets

monthly to discuss changes.

 

Maps of India show both names for Bombay with the old name in

parenthesis. "This is like the transition we went through for China

with Beijing/Peking and Guangzhou/ Canton appearing together," says

David Miller, senior editor of National Geographic Maps.

 

As in the usage of Constantinople alongside Istanbul, Bombay will

keep popping up in most maps. "It's done with some of the more

famous historical cities that have changed names," says Washington-

based Miller.

 

But he feels new names should be recorded. "Name changes often

reflect the will of the people in democracies or the use of an

indigenous language gaining favour over a former colonial language,"

he says.

 

Back in western India, where it all began, Pramod Navalkar, leader

of the right-wing Shiv Sena party that spearheaded the change to

Mumbai, says things may be getting out of hand.

 

"It began with cities, then roads, then intersections. Now even

street corners are being renamed," Navalkar says. "Everybody gets

confused."

 

He added with a chuckle, "Many a time I also say `Bombay.'"

 

Source: The Malaysia Star, Malaysia: "Bombay or Mumbai, the name

debate goes on" by RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM

URL:

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?

file=/2004/11/29/features/9491280&sec=features

[Guest guest]

Calcutta is from Kalighat, not Kolkata, may be the bengali itself is

derived from this

 

-J

 

-

[Guest guest]

Huts wanted to add the name "Dhaka" is dervived from the shakti pItha of

Dakeshwari and that is now the Dacca sahib Mosque.

 

Devi Bhakta <devi_bhakta wrote:

Some countries merely corrected spellings based on Britons' faulty pronunciation

of foreign languages. Bangladesh changed the spelling of its capital to Dhaka,

instead of the British Dacca, in 1982.