Hindustan????

In the last four thousand years or so the Indian sub-continent has gone through a lot of names. Since the Indus Valley Civilization spanned from what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan to the heart of Madhya Pradesh there have been dozens of other civilizations and ruling dynasties. With a few glaring omissions after the Indus were the Mayurans, the Cholas, the Mughals, Hindustan, the Portuguese, the French, the British and now India's democracy. What we know as "India" today had never been united into one territory until the British seized control from hundreds of smaller kingdoms. In a standard process of succession every new leader that took control decimated the remains of the previous civilization and attempted to start a new history. And in every instance cities were dubbed with new names.

Since India gained independence from British rule the Indian government, spurred on by fundamentalist parties that originated in Mumbai, has been changing urban monikers to the "original" Hindu names. Bombay became Mumbai, Delhi - Dilli, Calcutta - Kolkotta, Madras - Chennai and as of today Pondicherry has been renamed Puducherry.

Putting new names on cities, towns and streets may be a way to lay claim to the land in some fundamental way, but calling the new name "original" has some dark undertones. When Bombay was first called Mumbai it was little more than a fishing village with a moderate sized port. When the British took control it transformed into a world economic juggernaut. Delhi grew into a prominence under several generations of Islamic rule--many of whom would have scoffed at the recent name change. What we know as the Indus Valley Civilization or Harappa was most likely called Meluha by the people at the time. The city of Pondicherry didn't even exist before the French borrowed the name of an insignificant fishing village and turned it into their center of operations in South Asia. Renaming it Puducherry is returns it to village status and ignores a rich French history.

If the trend should continue it would make sense that the entire nation of India should get a name change. After all, India was only the name that Alexander the Great (or Sikander if we want to keep up the Indianization of names) gave to all the people on the other side of the Indus River. Technically it would include most of Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and parts of Burma...er...Myanmar.

Would it make sense to call India "Bharat" or "Hindustan"? Bharat is the Sanskrit name for the land of the Mahabarata. It carries Hindu connotations and overlooks centuries of Islamic and British rule. "Hindustan", however, was the name for British occupied India and represents the first time that the entire region existed under a single leadership. If politicians did try to rename India there would probably be riots on the streets. Every minority group in the country would feel disenfranchised--as if their own regional histories had no real stake in the nation.

But if you can't rename the country, why can you rename the cities? You cannot simply delete several millennia of non-Hindu rule from the pages of history (though they may have tried that in Gujarat). Sure, under the British many people suffered. People suffered under the Mughals, too. More people lived in poverty than palaces in the areas where there were flourishing Hindu kingdoms. How much better is the India that we know today? Has giving it a new name changed