When the Shiv Sena party came to power in Maharashtra in 1995, it officially renamed Bombay as Mumbai as a gesture of discarding imperialist...
When the Shiv Sena party came to power in Maharashtra in 1995, it officially renamed Bombay as Mumbai as a gesture of discarding imperialist baggage and asserting Maharashtrian nativism. When Bharatiya Janata Party’s Adityanath took charge in Uttar Pradesh, he asserted his Hindutva ideology by renaming Allahabad as Prayagraj and Mughalsarai as Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Nagar.
Now, Maharashtra’s tri-party coalition government has turned its attention to caste. On December 2, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s office announced that the state would rename all villages, settlements and localities bearing caste-based names that point to the caste identities of the people living there.
According to the government, this would mean renaming places like “Maharwada”, “Brahmanwada” and “Mali galli” with more progressive names like Bhim Nagar, Samata Nagar or Kranti Nagar.
The aim of this move, according to social justice minister Dhananjay Munde, is to change people’s mindsets about caste and gradually help abolish the caste system.
Will this actually work? Can removing the “Mahar” from Maharwada change the way a village perceives or treats members of the Dalit Mahar caste? In rural Maharashtra, some anti-caste leaders believe renaming places will make no such difference.
In cities like Mumbai, residents of areas with caste-based names are just as sceptical about the utility or impact of name-changing.
“My area has been...
