The Great Ganesha

[Cross-posted on Desicritics] 

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.”
- William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet

“What’s in a name? That which we called Bombay
By any other name smells just as bad.”
- The Great Ganesha

Hey, don’t get me wrong. I love Bombay. Stinky as it is, for better or for worse, it’s what I’ll call home no matter where I am - be it Wisconsin, New York, New Jersey or San Francisco. But what exactly has our great Parliament achieved by changing the name of the city from Bombay to Mumbai? A big, fat goose egg, is what!

Nom Du Jour
It’s not like this is the first name-change. In fact, it was called Heptanesia, meaning ’seven islands’, by Ptolemy, circa 250 BC; the Arabs called it Al Omanis during Muslim rule; and the Portuguese called it Bom Bahia, meaning ‘good bay’, when they were in power. And that’s just a few of the names (read this book to see more). So what’s the big deal? This is just another name-change, right? Wrong. This last one is against the very foundations the city was built on, and everything the city stands for today.

The City That No One Wanted
For most of its 2,300 year history, it was a bunch of swampy islands occupied by local fishing tribes which, unfortunately, nobody cared too much for. The Portuguese tried in vain to develop it as a port. When Charles II got it as dowry for marrying the Portuguese princess Catherine de Braganza in the seventeenth century, the British government had to rent it out at a lowly ten pounds sterling per year to the East India Company in order to get rid of it. Remember that we’re talking about a whole city, and for a year. Even with inflation, that’s a pretty paltry sum.

A few years after that, which was around three hundred years ago, the Company put a semi-retired colonel, Gerald Aungier, in charge of the city. This guy was smart. He set up all kinds of inducements for people to set up their businesses in the city, regardless of caste, creed or religion. This was practically unheard of in those times. Suddenly, The City That No One Wanted became The City To Be In and Bombay saw its first population boom around this time. Businessmen from all over the country moved there. Amongst them were Muslims, Parsis and Jains from Gujarat and Jews from Cochin who previously felt persecuted where they lived. They were now welcome in Bombay. Aungier even ceded land to Parsi workers for the Towers of Silence, so they could bury their dead according to tradition.

This set the tone for everything the city was about. It was not about religion, it was not about caste, it was most certainly not about community. It was about something larger than all of these superficial things - it was about commerce and the discipline it brings along with it.

Petty People In Power
So when I heard that the Shiv Sena was fighting for a name-change based on nothing other than communal lines, it annoyed me. This was nothing but petty people in power playing divisive games. What was their reasoning? They said that we needed to shed our British colonial past. Assuming that they were correct (which they weren’t) enough unnecessary blood has been shed in the name of anticolonialism - have they heard of Idi Amin? They said that it was time the Maharashtrians claimed back Bombay. That’s just the kind of narrow-minded reasoning that one would expect from them. It’s hard to say what the real reason was - perhaps it was the need for power, perhaps it was simple ineptitude or perhaps these people really believe in that crap. I don’t know. What I do know is that judging from history, no one can stay in power for long with this kind of rhetoric. The city has survived for three hundred years and from the looks of things, has a long way to go despite these bullshit artists. Small-minded people cannot and will not undermine what the city stands for. Bombayites know better.

And of course, there is another more practical reason why I’m peeved by the change: Politicians wasting their time and our resources on irrelevant things. The city needs to develop its infrastructure to compete in the new global economy, it needs to increase spending on education, it needs to create solutions for the housing problem, I could go on. But then again, what else is new? Since when do we Indians actually expect the government to help the country progress?

There’s Hope Yet
Despite that bleak outlook though, in the ten long years since the name change, a lot has happened. India is now on the global economic map, with Bombay, the financial capital, the epicenter of these changes. [Ok, Delhi, Bangalore and Madras (or should I say, Chennai?) are also developing, but let's face it: They've all got some ways to go before they get to the point where Bombay is at.] There’s actually a glimmer of hope in people’s eyes. Not everyone is ready to send their kids out of the country at the blink of an eye. Now, they might even spend some time thinking about it before they do. Hey, that’s positive change! People, especially those in power, are seeing the benefits of an open economy and are overcoming their fears of it. Maybe some years from now, this will bring in a fresh batch of politicians with a new mindset. Maybe they will have a desire to actually improve things. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll change the name back to Bombay. Which would make life easier for me, because I never stopped calling it that in the first place.

Written by courtesy for an upcoming article by Ami Cholia about the ten-year anniversary of the name-change, to appear in Sunday Mid-Day.