The nationalists had been pushing for a name change for many years. Mainly they wanted to strengthen Marathi identity in the region. Jump directly to the content. Sign in. All Football. It swept to power in state elections shortly afterwards on the back of its pro-Marathi stance.
But two decades on and with the city's youngsters having grown up knowing their home only as Mumbai , Bombay's time could soon be up. The five-day-long fest, which was last celebrated in , saw participation from not only local talent, but also from countries such as Russia, Serbia and Jordan.
Facebook Inc. Minutes after Facebook made the announcement, a torrent of hilarious comment began on Twitter, especially from companies, people and even the social media giant Twitter. Firstpost Conversations 9 Months S. Home India News What's in a name? Hyatt Regency Mumbai. JW Marriott Mumbai Sahar. The Westin Mumbai Garden City. Courtyard by Marriott Mumbai International Airport. Show More. And so the study of place names is the study of identity and ideology, taking into account place and purpose at once.
While the struggle is about profound structural change in order to liberate ourselves from our colonial entanglements — which we may, for the moment, be unable to transcend — then at least through the renaming process it is possible to face the history of colonisation with as much openness and self-reflection as possible. The renaming process forms one part of a wider socio-political, cultural and economic struggle in the decolonial efforts of museums and galleries.
Other efforts have included the return of stolen treasures, the renaming of artworks with racist titles, and consultation with Indigenous communities for determining the future of museums and galleries. When the influence of the British Raj was declining, the Imperial Institute in London was compelled to rethink its programme, supported as it was by the profits of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of Part of its core business until this point had been to research and share information about raw materials extracted from British colonies, but when regions in Asia, Africa and the Middle East began to achieve independence, it was renamed the Commonwealth Institute.
Now, even the Commonwealth Institute does not exist; it was liquidated in , and its London premises were given over to the Design Museum, which is an altogether different organisation that bears little connection to the colonial institutes of the past. Place names are sites of memory, and in their letters are inscribed the histories of their people. In , soon after the Crown took over the direct governance of India from the East India Company, a group of public-spirited citizens decided that the first important public institution to be built in Bombay would be a museum along with a natural history and botanical garden.
Most online inflation calculators put 1. The plan to build a Hall of Wonder in a grand Neo-Renaissance style was conceptualised by Dr George Birdwood, and in , the Victoria and Albert Museum was opened to the public: a building richly coloured with green and gold accents, with Corinthian and Doric columns, and with Thomas Minton and Sons flooring imported from Staffordshire.
A little more than a hundred years later, in , the museum was renamed to honour the late Indian physician and Sanskrit scholar. The link between the lateth-century British-Indian architecture style and the Maratha is tenuous, if not altogether missing. And the irony is complete when the people of Mumbai — taxi drivers and shop owners alike — prefer to clip the grandeur of this name to its Roman initials, CSMVS.
To be sure, this is not to a call for historical accuracy, but rather to question the values expressed by applying his name to the museum built to commemorate the arrival of Prince Albert in India. And to be twice sure, neither is it to argue for the retention of a British title for an Indian museum.
Instead, what the choice makes clear is that renaming is just as much about the present as it is about the past. As symbols to which people ascribe meaning, place names are effective in revealing the political climate of the day, just as much as remembering forgotten things. The renaming of the civic museum is just one example in a number of other instances commemorating Shivaji, including the name change of Victoria Terminus railway station to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, and Sahar International Airport to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport.
The place names evoke a greener past which is lost in the city smog. Cumballa Hill refers to the kambal , a type of deciduous ash tree used as anti-inflammatory medicine in Ayurveda. There were tad palms in Tardeo, and vad trees in Worli. The fig tree creek of Umarkhadi, and the umbrella trees of Bhendi Bazaar. In an essay on the relationship between place names and decolonisation, recalling flora and fauna may feel benign, not because the naming system follows a pleasant logic, but because it is difficult to read these place names within the wider socio-political context.
The megalopolis of Mumbai is built on what was once an archipelago of seven islands, which was known to the Greek geographer Ptolemy, in CE, as Heptanesia. Pleistocene sediments suggest that the islands were inhabited since the South Asian Stone Age, but nothing certain can be known about these ancient peoples.
The earliest known accounts are from the 4th century BCE when Koli fisherfolk and Agri salt collectors called these islands their home. Between the 2nd century BCE and 9th century CE, the islands were ruled by successive dynasties, until the reign of the Shilaharas from to The Delhi Sultanate annexed the islands in and controlled them until when they were then governed by the independent Gujarat Sultanate.
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