The renaming game: For many, it's still Bombay

The renaming game: For many, it's still Bombay

Talwar Badam, Associated Press/Bombay, India

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 Westernized 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 U.S.
government and the European Union officially accepts Mumbai.

Bombay's rechristening 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 up.

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,"
said 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," said 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 said. "I
personally think the collective memory of people is what really
matters, even in terms of heritage.

"The name Bombay immortalized a city that was Kipling's
birthplace," she said 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," said Gul Tekchandani, chief investment officer of Sun
F&C, a Bombay-based brokerage.

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 U.S. Board of Geographic Names and international
organizations 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," said 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," said
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 favor over a former colonial
language," he said in a telephone interview from Washington.

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 said. "Everybody gets
confused."

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