“Whats in a
name?” is usually attributed to Shakespeare. Yet in the name lies the identity
of the character, identity of the place, identity of the person and more. It is
for a name that agents fight. Noted economist Stephen Levitt dedicates an entire
chapter on naming preferences in his best seller Freakonomics. To him Levitt,
name is an aspiration and perhaps manifests a response to an incentive. Parents’
name their children after their role model, one whom they seek to emulate. The
name of successful character is what is sought to be named to many a kids born
in their era. Names undergo a change with passage of time. If the names
denoting God and Goddess dominated the Indian landscape for many years, it is
the modern trends and the names associated with these trends that dominate the
current era. A part of Pakistani problem in identifying with terror is something
decoded through the names the parents keep their children in that country. In fact,
the naming trends indicate several pointers on the probable directions of the
society. Yet, the discussion on this is something about the personal, at the
family level. Yet the naming is not confined to the family or the individual. It
goes beyond to the public places. It goes to the various places, localities,
new layouts, airports, bus stands, railway stations, bridges, flyovers, metro
stations, national parks, local parks and gardens, theatres, roads, bylanes and
much more.
The current post
will seek to examine the intricacies of the naming of public places. The public
places are usually named after someone prominent who has played a role in that
locale or someone renowned nationally or internationally who has some
connection with the said locale. Yet the decision to name public places is
often political than anything else. It is the vote bank that matters the most.
More importantly it is conveying a signal to the top that they are present. By naming
the public place after someone connected with the top in the party hierarchy. In
the Indian context, in recent times, the naming of public places has acquired
certain notoriety. This is because more and more public places started getting
named after the Nehru Gandhi family during the days of UPA in power. Rajiv
Gandhi might not have had any connection with Hyderabad airport but it was
named after him. Conceding that Rajiv was a pilot and would have flown to
Hyderabad many a times, this was certainly not a great reason to name it after
him when certainly other leaders existed like PV Narasimha Rao who too was a
Congress Prime Minister. Going further the Bandra-Worli Sea Link too was named
after Rajiv Gandhi indicating a high degree of sycophancy. In fact, it would
seem that every other place in India is named after Rajiv Gandhi, Indira
Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and even Kamala Nehru. Naming after Sonia Gandhi too
exists but fortunately it did not attain the critical mass.
The reasons for
the above are very simple. There is both top-down push and bottom up pull. To the
party workers and leadership at the local levels including district and state
level, their motivation and incentive is to get noticed by the party leadership
or the party high command. If they manage to please the party high command,
their progress in the upward echelons of the pyramid would become smoother. Yet
the competition for those few posts as one moves up the hierarchy is very
strong. Too many leaders would aspire for those too a few a positions. Therefore,
a competitive gamble would begin among these workers and local level leaders. One
way of demonstrating their loyalty credentials is to ensure the names of public
places in their local regions are named after the party leadership. In the
Congress, obviously everything and anything has to be connected to the
Nehru-Gandhi family. Therefore, naming of all and sundry public places would
sound good. At the same time, the top leadership would also want to push their
things down the throat of the party workers. In the Congress hierarchy, there
was no doubt, that the narrative to be created must entail the contributions of
the Nehru-Gandhi family. Hence the party leadership would be more than keen to
have their names inscribed at all the public places. Therefore it is no wonder
during the Congress rule everything under the sun had to bear the name of
someone or the other in the Nehru-Gandhi family. The Indira canteens in
Karnataka could never have been named Chennamma canteens for this above reason.
At another
level, it is about catering to the fancies of certain votebank. For instance,
Aurangzeb though an invader and who committed numerous atrocities, finds
numerous roads and public places named after him. It was after a long battle
that Aurangzeb road in Delhi was renamed. The names to public places kept after
the Muslim invaders is perhaps unique to India. Germany would not name anything
after Hitler nor would many European countries name their roads after their
invaders. Yet India relishes in naming roads and other places after the
invaders. It might be Stockholm syndrome but at a deeper level it is about
catering to the fancies of certain section of a population that sees these
rulers as their heroes and reminisces of those days when they were the rulers. Their
vote being united and uncluttered offers political parties to cater to them to
secure victories. Therefore, many places are named after these Islamic rulers.
Every political
party has its own iconography and thus names those public places after them. Therefore
it is no surprise to find Periyar or Anna or MGR or Karunanidhi or Jayalalitha
being named in various public places in Tamil Nadu. It is Tamil Nadu politics
and the Nehru-Gandhi family politics in Delhi that were responsible for naming
the public places after their therpantheons rather than those who were
associated with the place.
Therefore, as we
saw in the above instances there are both push and pull effects that goes
towards naming the various places. Yet these naming trends do fetch diminishing
returns which became visible in the early part of this decade in context of the
Nehru-Gandhi family. Names do reflect the identity. The public places do reflect
the character of the place. The honour of the names must be connected with
someone prominent in that place. So unlike Shakespeare, names do matter.
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