Why have Madras and Bombay been renamed as Chennai and Mumbai respectively?
Over the past 30 years, conservatives have increasingly grown irritated of colonial heritage in Indian history. Colonialism invokes different passions in different people. Some are proud of it, some hate it a lot and the rest don’t care. Their responses often depend on how much their region/culture suffered/prospered in colonial era. Depending on who is in power, changes to Indian culture happen.
In some cases, it is just reverting back to older spelling [moving from Tanjore or Bangalore to Thanjavur & Bengaluru], while in other cases it is changing entire names [Mumbai or Chennai]. While some liberals see this as whitewashing, some conservatives see this as putting back the color after it was whitewashed in the past.
Mumbai comes from the Mumba Devi Temple that is one of the oldest in the city and the patron goddess for the early inhabitants. The invading Portuguese colonists wrongly pronounced this as Bomba or Bombay. When Shiv Sena got to power in Maharashtra in 1995, it was a rallying cry for them to change the name.
The Chennai name comes from a local ruler Damal Chennappa Nayagar from whom East India Company took the territory. There is an alternative theory that the name comes from Chennakesava Perumal Temple. The invading Portuguese colonists built a major church with the deity Madre de Deus [Mother of God] leading to the city name as Madras.
In both Mumbai and Chennai, the locals have used these names for a long time in their native languages, but in English people still used Bombay and Madras. In 1995-96 the changed was made in English too as enough of the erstwhile locals used English now & wanted the name they used in Marathi/Tamil to be used in English too.
© Balaji Viswanathan
