Clamour for renaming cities, landmarks grows vociferous

With the state and central governments approving renaming of Aurangabad as Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar and Osmanabad as Dharashiv, more such demands are gaining momentum in the state. On Saturday, leaders from all parties in Buldhana district in Vidarbha region raised the demand to rename the district as Jijau Nagar after Jijabai, mother of Maratha King Chhatrapati Shivaji

Mumbai: With the state and central governments approving renaming of Aurangabad as Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar and Osmanabad as Dharashiv, more such demands are gaining momentum in the state.

HT Image

On Saturday, leaders from all parties in Buldhana district in Vidarbha region raised the demand to rename the district as Jijau Nagar after Jijabai, mother of Maratha King Chhatrapati Shivaji. Jijabai was born at Sindkhed Raja in Buldhana. They have also submitted a memorandum to the tehsildar pressing for their demand.

“Her father Lakhujiraje Rao was a grandee of Sindkhed Raja which is part of Buldhana district. Sindkhed Raja was the centre of power and Jadhav was running his province from there and thus it would be better if Buldhana be renamed as Jijau Nagar,” the memorandum read.

Similar demand has also been made for Pune by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) legislator Amol Mitkari on January 13, who was of the view that renaming would honour the memory and contribution of the Maratha King’s mother. Jijabai had camped in Pune with her son and looked after his training.

Chief minister Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena in its first national executive committee meeting on February 21 too passed a resolution to rename Churchgate railway station after Chintaman Dwarakanath Deshmukh, country’s first finance minister who hailed from Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar MP and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Imtiyaz Jaleel sat on an indefinite chain hunger strike from Saturday opposing renaming of Aurangabad.

Jaleel said his protest was above party lines. “We have formed an action committee that have members from other castes and communities as we opposed the renaming that was done without taking the locals into confidence,” the AIMIM MP said, alleging that the decision was taken owing to the fight of one-upmanship between Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena (UBT).

He pointed out that the erstwhile Thackeray-led MVA government on June 29 last year approved renaming of Aurangabad as Sambhaji Nagar and questioned the central government’s approval saying, “How come they take a decision when the matter is sub-judice. A total of three petitions are pending before the Bombay high court.”

As the local body elections that are due for this year and state assembly and general elections scheduled for next year, more such demands are likely to come in the coming days. Political experts believe that the politics of renaming places was started with an aim to rake up religious sentiments.

Political analyst Hemant Desai said that the deliberate and mischievous politics that started in north India, especially in Uttar Pradesh, has been brought to the progressive state like Maharashtra. “The demand to rename cities and places has been there in the state since long but now they are getting aggressive and the objective behind them is to rake up religious and identity sentiments of the people,” Desai said.

The other aspect is that the protests are being carried out by right-wing Hindu organisations demanding a law against alleged religious conversions in the state, he added.

In the beginning of the year, a controversy broke over the leader of the opposition Ajit Pawar’s remarks that Chhatrapati Sambhaji was not a ‘Dharmaveer’ (defender of religion) but ‘Swarajya Rakshak’ (protector of independent state) considering historical facts. BJP started a protest against Pawar claiming that he had insulted the Maratha King.