CM to urge centre to rename IIT-Bombay as ‘IIT-Mumbai’

Fadnavis acts swiftly after MNS uses Union minister’s remark to stoke Marathi pride ahead of civic polls

MUMBAI: Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said he would write to the centre to rename “IIT-Bombay” as “IIT-Mumbai”, to contain the political fallout of a remark made by a Union minister on Monday. Fadnavis’s decision comes only hours after Raj Thackeray, chief of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), slammed Union minister of state for science and technology Jitendra Singh (BJP), for saying in a lighter vein, “As far as IIT-Bombay is concerned, thank God it still has this name. You have not changed it to ‘Mumbai’. So that’s another compliment to you. And also true for Madras. It remains IIT-Madras.”

Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (HT PHOTO)

Singh had made the remark during a function at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-Bombay), one of the country’s premier engineering institutions, on Monday.

Thackeray, long a champion of Marathi pride and now using it as his rallying cry for the upcoming Mumbai civic polls, is leveraging Singh’s remark to bolster the MNS’s agenda. MNS workers on Wednesday also erected a banner outside the IIT-Bombay campus, “renaming” the institution, set up in 1958, as “IIT-Mumbai”.

On social media, Thackeray warned that the Marathi people living in Mumbai and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) should be aware of a conspiracy to separate Mumbai and later MMR from Maharashtra. He claimed it was no different from the central government’s attempt to “wrest” Chandigarh from Punjab.

“Unity of Marathi people shattered the plot to separate Mumbai from Maharashtra a few decades ago. Some people have a problem with this and now that bitterness is coming out through such statements… The name ‘Mumbai’ irks them (BJP) because it is named after Mumbadevi, the original goddess of Mumbai. Her children are the Marathi people... Conspiracy to grab the city is going on. First Mumbai, and then the entire MMR region will be seized and linked to Gujarat. Marathi people should wake up,” Thackeray said in a social media post.

In a swift damage-control move, Fadnavis in Nagpur announced that the Maharashtra government would write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the education ministry, seeking to change the name of IIT-Bombay to IIT-Mumbai.

But, he added, “Those who send their children to these institutions have never objected to the name ‘Bombay’ in these schools, and yet they now speak for ‘Mumbai’,” he said.

On Wednesday, Thackeray wasn’t the only politician leveraging the “Mumbai” name-game. Fadnavis also said “Bombay” was renamed “Mumbai” during the tenure of the first Shiv Sena-BJP alliance government in 1995. And that it was former Union minister and senior BJP leader Ram Naik who had made the biggest contribution to this decision.

“We always say ‘Mumbai’, and not ‘Bombay’. Now I will write a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the HRD (Education) Minister to change the name of IIT-Bombay to IIT-Mumbai,” said Fadnavis.

Former BJP MP Kirit Somaiya addressed the media on Wednesday and said the BJP-led state government would send a proposal to the centre, to rename the Bombay High Court as the “Mumbai High Court”.