Democratic Accommodations by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789388414562
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-08-18T07:00:00+00:00

While renaming streets/roads in 1950s was used as an ideological tool to divest landscapes of their colonial association and acquire political legitimation, a new trend seems to have set in with the rise of cultural nationalists in political power in recent years. Renaming of streets, roads and places is now being used to polarise socioreligious communities for electoral advantage. The most visible pattern is picking up streets/roads/places bearing association with medieval period—often seen by the cultural nationalists as a period of political and cultural rupture—and renaming them.

The most controversial case in this context is renaming Aurangzeb Road in 2015 after A.P.J. Abdul Kalam—one of the most popular former Presidents of India. This particular instance of renaming or relabelling of one of the most important roads of Central Delhi is of enormous symbolic and political significance. For one thing, Aurangzeb, one of the most powerful Moghul rulers, is seen by many, mostly the Hindu right as the symbol of ‘Islamic fanaticism’ and ‘despotism’. On the other hand, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, though a devout Muslim himself, is hailed as a kind and benevolent human being and above all an illustrious son of the soil who, through his momentous contribution in India’s defence sector was described as the ‘missile man’ and added to the strength and pride of the country. In a way, relabelling Aurangzeb Road after A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is not only an attempt of further excoriating Aurangzeb but also of playing the politics of ‘Good Muslim/Bad Muslim’.

This is, however, not an isolated case but rather confirms a pattern. For instance, a 150-year-old railway station named ‘Mughal Sarai’ (in the state of Uttar Pradesh) has recently been renamed as ‘Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction’ after the Jan Sangh (the precursor to the BJP) leader Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. The city of Allahabad named by Akbar (who, unlike Aurangzeb, is hailed as a benevolent and secular Moghul king) has been renamed as Prayagraj. Even the famous Hazratganj Crossing in Lucknow, named after Begum Hazrat Mahal, a heroic Avadh queen who fought the British, has been declared to be renamed as ‘Atal Chowk’—after one of the founding members of the BJP and the former Prime Minister of India. What is, however, more worrisome is that all this did not arouse strong enough public outcry so as to stop government’s renaming spree. There is a little realisation that renaming places, streets or roads creates ruptures in people’s lived experience. It is also like demolishing monuments. Once erased, they fade from public memory and consciousness.

Educational Policies

In modern times, the education system of a country is not merely a site of production and transmission of knowledge and of socio-economically useful skills but also one of the primary agencies of socialisation. It is in educational institutions, schools in particular, that the children learn about and develop attitudes towards the nation, the society and the outside world. Generally speaking, education systems seek to transmit the dominant value system to the next generation. This is hardly an issue in homogeneous societies (Watson, 1979).

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