It’s Not the Taj..!

As I hear about names of cities being changed left, right and centre I see members of the heritage committee, “This building and this and this and this!” exclaim members of the heritage committee as they walk down the roads of a city anywhere in the country.
“But we don’t want our buildings to get the heritage tag!” wail the owners, “It means we can’t build something modern here, will have to repair under your specifications. We don’t have the funds, nor will the government give any!”
The heritage committee move on, their job, to identify buildings, they have no money to offer for repairs, they have no powers except trying to preserve a city’s heritage!
The question I ask here is, are only buildings part of our heritage?
Aren’t names and landmarks much, much more important than just keeping a dilapidated building standing? History isn’t only in concrete!
The other day while driving in America, and hearing strange sounding names which were not English ones, I asked my host, how these names came about, “Why,” he said, “They were the original names given by the original native Indians! Alabama, named after the Alibamu, and Indian tribe, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, and hundreds of names, some so difficult to pronounce, but loaded with history!”
In a recent count over eighty-six roads in a city like Mumbai, yes I didn’t say Bombay, have been renamed.
But hold on to that thought with me, it’s not just about the history of a name that is lost, but also our own personal history that is lost. Let me explain; with every name of every street I have lived in comes back memories of incidents and people, of not just my life, but of the city that was then. I tell my children of the Christmases of Clare Road, where mostly Protestants lived once, and about Sankli Street filled with Anglo-Indian families, but it makes no sense talking thus about the new Mirza Ghalib Road which is what Clare Street is now called!
In our country we seem to be afraid of history, maybe because it’s others from outside that have influenced us. So we take a giant brush and with hurried strokes erase all that reminds us of the past.
And as we allow name changes to our streets, localities, even railway stations and airports, and now even cities, a heritage committee goes around trying to preserve old buildings!
“Hey members of the heritage committee! Look beyond the buildings, look beyond what you visually see, and preserve history!”
“What a beautiful monument, isn’t this the Taj Mahal?”
“No, we’ve changed the name!”
“No wonder there’s no tourists coming here anymore! You change the name, you erase history! You erase history, you erase interest..!”

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5 thoughts on “It’s Not the Taj..!”

  1. So true. Old names are historic.History should not be tampered with. But what about the old names tampered with by the foreign rulers? Triplicane, Trivandrum,Quilon,etc?

  2. Great article, Bobby. Here too, Elgin Flour Mills was pulled down and ElginApts is the new structure. The old name Churchgate, is now Deshmukh… I read.All the development done by the British, they don’t want to acknowledge. Till they arrived and annexed the warring principalities,when kings asked for their help,it wasn’t a country.Those the French helped,defeated by those the English helped were annexed to the ones who won. We were20years behind the 1st World when theBritish gave freedom to us after the World War as they had promised us after writing the constitution for the people to live in peace.

  3. There was an ‘Hampton bridge’ somewhere in North Chennai…. Soon got misspelt as ‘Umpton bridge’ during renovation of the city over the years…. Then came the Tamil sign boards – so it was translated and painted as ‘Barbers’ bridge’ !
    And life goes on…… for the common man ????????
    When history books themselves are being changed, what’s in a name !!!

  4. There was an ‘Hampton bridge’ somewhere in North Chennai…. Soon got misspelt as ‘Umpton bridge’ during renovation of the city over the years…. Then came the Tamil sign boards – so it was translated and painted as ‘Barbers’ bridge’ !
    And life goes on…… for the common man ????????
    When history books themselves are being changed, what’s in a name !!!

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