Maharashtra has been enflamed in recent weeks by deeply concerning rhetoric about the 17th century Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. On Monday night, violence was reported in Nagpur over demands that Aurangzeb’s grave should be demolished.
The attempts to obliterate the memory of the Mughal emperor are not new. In 2023, after a campaign that lasted decades, the city of Aurangabad was renamed after the Maratha ruler Sambhaji.
The Nagpur incident brings back into focus a Bombay High Court judgement last year and the Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene in a petition against it that could have been the opportunity to judicially resist the violent politics of renaming in India. Also lost was the chance to protect Muslims from being criminalised as historical perpetrators of violence.
On August 2, 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed a plea challenging the renaming of Aurangabad to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Osmanabad Dharashiv.
The renaming had been proposed by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government and upheld by the Bombay High Court in a judgement in May 2024. This High Court judgement created an unusual line of reasoning around renaming of towns and cities in India, couching the polarising politics of renaming in the polite confines of judicial interpretation.
The judgement began with Shakespeare’s famous quote where Juliet, emphasising the irrelevance of a rose’s name to its fragrance asks, “What’s in a name?”
Acknowledging the lack of statutory provisions for renaming Indian cities, the judgement was based on two arguments. Firstly, legal provisions allow for state governments to alter the limits of, or abolish and name “revenue areas”. Secondly, if a government has the power to abolish an existing area or name a new one, it can rename existing areas also.
This dispassionate line of reasoning has shown itself to be very dangerous. With no mention or reference to the politics of renaming in India, the judgement completely ignored the socio-political context of renaming towns and cities.
Towns and cities can be renamed for a multitude of purposes. In the case of Chennai, formerly Madras, it was to acknowledge local tradition. In the case of St Petersburg, the changes reflected changing political realities. During World War I, the Russian city was renamed Petrograd because St Petersburg was deemed ‘‘too German”. In 1924, it was rechristening Leningrad after the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1991, after the collapse of communism, it reverted to its old name.
In contemporary India, however, renaming follows a more divisive and dangerous agenda. It premises itself on the false narrative of history where Muslims are claimed to have invaded the “Hindu” subcontinent, destroyed its glorious ancient culture and then ruled India for a thousand years as fanatical despots.
This version of history first paints today’s Indian Muslims as descendants of these medieval Muslim “invaders” and presents Hindus as their victims. The changes in the names of cities and streets areprojected as an act of reclamation – a Hindu conquest over destructive Muslims.
This variety of politics burdens Indian Muslims with imagined historical guilt. It also positions Hindus against Muslim citizens of India and uses distorted histories to fan communal sentiment.
Therefore, the act of renaming, as procedurally sound as it might be, is a direct attack on the constitutional principle of fraternity and a violation of Article 51A(e) of the Constitution that calls for the promotion of “…harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious diversities”.
Besides, with its interpretation of urban areas as legal entities with revenue-based boundaries, the High Court judgement treated cities and towns as mere units of governance. It reduces the inhabitants of cities to being mere subjects who are governed. This is grossly incomplete.
Cities are not just units of administration. For their citizens, cities are places of birth, places of memory, of lived histories, identities and of familial connections.
When the name of a city is changed from its “Muslim-sounding” one to a “Hindu” one, it sends a clear message that Muslim inhabitants of the city cannot count themselves among the “original” members of its community. They are either descendants of the invaders who conquered the city and changed its name or are converts to Islam who got polluted and are an aberration to the true nature of the town.
Hence, Aurangzeb – after whom Aurangabad was named – despite being born in Gujarat and dying in Maharashtra is viewed as a foreigner who must be erased. On the other hand, Sambhaji – after whom the town got its new name and who also lived and died in the subcontinent – is viewed as an Indian and must be revered.
The message of the renaming is that regardless of your place of birth, your religion decides whether you are the primary or a secondary citizen of Aurangabad – and India. Muslimness is treated as more important than Indian-ness.
In March 2023, the Supreme Court had itself rejected a plea that sought the establishment of a renaming commission to maintain a list of “original names” that were changed by “foreign barbaric invaders”.
The Supreme Court had criticised the petition, noting that “…history cannot haunt its current and future generations...” Recognising the insidiousness of renaming, it demanded to know if the petitioner wanted to “…keep the country on boil?”
The Bombay High Court acknowledged this precedent but ignored it, concluding that renaming cannot be judicially regulated unless the name proposed is “atrocious”. Sadly, the courts ignored the fact that the act of renaming itself is harmful – as the Supreme Court had said, even if the new name is glorious.
It is best if Juliet’s beliefs are kept limited to personal gifts like Romeo’s rose. Cities, however, are places of citizenship and mnemonic associations. The current campaign to give Indian cities named after Muslim figures Hindu names establishes that Muslims do not belong in India the way Hindus do. These ghosts have come back to haunt Maharashtra.
Fahad Zuberi is a Doctoral Scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
