BHOPAL, India, 20 December 2006 — The obsession to change the names of major cities has now caught up with the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
After Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram and Bengaluru, the Jabalpur Municipal Corporation in Madhya Pradesh has passed a resolution to rename the city as Jabalipuram.
The Madhya Pradesh state government is also considering renaming Bhopal to Bhojpal, Indore to Indur and Ujjain as Ujjaini. Unlike the renaming of Bombay, Calcutta or Bangalore — which switched to names long used in their local tongues — these changes are to be a “historical” rather than a linguistic exercise.
The resolution to rename Jabalpur as Jabalipuram was passed at a meeting of the corporation on Saturday. Both BJP and Congress members supported a resolution to junk Jabalpur, derived from the Arabic word “jabal” (hill). Members said the city was being renamed after a sage in the Hindu epic Ramayana. The resolution has been sent to the state government for approval and ratification.
Jabalpur-based historian Arvind Pal said: “We are not sure where and when the sage Jabali lived. He is a mythological figure. It’s absurd to change the name just because the word ‘jabal’ is Arabic.”
