India has lived with its past without being overly concerned about it until politicians showed up. After nearly four centuries, Allahabad is now being renamed Prayagraj. It is a pity that there has been muted public protest to this in our country.
Despite a change of name in Mughal times, Allahabad never ceased to host Hinduism’s holiest mass congregation, the once-in-12-years Prayag Kumbh Mela. Ajmer is famous for the Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti’s dargah to which millions from all faiths, not just Islam, are drawn. No Mughal emperor considered changing the city’s name to something Islamic. Varanasi, also known as Kashi and Benares, was never renamed by any Muslim ruler. Akbar, in fact, took pride in reinforcing its centrality to Hinduism. Of course, some cities and towns such as Ahmedabad, Adilabad, Aurangabad and Ahmednagar have been renamed and go by the names given by their Muslim rulers. While these name switches make for a long list, we should not get carried away given how, despite several centuries of Islamic political domination of the subcontinent, so few of India’s towns and cities have been renamed. This is something that is conveniently ignored by those who wish to foster a sense of victimhood amongst the Hindus.
Partition profoundly changed the religious demography of India. From constituting a quarter of the population of undivided India, Muslims at Independence became a much-diminished minority of around 10%, leaving them more insecure than ever before. It took the combined efforts of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru for India’s Muslims to feel at home in a country that they had never left.
In her book, The Uses and Abuses of History, Margaret Macmillan observes: “History, if it is used with care, can present us with alternatives, help us to form the questions we need to ask of the present and warn us about what might go wrong.” On this, our historians have come short by being too quiet and failing to adequately highlight the fact that our past holds fine lessons in toleration and accommodation that chip away at every community’s feeling of victimhood.
It is worth recalling that much of India slipped into Hindu hands after the collapse of the Mughal empire only to be later replaced by the British. What should matter to us most today is the astonishing survival of India as a secular state. It will be a tragedy if this gives way to a cheerless monochromatic nation. A change in a city’s name today, especially that of any bearing an Islamic name, is not just a change but a menacing shot across the bows for those who are not Hindus. It should be our collective endeavour, therefore, to protect the secularism we still have, by robustly challenging the ongoing effort to alarm and humiliate our country’s largest minority by trivialising the Taj or renaming Allahabad.
The writer has taught public policy and contemporary history at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru