SHIV SENA corporator Dilip Lande has suggested that Malabar Hill, be renamed Ramnagari.A SHIV SENA corporator in the Mumbai civic body has suggested that Malabar Hill, the city’s posh, VIP address, be renamed Ramnagari, citing mythological significance.
Dilip Lande, the coporator from Kurla, has proposed that Malabar Hill be renamed Ramnagari after Lord Ram who, according to myth, stopped in the neighbourhood while journeying to Lanka to rescue Sita. He had also reasoned that ‘Malabar Hill’ is an English name and hence, needed to be changed.
The proposal will come up for discussion in December’s general body meetings of the BMC.
In 2013, when Lande was with the MNS, he had made the same demand. Sena then had ridiculed the proposal. The demand has come nearly 10 days after Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray made his maiden visit to Ayodhya, mounting pressure on the BJP to construct a Ram temple.
Lande’s letter to the BMC stated: “The area was named after Malabaris and the name was given by the British. On the way to rescue Sita, it is believed that Ram, along with Lakshman, stopped in the neighbourhood. The area should be named after Lord Ram as Ramnagari.”
As per mythology, when Ram felt thirsty after fasting for Shiva, Lakshman shot an arrow into the ground to dig a freshwater spring. It is believed that the Banganga tank on Malabar Hill, a site of religious activities and where ashes are immersed after cremation, is the spring that Ram drank from.
