There was a time when the magnificent Rajpath in New Delhi was called Kingsway. There was also a time when Janpath was called Queensway. When my father was posted to Delhi in the late 1950s, my first memories are of our bungalow on a road then called Queen Mary’s Avenue. In 1961, it was renamed Pandit Pant Marg, in tribute to the memory of the towering home minister Govind Ballabh Pant. My nana in Allahabad built his palatial home on Elgin Road. That was still the name of the road when he died many years after 1947. But, today, Elgin Road has become Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg.
Roads rarely change their axis, alignment or direction. Rajpath still majestically connects Rashtrapati Bhavan to India Gate and Janpath is still the most important gateway to Rajiv Gandhi Chowk, earlier called Connaught Place. But identities, associations and memories change. Such a change reflects changed priorities, or reformulated notions of patriotism, or a deliberate choice to change the narrative of history, not all of which are misplaced. When recently, Aurangzeb Road, one of the most prominent boulevards of Lutyen’s Delhi, was changed to A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road, all the above were invoked, with some people in support of the change, and others against.
The British came to rule us, and when defeated, left. When they ruled us they named roads, buildings and institutions after their own. When we won independence, we reclaimed our own patriotic narrative. Most of the roads that were renamed bore British names. Even cities reverted to their pre-British nomenclatures: Bombay became Mumbai, Calcutta became Kolkata and Madras became Chennai.
The Aurangzeb-Kalam transference falls in an entirely different category. It connotes a preference of one kind of iconic individual over another, but from within the non-colonial historical narrative. In other words, both Aurangzeb and Kalam were people who were our own, not firangis. But, if this is the case, the obvious question that pops up is why did a choice have to be made between one and the other? Choice is not a neutral decision, nor can it be random. It indicates selectivity through conscious application of mind, and is, therefore, inherently judgmental: Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal emperor, is not worth remembering. Is this a rewriting of history, or a rectification of past mistakes, or a course correction, or even worse, a somewhat hasty and arbitrary genuflection before religious stereotypes?
If this is not the case, I cannot for the life of me understand why a road other than Aurangzeb Road was not anointed in the name of our late and revered President? Not far away from the erstwhile Aurangzeb Road, we have Dalhousie Road, recalling a British governor-general who began the infamous policy of annexation that, among others, ended the kingdom of Awadh and introduced the theory of lapsed states by which the East India Company grew into an empire. Since we have so effortlessly renamed so much that recalls our colonial servitude, why could this improbably surviving remnant not be jettisoned to the dustbin of history and resurrected as A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road? My problem is that when such options are ignored, and deliberately provocative decisions are taken projecting the preference of one individual as against another, controversy and grievance are a totally unnecessary consequence.
Aurangzeb, for all his faults, was the last great Mughal emperor. Does he deserve to be punished after so many years of remembrance? And, if he is to bear this fate, why not also rename an existing road named after Muhammad bin Tughlaq, who, in hindsight, inflicted only a great deal of pain on his subjects, both Hindus and Muslims? Why not, indeed, rename the Qutub Minar too, since it recalls the “conquest” of India and was probably built on the debris of temples broken by the “conquerors”?
The truth is that those who name roads, either now or in the past, have had a rather narrow vision in terms of choices. Political rulers and politicians abound. But there is no place for writers, poets, artists, thinkers and philosophers. Delhi, as the capital of not only a young republic but also one of the most ancient and refined civilisations of the world, must have the least number of roads recalling this heritage. For instance, why is there not a road in our capital named after Shankaracharya, perhaps one of the greatest philosophers the world has seen? Why don’t we have a road named after Thiruvalluvar, undoubtedly one of the wisest of our ancient thinkers? Why does Delhi not boast of a Kabir avenue, or a Mirza Ghalib Chowk, or an Amir Khusro street, or a Ramdhari Singh Dinkar road? Why is there no road named after Jamini Roy, or Bharat who wrote the immortal Natya Shastra 600 years before the birth of Christ, or Nagarjuna the great Buddhist philosopher?
In London, a blue plaque reminds every visitor of a home where a great writer or artist or thinker resided. This can be seen in many other countries as well. By contrast, till very recently the house of Mirza Ghalib in Gali Qasim Jaan in old Delhi was a kabhariwallah’s workplace. Nations which have a very narrow sense of their own civilisational refinements are usually considered uncultured. India has a great culture but the resolve to recall it is certainly not visible in the capital of the nation. On the contrary, what we are witnessing is an ad hoc and arbitrary rewriting of history, guided by a selectivity that is hasty, subjective, whimsical and downright divisive.
Dr Kalam needs to be venerated, but not at the cost of pursuing such policies.
Author-diplomat Pavan K. Varma is a Rajya Sabha member
