Just when was Vasco da Gama renamed Sambhaji?

They were stunned for though they have been living in that town for decades they had no knowledge of when the town’s name had been changed. For that matter neither did the Chairperson of the local Municipal Council nor the local MLA. Just when did that change in name happen? Or didn’t it happen and is this just a clerical or a typographical error? 

The cards were issued by the Department of Civil Supplies, and the department’s director Vikas Gaunekar says the name is as “per government records which show that certain pockets in Vasco were named as Sambhaji in 1971”. If that is so, then what appears printed in certain ration cards of particular wards of Vasco town is definitely not an error. 

Gaunekar’s statement lends proof to the allegation that State NCP president Jose Philip D’Souza made dubbing this as a backdoor entry to a name change of the port town. There is merit in what D’Souza says, for this is not the first time that there has been a controversy over the name of this particular town. In the 1970s, when the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party was in power there had been a move to change the name of the town from Vasco da Gama to Sambhaji Nagar and for a short while it had even been so renamed. Not too many months ago, a news agency had reported that the then Speaker of the Goa Legislative Assembly had suggested that the name of the town be changed to Sambhaji Nagar. He had recalled the brief period during the MGP government when the port town had indeed been called Sambhaji Nagar.

If, the 1971 records that the Civil Supplies director claims exist, renaming Vasco da Gama, or certain pockets of the town, as Sambhaji, it is strange that for 44 years nobody knew this. The local residents didn’t know, the local MLA didn’t know, the former MLA who was Revenue minister didn’t know. In fact the former MLA, Wilfred Mesquita claimed that during his tenure as Revenue Minister, an MLA had moved a proposal to rename Vasco as Sambhaji but it was turned down. Mesquita was Revenue minister years after 1971, so surely when a MLA had moved the proposal at that time, the government would have pointed out that Vasco was already Sambhaji. Nobody did. Yet, as Gaunekar confidently says, as per the Registrar General of India records the system has Sambhaji as the official name of certain pockets in Vasco.

After 451 years of Portuguese rule, this is the only town in Goa that is named after a personality from the Iberian country, though the spellings of names of many towns and villages were changed by the Portuguese to make it easier for them to pronounce. Many spellings are now being changed, but change in name from Vasco da Gama to Sambhaji is not likely to be taken quietly by a large section of the residents of the town. If the matter is not cleared quickly then the government can expect some protests. Already the residents of Khariwaddo have threatened an agitation if the correction is not made within 15 days and there are likely to be more such demands in the coming days.

Yet, when one looks at the episode, there has to be a more reasonable explanation to the name Sambhaji appearing on the National Food Security cards, an explanation other than what the director of the department has proffered.