This refers to Central government giving nod to UP government’s decision to rename Allahabad as Prayagraj. But system should be for auto-change of names’ institutions including like High Court, University Railway-Station and others after name-change is affected. Names of Bombay High Court and Madras High Court still remain the same despite renaming of respective cities as Mumbai and Chennai decades back.
There has been gradual change in names or spellings of cities with the process still incomplete despite more than seven decades of independence. Distorted spellings of Jullender and Simla by British rulers in India as Jalandhar and Shimla have been rectified. But spellings of cities like Delhi and Bareilly as per actual pronunciation are still to be modified. Delhi is distorted version of Dehli meaning ‘Entrance’ in English. Many other countries like Bangladesh and China have already re-spelled names of their capitals as per actual pronunciation.
Likewise renaming of other cities and States should be in one go to remove confusion and distorted history. Even Pakistan acknowledges Lahore being named after Luv, son of Lord Ram because of Luv having established Lahore. Lucknow can be renamed as Lakshmanpur if the city was established by Lakshaman, younger brother of lord Rama. There are too many Rampurs and Bilaspurs in India which require renaming to avoid confusion. New names can be after heroic characters of Ramayan and Mahabharat.
Only old-timers know that since Western part of pre-independence undivided Bengal came to India, the State was named as West Bengal, and East Bengal turned into East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Prefix West should be removed from name of the State in the new name of the State.
Union Government should also adopt single name Bharat for the country abolishing British given name as India, in tune with unanimous resolution once passed by UP State-assembly. It is senseless to have two names for a country. Shi Lanka and Myanmar have already done away with such British legacy when these countries are no more known as Ceylon and Burma.
