Name changing in India: From decolonisation to neo-colonialism?

Seventy nine years after Independence, most colonial names have been wiped clean in Mumbai. So when Maharashtra minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha found one that was still intact and proposed that the municipal King Edward Memorial Hospital be rechristened, there really shouldn’t have been much of a debate.

“The name King Edward represents colonial rule,” Lodha said at an event to celebrate the hospital’s centenary in January. “It has no connection with India today. Therefore, the civic body should think about changing it.”

This week, the minister reiterated his demand. Edward, he said, was actually “King Kasab who looted India and killed lakhs of Indians” – a reference to the Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab who along with 11 others massacred 175 people in the city in 2008.

Oddly, Lodha’s suggestion has met with opposition from members of Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena faction – whose predecessors in 1995 had changed the name of the city from Bombay to Mumbai.

“There is a history behind the KEM Hospital’s name and contribution of Edward towards health that can’t be denied,” party MLC Sunil Shinde told The Print.

Historians point out that sites with colonial names, even those that memorialise controversial personalities, serve as resonant reminders that the past is more complicated that politicians...

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