Port Blair to Calcutta: Indian cities renamed after independence

In a recent update, the government of India has announced that it will change the name of Port Blair to Shri Vijayapuram as a step towards getting rid the country of all symbols of slavery." But this is not the first in India’s history since it gained independence from British rule. Names and languages are powerful tools to assert identity. And currently this name changing of the places in the country is a battle between India’s past and present. The renaming of places across the country happened due to various reasons and some of them include- change in official English spelling like- Calcutta became Kolkata and Orissa became Odisha; changing the names of Islamic origin to Hindu native name like- Allahabad became Praygraj and Osmanbad became Dharashiv. Some names that were anglicized like Trivandrum were renamed Thiruvananthapuram and the Cochin relabeled Kochi. Name change is a long process and it needs to be approved by the Government of India and still the name change can be challenged in the courts. Take a look at some of the places in India which were renamed and why.

The capital city of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, was recently named as Shri Vijayapuram. This city was earlier named after a British colonial navy official Captain Archibald Blair of East India company. In a post shared on X, Home Minister Amit Shah said, “to free the nation from the colonial imprints, today we have decided to rename Port Blair as "Sri Vijaya Puram." Vijaya Puram is a name that is symbolic of the struggle and victory of our Freedom fighters to gain independence.

Gurgaon, the largest city of Haryana, was renamed as Gurugram in 2016, by the Haryana Government. The government in an official statement said that Gurgaon had been the center of learning. It was known as Gurugram, during the times of Guru Dronacharya. However, the name, apparently, was changed during the Mughals' annexation of India. The government wanted to pay respect to the mythological and historical value of the city.

After the Independence of India, the provinces, princely states slowly joined the Union of India. The Mysore kingdom too joined the Union of India and in 1956, the Kannada speaking regions formed a greater Mysore State. However, not everyone was comfortable with the name ‘Mysore State’ as Kannadigas from outside the Mysore region felt unrepresented. They wanted it to be renamed as Carnatic or Karnata, as it was called in Medieval times. Finally in 1972, the Mysore State assembly passed a resolution to rename it as Karnataka.

Akhbar was impressed by the strategic position at which the ancient city of Prayag was situated. He decided to build a fort there and named it the region and the fort ‘Ilahabad’ or ‘the abode of God’. However Shah Jahan eventually changed it to Allahabad. The city of Allahabad is culturally significant to Hindus and hence the UP government proposed to change the name of the city to Prayagraj. The Union Government accepted the proposal in 2023 ahead of the Kumbh Mela.

Last year in September, the Eknath Shinde government officially renamed Aurangabad to Chatrapati Sambhajinagar. However, the decision was already approved in June by the Uddhav Thackrey government, but it collapsed the very next day. The name change history of this region starts in 1610, when it was first named Khaḍkī by Malik Ambar. When his son, Fatek Khan, took over the reins of power he changed it to Fatehnagar. In 1836, when Aurangzeb annexed the region he renamed it as Aurangabad, and made it the capital of the Mughal empire. In 1988, years later, Bal Thackrey first proposed to change the name of Aurangabad to Sambhajinagar. Chatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj was the second ruler of the Maratha kingdom.

In a historical text- Mirat-i-Ahmadi written in 1507, the region was referred to as ‘Manbai’. In another text written by Gaspar Correia it was known as ‘Bombaim’, which means ‘good bay’. When the British took control of the city, they anglicized the Portuguese term and came to call it Bombay. However, the fisher community of the city always called it Mumbai- a name derived from their Goddess Mumbadevi. The official name change from Bombay to Mumbai happened when the Shiv Sena came to power in 1995. They wanted to wash off any history of British influence.

In 1999, the Bengal State legislature voted unanimously to change the official name of the city to Kolkata. Kolkata served as the capital of British colonizers for a long time. The decision came after there was a wave among the Bengali speaking population to remove any imprints of British legacy and the biggest one being the anglicization of the name of their beloved city. The Britishers established their first colony in the richest province of the Mughal empire in the village situated on the Hooghly river known as Kali-kshetra, then Kali-kata. Slowly the Kali-kata became Calcutta as it was easier for them to pronounce.

To mark the 59th Karnataka Rajyotsava (state formation day), the state government of Karnataka announced the name change of the city from Bangalore to Bengaluru. The process of name changing was started in 2005 by Jnanipath Award Winner U. R. Ananthamurthy, however the resolution was not approved by the Union government until 2014. The word Benagluru is a Kannada word and Bangalore is the anglicized form used by the British colonizers.

In 1996, the city of Madras was renamed as Chennai by the state government of Tamil Nadu. This was done to break free from the colonial legacy and establish the local identity. However some people don’t really agree with this logic. Madrasapattinam and Chennapatnam are the two towns that cover the entire region of the city. And the people of the city relate to both the names as a part of their identity.