Kanika DAtta: A road by any other name

You can understand why Narendra Modi, who has raised personal austerity to a fine political art, did not want an address associated with horse-racing and gambling. But it’s an open question just how much lok kalyan (people’s welfare), will be delivered by changing the familiar name of a road associated with the official residence of India’s most powerful elected politician. Start by asking an auto-rickshaw or taxi driver to take you to Lok Kalyan Marg (Google Maps can help — it dutifully changed the name already).

Or maybe this is the government’s way of reminding itself that lok kalyan, aka “development”, was promised in 2014 but was sidetracked by such core concerns as beef bans and students shouting anti-national slogans. Still, this regime has understood that though road names serve a utilitarian purpose, they define a city’s culture too (think plain-speaking New Yorkers and their city’s mostly numbered roads). New Delhi, with its fascinating overlaps of ancient Hindu, Islamic and British pasts, poses a particular problem for a regime that incorporates religio-social change in its agenda.

India’s colonial heritage has mostly been erased from the capital’s roads, with Willingdon Crescent giving way to Mother Teresa. But the Islamic past, from the slave dynasties to the Great Mughals (and the last one, the exquisitely cultured if politically gormless Bahadur Shah Zafar), remains as an enduring symbol of India’s lively syncretism. It also underlines the inconvenient truth that these rulers were not outsiders and exploiters in quite the way the British were.

No matter, the National Democratic Alliance II has rarely allowed historical accuracy to hinder its nationalism. Thus, our late President, A P J Abdul Kalam, gets commemorated by replacing Aurangzeb, the original Hindu persecutor in modern saffron demonology. The apolitical and deeply secular Kalam was pronounced a decent sort of chap “despite being a Muslim”, by our Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma. He was, Mr Sharma clarified, a “nationalist” and “humanist”. He doesn’t specify that Kalam’s chief achievements lay in his role in developing indigenous missile technology, though the medical profession may prefer to fete him for the cost-effective “Kalam stent”.

Maybe Delhi should be grateful that attention was deflected from Akbar Road, and a suggested name change to Maharana Pratap Singh Marg. This proposal came from V K Singh, deputy foreign minister, who, as Army Chief, couldn’t clarify in which year he was born. Maharana Pratap Singh did harry Akbar for much of his reign — the latter’s victory at Haldighati was a close-run thing. No doubt his name emblazoned on a signboard near Man Singh, Akbar’s trusted Rajput general, would have stiffened Rajput pride, which has been dented since the abolition of the privy purse in 1971.  

The problem is that it is hard to deny Akbar’s greatness. Doesn’t a government-certified school textbook assure us that “Akbar, though a Muslim, was a good king”? His syncretic Din-i-Ilahi philosophy — at a time when his British contemporary Elizabeth I was persecuting Catholics — was way ahead of its time.

If questions of moral turpitude and religiosity were strictly applied, Mr Modi would have a hard time retaining the name of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the road that runs along another flank of the prime ministerial residence. The Parivar may celebrate his dissolution of the Muslim Caliphate but Ataturk dragged Turkey into the modern era with dictatorial secularism. Ironically, it is a legacy that Turkey’s current head Recep Tayyip Erdogan is working to violently overturn, and more than one commentator has spotted grim similarities between his strongman proclivities and Mr Modi.

Ataturk was also no saint. He drank too much Raki, the potent aniseed drink that contributed to his early death, and was linked with several women after his divorce. His relationship with Sabiha Gokcen, his adopted daughter and Turkey’s first woman aviator, was always open to speculation.

Down the road, there’s Andre Malraux Marg, named for the author, Indophile and culture minister under Charles De Gaulle. Married twice and with several live-in relationships, he once declared that “Man is dead, After God”.

Changing the name of Race Course Road may belatedly save the multitudes from moral turpitude. But just as people stubbornly abbreviate Connaught Place to CP instead of calling it Indira Chowk and Rajiv Chowk — name changes pushed by Congressman Mani Shankar Iyer, thence known as “Indira aur Rajiv Chowkidar” — the clunky sound of Lok Kalyan Marg is unlikely to replace racy Race Course Road.

In any case, when the wannabe middle class is ambitiously naming whole apartment blocks Wellington, Princeton, Manhattan or Malibu, does it make sense to bother about the name of a road?

Every week, Eye Culture features writers with an entertaining critical take on art, music, dance, film and sport