Why the Bid to Rename IIT Bombay Doesn’t Work

When BJP’s Jitendra Singh, the Union minister of state for Science and Technology, made a remark about the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay still retaining the city’s old name during a visit recently, he would have little clue about the snowballing effect it would have had. “Thank God, IIT Bombay has still retained its name…you have not changed it to Mumbai,” he said at an event in the institute on Monday.

Raj Thackeray, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief, who it appears certain will join hands with his cousin Uddhav Thackeray for the forthcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) election, was quick to seize the opportunity. “They hate the name ‘Mumbai’ because it is named after Mumbadevi, the original goddess of Mumbai. Her children are the Marathi people who have lived here for generations. They hate you and your city,” Thackeray would say a day later, trying to burnish his credentials as a leader of the sons-of-the-soil, and trying to cast the BJP as a party for outsiders.

It is a plank that has served the erstwhile Shiv Sena well in the past, but it hasn’t quite found resonance in recent times. His cousin Uddhav tried to build on this argument in the state election last year, but failed to stop the BJP from its best ever performance in the state.

Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who desperately wants to stop the cousins from taking over the BMC, wasn’t of course going to leave the controversy to chance. He has now announced that he will be formally writing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union Education Minister requesting that IIT Bombay be renamed to IIT Mumbai.

All this of course is an eyewash. Jitendra Singh’s relief at finding IIT Bombay still retaining the city’s old name is a surprise given that it was the BJP at the Centre and in a coalition with Shiv Sena in the State, that approved the city’s name change to Mumbai in 1995. It has since played a key role in changing the names of many other institutions and locations in Mumbai and across the state. Thackeray, who has led many campaigns to make such name changes, has himself, along with the rest of the Thackeray clan, had little qualms about sending his children to study in Bombay Scottish School, a well-known school in the city, a dig which Fadnavis made while making his latest announcement.

And so, it now looks certain, once the Centre approves it, that yet another institution in the city will see a name change. To most Mumbaikars, sons of the soil or not, whether an institution will carry a new name or not will have little bearing. Some, egged on by the political conversation of that time, might have had an appetite for some changes, like the name of the city. But this appetite has since dimmed, with the charade becoming evident.

Besides, you just have to look at the streets to see how well it has worked. Past names continue to stick. VT (Victoria Terminus) remains as commonly used, if not more, than CST (Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus). Nobody has really caught on to Prabhadevi station for Elphinstone Road station. And even the old name of the city has been difficult to scrub out of the mouths of people.

And then are the many new names that were stillborn. They exist only on paper. Ask a cab driver to take you to Gopalrao Deshmukh Marg (instead of Pedder Road) or Netaji Subhas Bose Road (instead of Marine Drive), and hear him tell you to not waste his time.