Why has the BJP in power renamed so many cities and changed iconic cityscapes? While such attempts have attracted criticism from those who do not see eye to eye with the ruling party at the Centre and in many states, little attempt has been made to understand why this is happening.
The move of the Centre to rename Rajpath in New Delhi as Kartavya Path has been met with much opposition from rival political parties. The name Rajpath, literally meaning the path of the state, was itself a renaming from the colonial name, Kingsway. Kartavya Path literally means the path of duty.
This isn't the first such attempt at renaming by BJP governments. Aurangzeb Road in Delhi was renamed as Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Marg. Allahabad was renamed Prayagraj. Race Course Road, which houses the residence of the Prime Minister, was renamed Lok Kalyan Marg, literally meaning welfare of the people. The Planning Commission was replaced by the Niti Ayog. Parliament and the adjoining areas are already under dismantling and reconstruction to ensure that the entire stretch will have a different visual look from the one people were used to.
The BJP with a full majority under Narendra Modi clearly wants to leave a memory for posterity that people will associate with it for a long time to come.
The state always seeks to build a symbolic-memorial tradition, which is its own way of leaving an indelible mark in history. This isn’t true about the modern state alone. The Ashokan Pillars in various parts of India, the Sarnath Lion Capital, the Taj Mahal built by Shah Jahan, etc., were all meant to leave behind tangible symbols that would forever stay etched in popular memory.
In modern India, most symbols owe their origin to the Congress, which was the party that led the freedom struggle. From choosing the tricolor as the national flag to choosing Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem to deciding the national emblem, Congress leaders played a decisive role. This apart, some other things got associated with Congress memories: the Gandhi topi (cap), the Nehru jacket or Jawahar coat, which is now sometimes called the Modi jacket, etc.
So, the state’s symbols, which were actually symbols not of any one political party but of India, owed their origins to the primacy of the Congress at independence.
Other parties, by contrast, had very little to contribute to the state’s symbolic-memorial tradition. Before the BJP, the BSP tried to leave its ideological stamp, when Mayawati in power built parks in Noida and Lucknow that showcased Dalit-Bahujan icons from across India as also elephants, which reminded many of the BSP’s party symbol.
The BJP stormed to power in 2014 — and has stayed in power till now — in a paradoxical situation: the symbols of the state have nothing in common with what is perceived to be the ruling party’s own past.
What has followed is a two-fold BJP strategy: claim some symbols with pasts in the Congress and create some new lasting symbols of the state.
So, the BJP claimed the legacy of Sardar Patel in a visible manner, constructing a grand statue of the freedom fighter in Gujarat. It has also claimed the national anthem and the tricolor in new ways: by insisting that the national anthem be played in all movie theatres before a film starts and by launching the Ghar-Ghar Tiranga campaign this Independence Day.
Some other symbols have been tweaked to ensure they remind posterity of the BJP’s centrality to them. The Central Vista renovation will visually change the seat of power in the capital. The national emblem atop the new Parliament building has been seen as a slightly tweaked version of the previous one and will remind the onlooker of the BJP. The Kashi Vishwanath Corridor will also remind future tourists of Prime Minister Modi.
The result: whenever the BJP is voted out of power, it will remain a part of national visual memory. Its legacy will also be remembered via the changed names of roads and cities. The Centre is thus trying to ensure that the BJP does not just remain the party in power — as Vajpayee’s BJP was — but also transforms into the party of power in India.
The opposition instinctively realises the same and is livid. The government’s attempt is to ensure that never in the future should the BJP have to face the prospect of being seen as alien to the legitimate symbols of the Indian state.
—Vikas Pathak is a columnist and media educator. The views expressed are his own.
(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)
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