The editor of the leading British newspaper ‘The Independent’, Amol Rajan said he would revert back to using Bombay instead of Mumbai when referring to the financial hub of India.
He said he will rather side with India’s tradition that has been open to the world, than the ‘closed-minded view’ of Hindu nationalists.
Mr.Rajan born in Kolkata and raised in London, said. “The whole point of Bombay is of an open, cosmopolitan port city, the gateway of India that’s open to the world. If you call it what Hindu nationalists want you to call it, you essentially do their work for them.”
Bombay was renamed as Mumbai in 1995, with the force by Shiv Sena. The city has been named after the goddess Mumbadevi,
the protector of fisherman. He said.
“As journalists, as someone who edits The Independent, it’s incredibly important to be specific about our terminology.”
He said, referring to the ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party that. “I’d rather side with the tradition of India that’s been open to the world, rather than the one that’s been closed, which is in ascendance right now.”
Rajan said “In post-partition India, there has been a sort of uneasy marriage between two very different traditions. One of the
founding father, amazing people like B R Ambedkar, Patel, Nehru, Gandhi who are open, secular pluralists and tolerant.
“The other was a slightly nastier strain of Hindu nationalism, which has its expression in the BJP and a movement called
Shiv Sena,” he said.
Rajan said the name Bombay had its roots in the Portuguese colonial name “Bom
Bahia”, or “good bay”. But “Shiv Sena pushed through the renaming against the will of the national government.”