India pushes to erase colonial past by renaming Simla

British governors’ summer capital is the latest target of nationalist party’s bid to resurrect its Hindu roots

SIMLA, the former summer capital of British India, is likely to be renamed to free the town from the “mental slavery” of its colonial past.

The local branch of the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party, wants to rename the Himalayan hill town established by the British in 1864, after the Hindu goddess Shyamala Devi.

“Before the British arrived, Simla was known as Shyamala,” Jai Ram Thakur, the chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, said over the weekend. “My government will seek public opinion on the demand to revert to this name.”

Other Right-wing organisations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or World Hindu Council, are also demanding Simla’s renaming. “Sticking to names [of places] given by [British] oppressors is a sign of mental slavery,” said Aman Puri, the state head of the VHP. “Changing their names is a small but significant step in renouncing it [servitude].”

In recent years, federal and provincial BJP governments have launched a drive to rename several towns in an attempt to resurrect India’s Hindu past.

Earlier this month, the BJP government in northern Uttar Pradesh state renamed the holy town of Allahabad on the banks of the Ganges as Prayagraj, the “purer” Hindu name it was known by more than 500 years earlier.

Around 19 of 29 Indian provinces ruled directly by the BJP, or in coalition with regional parties, are considering similar name changes.

Mr Puri said he was of the view that the British had a problem pronouncing Shyamala and changed its name to Simla, which endured until well after Indian independence in 1947.

In January 1972, as part of the reorganisation of Indian provinces, Simla became Shimla. The VHP is also demanding that the equally charming, but smaller hill town of Dalhousie, 200 miles to the north, which is named after a Scottish marquis who served as India’s governor-general from 1848 to 1856, be given a new name. The VHP wants it to be named after Subhash Chandra Bose, a well-known Hindu anti-british activist. It also wants the grand former residence of British governors-general and viceroys, now the state-run Hotel Peterhoff, to be named after the fifth-century poet Valmiki.

However, the opposition Congress Party, which headed Himachal Pradesh’s provincial government until late last year, has ridiculed plans to change Shimla’s name.

“The focus should be on resolving Shimla’s myriad problems, like its chronic water shortages and rising unemployment, and not on changing its name,” said Naresh Chauhan, a Congress Party spokesman.

Since independence, India has done away with numerous symbols of British colonial rule.