To say I’m hopping mad at the blatant name changing spree we’re witnessing in this country of ours is an understatement. And what’s worse is the absolute lack of a political discourse about it! Rewriting history to score political mileage is absolutely unacceptable. And to counter the action in the lame defence that hitherto political parties in power also engaged in it at different points in time doesn’t help score points. Isn’t that the one of the reasons they were voted out of power in the first place? So why even imitate those actions?
But then we don’t seem to learn, do we?
And so when economics fail, we take to renaming cities on a war-footing. (Agra to Agrawal, Faizabad to Ayodhya, Allahabad to Prayagraj, Ahmedabad to Karnavati...)
As if the plethora of real-time issues screaming to be addressed in this country were not enough at hand already!
And now that the madness has been unleashed, time they also rename the ‘samosa’, 'paranthas' 'kebabs', 'biriyani', 'pilaf', 'tikkas' 'kurma', 'falooda', 'gulab-jamun', 'jalebis', 'phirni' - them all. After all, all of these dishes originated in Mughal kitchens across the Indian sub-continent now, didn’t they?
Do away with kurta-pyjamas, churidars, sufi music as well!
Also, boycott zaffran, onions. potatoes, tomatoes and tea, coffee, paper, silk - all of which are not indigenous to India!
Finally, BAN CRICKET as a sport too. It's an English game. And yeah...time they realised that the national game Hockey is originally a Canadian export; time to change that to gilli-danda too.
Cultural integration and assimilation - now what the hell is that? We’re Indians - our culture, agriculture! That must explain our political preoccupation with conveniently uprooting, re-seeding established cultural constructs, re-engineering culture/social mores seasonally into the fertile soil of time, all in the hope that such tilling efforts will reap a rich harvest of votes.
Mera Bharat mahan.
