Mumbai: Whenever the Shiv Sena is in power either on its own or in alliance, one of the first things it does is rename places. It famously renamed Bombay as Mumbai in 1995 when it was the senior partner in the state’s ruling alliance with BJP. Since then, Shiv Sena and its clone Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) have often forced Bollywood film directors to get their film characters say “Mumbai" and not “Bombay" even if the movies were situated in the period when Mumbai was Bombay. And of course, the Sena-BJP government also re-christened the Victoria Terminus, that imposing and defining remnant of the Raj, as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, which in December 2016, the state government, further re-named as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus!

In December again, Shiv Sena veteran and state transport minister Diwakar Raote got a new suburban train station on the Western line named ‘Ram Mandir’.

Now, Raote, who was Mumbai mayor in 1991-92, and his party have set his sight on newer sites. They want the colonial era names of suburban train stations in Mumbai changed to native titles to make them more localized and easier to understand in terms of their relation to the surroundings. For instance, the Shiv Sena has demanded that Elphinstone Road station on the western suburban rail line be renamed Prabhadevi, which is the name of the locality where the station is located.

On 15 March, Shiv Sena MP from Mumbai South Arvind Sawant, raised this demand in the Lok Sabha. On 20 March, Raote led a delegation to Union home minister Rajnath Singh to make similar demands for some other stations as well.

“If a new station on the suburban line is to be inaugurated, then the Maharashtra transport ministry has the powers to name it. But if an existing station is to be renamed, then the Union home ministry is the final authority," Raote said, explaining why the delegation met Singh when it was Raote who approved the decision to name Ram Mandir station.

Other stations sought to be renamed are Grant Road as Gamdevi, Currey Road as Lalbaug (Lalbaug was originally a Shiv Sena stronghold, also famous for its Ganesh festival of Lalbaugcha Raja or the Lord of Lalbaugh), and Mumbai Central as Jagannath Sunkersett. Sunkersett was a 19th century Bombay philanthropist who in 1845 along with Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, formed Indian Railway Association that eventually brought railways to India and was also the first Indian to be nominated to the Legislative Council of Bombay in 1861. The nativist party wants to commemorate Sunkersett for his large body of contribution to the making of modern Mumbai.

Asked the reason why the Shiv Sena wanted stations renamed, Raote, in lighter vein, posed a counter question: “How would you feel if Hindustan is taken away from Hindustan Times? Our train stations and places have to have our names, the names of our icons and our heroes. This is our city," Raote said. He said he has been pursuing this issue for 25 years and would soon release a book compiling his efforts and the correspondence he has had with various government departments.

In the long history of renaming in Maharashtra that has featured the Shiv Sena, there is probably one renaming that the Sena was dead against—the renaming of Marathwada University as Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada Vidyapeeth in the early 1990s. It was Sharad Pawar as the chief minister of Maharashtra who executed the decision after a prolonged and violent agitation by Dalit organizations. Shiv Sena founder late Balasaheb Thackeray had opposed it not because he did not revere Ambedkar, but because he thought the renaming would reinforce the caste fault-lines in Maharashtra.

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