Why have roads named for Mughals? Point is about despots, not religion

There were hundreds of other Indian names to choose from, but Nehru's Congress chose only to retain Mughal emperors' names.

The requisite amount of impotent fuss has been made by ignorant liberals over the apparent removal of the hymn Abide with Me from the Beating Retreat ceremony. Good. I too love that tune dearly and especially the way the Indian Army has rendered it over the years. If at all it is replaced I hope it’s by Vaishnava Janato. 

According to the Gandhi Sevashram, Abide with Me was not quite his favourite hymn. That honour went to two other hymns.

It was introduced only in 1955 by two middle level officers of the Indian army, Brigadier Bewoor, who went on to become army chief after Maneckshaw, and a Major Roberts. 

Change mania

Talking of changing things, I have often wondered why the Nehruvian Congress while changing colonial road names in Delhi, left the Mughal emperors’ names undisturbed.

I mean would Tel Aviv name its roads after Nazis or the British after Tipu Sultan? But they did name New Delhi’s roads after some Mughal emperors. They built it, after all.

So they named roads after their own heroes. Hence Curzon Road, Minto Road, Wellesley Road, Cornwallis Road, Hastings Road, Hardinge Road, Irwin Road, Ratendon Road, Rouse Avenue, Lytton Road, Chelmsford Road, Albuquerque Road (who was he?) and even Dupleix Road.

Not one of them remains. But the Mughal emperors’ names do. Until 2016 we even had an Aurangzeb Road. How can you name an important road after a guy who cut off his brother’s head and sent it on a platter to their father--who he had imprisoned? The road is now named after APJ Kalam.

Why did we have a Shahjahan Road but not Subhash Chandra Bose Marg till the 1970s? And Humayun Road? Ferozeshah Road? Who was he anyway? Tughlaq Road? Tughlaq of all people? And Lodhi Road? Sher Shah Suri Road, too? 

But guess what Gandhi ji got: the then very remote Ring Road. (But a lovely wide avenue in the very heart was named Motilal Nehru Marg). 

Why could they not name Kingsway after Gandhi ji? It’s called Rajpath now. Why was Queensway called Janpath and not, say, Kasturba (Gandhi) Path? 

There were hundreds of other Indian--Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Parsi, Jain--names to choose from. But Nehru’s Congress chose only to retain these Mughal emperors’ names. It missed out on Jehangir, though, in whose name a slum colony was named in the 1970s. 

Mughal, not Muslim

Also, please note: I am not saying Muslim but Mughal. I repeat. Not Muslim but Mughal. 

Wajid Ali Shah might have been a loser but he was a decent fellow, all told. Why was nothing named after him when even that brigand Babur has a lane named after him near Bengali Market? Why has Hem Chandra Vikramaditya of Panipat been ignored? Why no Tipu Sultan road, even a small one?

No road in Delhi was named after any Parsi either till much later. Or Sikh. Or Jain. 

The point, I repeat, is not about Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Christian names. It is about the Mughal emperors who were as big a bunch of despotic thugs as the Brits. Akbar, after all, introduced the first purchase preference policy as a means of forcing artisans to convert to Islam. 

Post-Nehru the Congress did make up somewhat by naming government colonies after Indians. Laxmibai Nagar was originally Vinay Nagar. It was broken up into several nagars, including Sarojini Nagar. Then we had Netaji Nagar, Naoroji Nagar, Ramakrishna Puram etc. 

But by the end of the 1970s, the Gandhi family took over as the prime source of all public property names.