Hindu and Sikh Indian slaves waiting upon their White British masters in British-ruled India
In February 2016, the UK publisher ‘The Independent’ began a controversial campaign criticized by many as colonial, Hinduphobic and racist – to rename India’s port city Mumbai to Bombay. Mumbai was previously known as Bombay after the British’s bloody colonization of the Indian sub-continent for almost 100 years. Under the British Raj (British rulers), during 1858 to 1947, tens of millions of the indigenous Indians were terrorized. Under British rule, it wasn’t just terror that the indigenous Indians (mostly Hindu) felt, the British Raj was also responsible for the deaths of millions of indigenous Indians (including famines that were caused by the looting of many of their native resources). So knowing all this, when the British finally left the Indian sub-continent and India had grown to a big (but still young) nation, the then government decided to revert all major cities named by the British colonizers to their original heritage names. This growing-up of the Indian people led Bombay to be re-named to Mumbai.
Mumbai is based in the Western Indian state of Maharashtra, which is occupied by Indian people who speak in Marathi and are mostly Hindu (80%), although 10% are Muslim and 5% are Buddhist. Marathi speakers had always called Bombay city as “Mumbai” since the city’s indigenous inhabitants were Hindu Marathi fishermen and ‘Mumbai’ is short for the goddess name Mumbaidevi, the protector of fisherman. When the British invaded India and Mumbai, they re-named it by using an anglicized take on the Portuguese colonial name “Bombahia” which meant ‘Good Bay’.
Therefore, it is quite strange that in 2016 a British media giant (The Independent) begins a campaign that refuses to refer to Mumbai by its current & native name, and go one step further and officially call it as Bombay again. Thousands of upset & offended Indians took to social media (this controversy even trended on Twitter India) to strongly criticize The Independent’s move to re-name their city’s name back under the colonial name Bombay, and said its like refusing to let Indians decide on their own heritage. Hundreds of critics have even labelled The Independent and its editor Amol Rajan as bigots, racists and new-age advocates for superiority/colonial complex, even a bit of white-privilege (can you imagine a large Black African media outlet refusing to say London city and demanding the use of the original names from the pre-British era) .
Here are some tweets and comments being posted by the Indians about this strange (politically motivated) and bigoted controversy:
Mumbai is the Marathi name; Bombay the colonial one. I prefer Mumbai. Perhaps The Independent = The Colonialist? https://t.co/9qr2wzEWj0
— Amish Tripathi (@authoramish) February 11, 2016
The Independent thinks the name ‘Mumbai’ shows nasty Hindu nationalism. But,dear old thing,been calling it that in Marathi since I was born!
— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) February 11, 2016
#BanTheIndependent down with idiotic @amolrajan for his colonial slavery mindset. pic.twitter.com/zUUbyN3Q82
— Anup Setty (@anupsetty) February 11, 2016
@bhogleharsha Absolutely colonial mindset (though done by an Indian) of the Independent who thinks they can decide the name of our cities!
— Sridhar Samu (@sridhar_samu) February 11, 2016
The independent to refer the British govt as the East India company
— DaatanchiTaai (@runjhunmehrotra) February 11, 2016
The Independent is going back to calling itself The Monarchist
— Rohan (@mojorojo) February 11, 2016
The editor of the Independent should also switch that national dish of Britain back to fish and chips https://t.co/cqsM1NDReS
— Malika Rodrigues (@ruderigues) February 10, 2016
From today I am going to call The @Independent as Colonial Times. How’s that?
— Kaushal S Inamdar (@ksinamdar) February 11, 2016