Friday 23 December, 2005

Fixation with anglicizing native names

I was least bothered about recent controversy over change of name of Bangalore city to Bengaluru until i stumbled on a discussion in a internet forum. It made me to ponder about the mentality of some people, who oppose any such change because new official name does not sound cool and old name has historic significance since British times(only among english educated). This discussion reminds me of a event in my childhood, On my annual summer school holidays i went to my grandmother's village with my mother and brother. Villagers frequent my grandmother's house to meet my mother, since she visits her parents once in a year, on one such occasion, a person playfully asked, "what i was doing here, when my house is in Haidarabad?", another person objected to his pronunciation of Haidarabad and requested me to pronounce it for him, i proudly said its Hyderabad and instantly that person suggested to his companion, that he should utter the city's name in a way i did, otherwise people will think he is old fashioned.

This experience amused me and thought that as these people are uneducated, so don't know how to pronounce my city name. Only years later i realized my folly and our fixation with anglicizing native words. My village is in between Tirupati and Cuddapah, which is almost equidistant from Bengaluru and Chennai cities, people there and parents of my kannada friends call it by its original name: Bengaluru. Both names coexisted for all these years, Bengaluru is more popular in the country side and Bangalore among cities & english educated people, but when people say Bangalore sounds more cool, then it represents their state of mind( & perhaps lack of self esteem over ones culture) and standards which they are applying to judge, isn't compatible with the native culture and it is totally nonsensical comparison, same can be said when we apply native standards to judge foreign words.

When it comes to changing names of cities, What can i say about our state of mind, after hundreds of years of subjugation, In this secular nation still we let the city Shahada in India to retain its name, when Shahada is the central statement of Muslim faith and it means "There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet" and more to it, if you say with intent, then uttering this single word can officially make you Muslim!.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another confusion started on city name.

now also when we tell chennai to some people, they will ask where is chennai, they know the old name Madras.

Anonymous said...

Jeevan,

In kannada language, Bangalore is written as Bengaluru, so there isn't much difference there. Coming to name change of madras, how many still remember old name of Sri Lanka, which was changed 35 years ago? So its just a matter of time!

Anonymous said...

I thought that this name change was snonymous to Ramdoss' Tamil drive ! Maybe itz not that bad after all

Anonymous said...

Jayan,

IMHO, Correction of a mispronounced name cannot be compared to Tamil protection movement.

Anonymous said...

Happy New Year Shuuro.:)

Anonymous said...

Happy New Year!!!