The Modi government is often accused of tying new name-ribbons around existing welfare schemes and presenting them as new. While this goes on at the Centre, some BJP state governments and many in the larger Sangh parivar have gone on a seemingly unending name-changing spree. Uttar Pradesh has taken the lead, but there are also murmurs about Ahmedabad (Gujarat) and local demands to rename Aurangabad and Osmanabad (Maharashtra), and the tempo is sure to pick up.
The past is always in the repertoire of identity politics, and legends and leaders consigned to the past tend to find place in the contested terrain of statues and symbols. Rulers and ruling classes are keen to turn their legacies into monuments and memory. This is true not only of pre-democratic rulers; in democracies too, the bid to create enduring legacies and leave imprints on public memory form an essential part of the politics of culture. So, rulers and political figures are memorialised, often posthumously, in currency notes, in statues at busy public squares, on signboards and road names. If anything, in the time of selfie-love, the narcissistic impulse to make themselves a part of history is greater for our current democratic rulers. Just as rulers of pre-Independence India, British or Mughals or homegrown, and of various religious persuasions ensured they live for posterity through memory, so do the rulers today want to create new memories. What is happening in our midst may be understood as the politics of memory, the politics of symbols, at multiple levels, as an…
