The Bangalore-Mysore Tipu Express has been renamed as Wodeyar Express by South Western Railway at the behest of a BJP parliamentarian, drawing allegations of communalising public transport, particularly in the light of BJP governments changing the “Muslim” names of several cities and roads across the country.

Mansoor Khan, co-chairman of the state Congress communications wing, termed the decision “communal politics at its laziest”.

“Why has the (name of the) Tipu Express been changed to Wodeyar Express? The train has been plying on the route for 42 years without anyone being bothered about its name. What is the use of this renaming? Does it help the public in any way? This is communal politics at its laziest,” Khan tweeted.

The change of name for the train was announced by BJP Lok Sabha member Pratap Simha, the prime mover behind the move.

“Now Wodeyar Express will serve you instead of Tipu Express,” Simha tweeted, along with the railway notification and his July 25 letter to railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw seeking a name change for the train, operating since the early 1980s.

Tipu Sultan, the 18th-century ruler, is popularly known as the “Tiger of Mysore”. He waged four wars against the British before he died fighting — a record the current flag-bearers and vocal champions of muscular Indian nationalism cannot claim.

The Sangh parivar, however, accuses Tipu of destroying temples and carrying out mass murder and religious conversions of Hindus in Kodagu and Dakshina Kannada of Karnataka and the Malabar region of neighbouring Kerala.

The Wodeyars ruled the kingdom of Mysore from the late 1300s till the 1760s and then remained titular rulers from around 1800 till 1950. While the critics of the controversial move didn’t question the credentials of the Wodeyars, they suggested that the railway ministry could have added a new train to the busy route and named it after the Mysore royals instead of denigrating Tipu.

N.A. Haris, a Congress MLA, saw it as a move to hide the failures of the BJP government. “People should be aware of the BJP’s appeasement regime, which is always bothered about a religion and ideas related to that religion. Religious disharmony is being conducted to hide serious problems like price rise and unemployment,” he tweeted.

The renaming of the popular inter-city express did not go down well with many old-timers, either.

“If the BJP is determined to honour the Wodeyars, they should have named Mysore airport after the Maharaja of Mysore, Jayachamraja Wodeyar, who was an aviation enthusiast and always wanted to build airports here, and not denigrate Tipu who was a real hero,” writer and retired professor of the University of Mysore, Mahesh Chandra Guru, told The Telegraph.

After being the Maharaja of Mysore for a decade from 1940, Jayachamraja Wodeyar was governor of the then states of Mysore and Madras.

“Or they could have introduced a new train and named it after any of the Wodeyar kings rather than denigrate a great king like Tipu Sultan, who had sent shivers down the spines of the British,” Guru said.

After the train renaming, Karnataka’s BJP dispensation appears to have turned its attention to a ritual associated with Tipu — the Salam Mangalarathi that is performed at the Kollur Mookambika Temple in Udupi district at 8am every day in honour of a visit by the Sultan of Mysore.

Revenue minister R. Ashok on Saturday told reporters that the name of the temple ritual would be formally changed if the local people so wanted. “We will certainly consider it if the local people want to change it (the ritual’s name),” he said.

The Sangh parivar has long been waging a battle to rename the Salam Mangalarathi, and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had in March this year submitted a memorandum to the temple authorities to adopt a new name for the ritual.

The BJP has been hesitant to acknowledge the achievements credited to Tipu. A Congress government’s decision in 2015 to observe November 10 as Tipu Jayanti had triggered widespread protests and counter-campaigns against the Tiger of Mysore.

A VHP functionary died and several people were injured in rioting in the hill district of Kodagu when the Congress government celebrated Tipu’s 266th birth anniversary.

The BJP was in for embarrassment with its own councillors in the Bangalore city corporation ratifying a move to rename a road in the city after Tipu in 2015. The councillors, however, reversed the decision a month later.