Rechristening seems to be the flavour of the current political season. There are indications that the Bharatiya Janata Party may be eager to change the name of the nation itself. But at an hour when name-change is very much the sign of troubling times, the BJP, forever eager to tweak history and identity, may find itself in a spot from news coming out of Uttarakhand, one of the states that finds itself under the thumb of the double engine sarkar. Recently, the district administration of Lansdowne met a clutch of representatives, including business firms, political organisations and hoteliers, to seek their approval for changing the name of the town, founded as a military cantonment during the raj, after Bipin Rawat, India’s first chief of defence staff. Their response was not quite in the affirmative. What was equally illuminating was the reason cited in favour of the status quo. The wise citizens stated that changing the name of Lansdowne would have a debilitating impact on the town’s economy that was heavily dependent on tourism.

This incident may seem to be an exception. But it raises important questions regarding the spurious logic of name-change initiatives that are a dime a dozen in this country. Most of the administrative interventions to alter the name of settlements or public spaces have been laced with the myopia of identity politics. Else, they are misguided attempts to drive a wedge between a place and its heterogeneous but organic history. Significantly, what the accompanying shrill debates often ignore are the stupendous economic costs that accompany such misadventures and their dire consequences on the unique brand of a township. For instance, not much is said about the fact that Allahabad’s metamorphosis to Prayagraj had, according to one estimate, cost over Rs 300 crore. Some calculations suggest that the BJP’s latest ruse — changing India’s name to Bharat — would involve an astronomical sum that could have been better spent in financing many of the country’s welfare projects. There is another lesson that Lansdowne has taught New Delhi. This concerns the importance of public consultation. Imposing a new name with the help of a brute electoral majority in Parliament or in a state assembly is antithetical to the spirit of democracy. The real adjudicators of such transformations in nomenclature must be the people. This is because what is at stake is not just their history but, as Lansdowne’s residents have argued, also their livelihoods.