Sullivan quotes Hitchens approvingly, and therefore indicates his intent to call the city victimized by Islamist terrorists last week Bombay rather than by its proper modern name, Mumbai. Their argument is that it is illegitimate for brown-skinned to change the names given to their cities by their British masters during the colonial era – especially if that name change reflects the cultural heritage of the majority.

When Salman Rushdie wrote, in The Moor's Last Sigh in 1995, that "those who hated India, those who sought to ruin it, would need to ruin Bombay," he was alluding to the Hindu chauvinists who had tried to exert their own monopoly in the city and who had forcibly renamed it—after a Hindu goddess—Mumbai. We all now collude with this, in the same way that most newspapers and TV stations do the Burmese junta's work for it by using the fake name Myanmar. (Bombay's hospital and stock exchange, both targets of terrorists, are still called by their right name by most people, just as Bollywood retains its "B.")

In effect, the two British expatriates argue that the Indians must accept the decisions of those who colonized their nation and attempted to suppress their religion and culture. I guess that is a sign of the arrogance that still runs deep in British culture – the sun may have long since set upon the British Empire, but they want to pretend that they still rule the world anyway.

Sullivan, though, in a fit of intellectual honesty, does publish a dissent by one of the uppity Indians who insists upon defending their right to give an Indian city a proper Indian name.

I'm a fourth-generation Mumbaikar who loves reading your blog, but your post about the name Mumbai (linked to Hitchens) left me seething.
Hitchens is completely wrong. As someone whose roots go back many generations in Mumbai, let me assure you that we've always called the city Mumbai in our local language Marathi. The name Bombay was given to the city by the British. What do you think the city was called before the Europeans arrived? It was called Mumbai.

No word yet on whether or not either of these Brits will repent of their cultural imperialism and acknowledge that the name change to Mumbai is every bit as legitimate as the decision of Chinese authorities to rename their capital Beijing, or for the Russians to strip the names of Communist dictators from Saint Petersburg and Volgograd.

Posted by: Greg at 02:15 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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