Makes no sense to eulogise likes of Aurangzeb

There cannot be enough words of praise for the New Delhi Municipal Corporation's near unanimous decision to rename Aurangzeb Road in lutyens' Delhi to Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road. Not only has a son of the soil, who was one of the nation's most prominent humanitarians and among the best Presidents, been honoured, but a bigoted ruler who has remained a scar on the country's secular history, downgraded. A huge wrong has been righted in the process, and not a day soon. It is astonishing that somebody should have even decided in the first place to name a road after Aurangzeb — and that too in a country whose people have suffered at the hands of the religious bigot.

Equally shocking is that the name stuck to the road for all these years with very few voices of protest. It is obvious that ‘secular' reasons must have come in the way of wiping off the Mughal ruler's name and that those who protested must have been dismissed as Rightists. Given the situation, the endorsement of nearly all members of the NDMC, representing various political parties, is heartening. Delhi Chief Minister has publicly supported the decision. However, according to some media reports, an Aam Aadmi Party MlA had questioned the move and suggested that a few other roads could be considered for renaming. This opposition is baffling. Why should the name of a person who had persecuted a large section of Indians during his reign, be there on the roads in the first placeIJ In this vein, it can also be argued that Mughal emperor Babur does not deserve a similar honour.

It is indeed ironical that people who have problems with freedom-fighters like Vinayak Damodar ‘Veer’ Savarkar and even kings such as Chhatrapati Shivaji or Prithviraj Chauhan, should have no qualms about promoting Aurangzeb's legacy through public symbols such as roads and institutions. Delhi is not the only place where the likes of Aurangzeb have been honoured. Demands have been coming from various parts of the country to undo this fascination that our leftist intellectuals have had and have perpetrated on the people over the decades. The Shiv Sena has already demanded the renaming of Aurangabad; there are those who have been agitating for a change in the name of Allahabad to Prayag. The renaming of Aurangzeb Road in the capital should give a boost to those efforts.

Meanwhile, despite being on the wrong side of overwhelming public sentiment, there are those who to oppose such changes. Their principal argument is that name-changing does not change history, nor does it allow one to escape historical facts. But that's not the point. Nowhere in the world are roads and institutions named after people who plundered and ravaged their nations or ruled cruelly. No country names roads and institutions after those who had enslaved them. In any case, people who today argue that history cannot be ‘corrected' or ‘altered', are so wrong in saying so. A bunch of intellectuals in this country successfully managed to change and twist history to suit their ideologies, and feed it to the gullible masses as absolute truth. Contrary opinion-holders and historians were dismissed as academically unsound, politically motivated and, in the worst case, cranky characters. Things have begun changing.