Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj district will now revert to being called plain old Amethi again and that is one Mulayam Singh Yadav decision which should be welcomed. This is not because we are ill disposed towards dalit heroes from the distant past being given their due share of national attention but because the tendency to arbitrarily re-name places is, generally speaking, an exercise in whimsy. There are moments in history, of course, when such a change of nomenclature is entirely valid, as for instance when a nation shakes itself free of foreign domination. But re-christening a region that has had its own history for immediate political ends is to perpetrate an injustice upon it. Remember the reason why Amethi was struck off from the map in the first place and the argument gets clearer. It was essentially to teach the Gandhi family a lesson for daring to speaking on behalf of Amethi’s dalits. Last year, Priyanka Gandhi on a visit to her mother’s constituency, happened to come across the case of Sambhu Nath, a dalit of Punnpur village, whose house had been demolished by a local political heavyweight. She led a march to the police station and lodged a complaint. The positive response the move evoked among the local dalits alerted Mayawati. In a bid at competitive caste politics, she promptly held a savdhaan rally in Amethi and announced that the region would henceforth be known as Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj, after the late 19th century ruler of Kolhapur who is believed to have introduced job reservations for dalits and other marginalised communities for the first time. That it was a name which had little resonance in the area was not her concern. What was important was to be seen as a more powerful leader of dalits than any jenny-come-lately. Today, Mayawati may be far too preoccupied with her tangle over the Taj Heritage Corridor issue to rush to the defence of poor Shahuji Maharaj. This is, in fact, the second time his memory has been treated so shabbily. The BSP leader had earlier renamed the pilgrim centre of Chitrakoot after him, only to have Kalyan Singh promptly reverse that decision the moment he came to power. So Kolhapur’s erstwhile ruler will have to await his tryst with posterity and UP politics. For now, Amethi remains Amethi.
