The latest entrants on the list of renamed districts will be Aligarh and Mainpuri. The former is to be renamed Harigarh, while the latter will be called Mayan Nagar. Aligarh and Mainpuri are both districts and cities.
The decision to rename Aligarh was taken by a meeting of the Zila panchayat board members. The block pramukhs and local legislators also attended the meeting on Monday, in which it was unanimously decided that Aligarh should be called Harigarh.
Aligarh, which houses the famous Aligarh Muslim University, was called Ramgarh earlier. In the mid 1700s, it was renamed Aligarh after the name of the city’s most important fort.
The first attempt to rename Aligarh was made by Kalyan Singh in 1992 but could not succeed as there was a Congress government at the Centre. In 2015, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had also pushed for recognition of the fact that Aligarh’s original name was Harigarh.
A similar proposal has been passed by the Mainpuri Zila panchayat with the demand that it be named Mayan Nagar. Since 1194, Mainpuri, which was originally a part of the kingdom of Kannauj, had been in the hand of Muslim rulers till the Chauhans in numerous numbers began to settle in there. The name Mainpuri itself comes from founders of the cities—the Jats of the Maini gotra.
Both the proposals have been sent to the state government.
Earlier, the Firozabad Zila Panchayat had also passed a proposal to get itself renamed Chandra Nagar. The original name of the city was Chandwar nager. The name Firozabad was given in the regime of Akbar by Firoz Shah Mansab Dar in 1556.
The present state government has renamed Faizabad, Ayodhya and Allahabad, Prayagraj.
The naming and re-naming of a place is not a simple matter. It opens up uncomfortable questions of memory, ownership, linguistic and religious significance.