From SOTY's St Teresa to KKHH's St Xavier's, B-town is fixated with western names

In February 1929, the Times of India (ToI) published a notice from the director of the Information Bureau of Punjab. It warned that “a society which has taken the name of Western University, the chief director of which society resides in Kapurthala, is granting or offering to grant graduation in Letters, Arts or Commerce…”.
The director went on to disdainfully state this was “not in fact a University in the proper sense of the term, as used in the British Empire” and had no power to grant academic degrees. But Western University was definitely an early example of what seems to be a very Indian tendency to value Western (literally, in this case) names, especially in the field of education.

Any number of examples could be given — St Xavier’s, St Stephen’s, Loyola, Presidency, Stella Maris, Mayo, Elphinstone — and anyone could probably name a bunch more, in every city. The practice is so standard, it may even have engendered something of a backlash. Some new private universities are deliberately choosing more Indian-sounding names, such as Ashoka, Desh Bhagat and Vivekananda Global, though with many, the Indian names simply derive from their principal donors, like Jindal and Shiv Nadar.

BOLLYWOOD LIKES WESTERN
Proof of the enduring appeal of the Western name is shown by schools and colleges in Bollywood films such as St Teresa ('Student of the Year'), St Xavier’s ('Kuch Kuch Hota Hai'), Holy Family ('Stanley Ka Dabba'), Imperial College ('3 Idiots'), Bishop Cotton ('Udaan'), Tulips ('Taare Zameen Par'), Rockford ('Rockford'), Model College ('Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar', where the antagonists are from Rajput College) and many more. 'Mohabbatein' was a rare film — set in Gurukul College.

One obvious reason is that many topranked educational institutions in India are still those that date from the British era and have retained those names. They also tend to have evocative colonial buildings that attract Bollywood films to shoot in them, and some link to the names clearly seems to persist.

Even in the rare case where one of these institutions was set to close, as with the 180-year-old Robert Money School in Mumbai, the organisation due to take it over, Chanakya Gyan Kendra, had started the Western-sounding Edubridge International school as replacement. (The outcry after news of the closure broke may have halted the deal – and affirmed the value of the school’s brand name).

CONVENTS & SAHIBS

One slightly misleading connection is the value placed on ‘convent school’ education. This should mean schools run by Catholic orders, and there’s no reason they must have Western names or even teach in English. For example, the Christian Brothers run Jagruti High School in Mandal, Gujarat as a rural vernacular school. But in practice, ‘convent school’ has come to mean English language education in an institution with a Western name.

In 2010, the Karnataka government came out with a circular asking schools to be careful in using the term ‘convent school’ when no Christian religious order was involved in running it. An article by Mumbai Mirror pointed to St Joseph’s Convent School in Pune that was run by Bhayaram Sisram Shikshan Sanstha, whose president was quoted saying “it is just a title. We do not think we mislead parents into thinking that the school is run by the church.”

But the craze for Western names in India goes back a long way, and beyond just educational institutions. In 1926, ToI reported on a commercial dispute in the Bombay High Court where the judge noted sarcastically how Indian traders faked foreign names: “I say the plaintiff in the suit is a Mahomedan ‘John Lesley and Co’ and now we have a Parsi ‘William Green and Co’.”

Even before this, in 1900, ToI carried a report, reprinted from the Indian Import and Export Trades Journal, on “the strange trust put by Europeans themselves in certain business carried on purely by the natives under the sign of a foreign name… This induces many of the tradesmen to adopt English names through sheer force of fashion.”

Some name changes might have been in the hope of bureaucratic benefits. In 1934, ToI published a letter from a reader complaining about people changing names to Western-sounding ones in the hope of getting benefits for the Anglo-Indian community. Some schools encouraged this, the reader asserted, because “they would not be eligible for certain government grants unless they could show a certain percentage of pupils with English names on their rolls.”

THE RENAMING ORGY

But if these reasons applied during the Raj, why have they persisted till today? Independence was supposed to bring a resurgence of Indian names, starting from the country itself. The Constituent Assembly discussed using Bharat, Bharatvarsha or Hindustan, partly in reaction to the naming of Pakistan, before agreeing on “India, that is Bharat.”

Another round of renaming involved the states. Some were easy – East Punjab quickly became Punjab (though West Bengal persisted till very recently). Central Provinces and Berar became Madhya Pradesh. But Uttar Pradesh was only arrived at after strong disputes, with alternatives like Aryavarta, Oudh, Kaushal and Brij being vigorously promoted.

Over time, renamings progressed, with Madras becoming Tamil Nadu, Bombay becoming Maharashtra and Mysore becoming Karnataka and so on. (One that was rejected was a 1960 proposal to call the Andaman and Nicobar Islands after the names used by Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army — Shahid Dwip and Swaraj Dwip).

These renamings were received with varied levels of hostility and support, as with the more recent name changes of cities like Madras to Chennai and Bombay to Mumbai. But most people can do little about state- or city-level renamings other than grumble in letters to the media or keep using old names in personal communication. But it becomes different when it comes down to a neighbourhood level, or to institutions where one has a direct connection with, like schools and colleges.

This kind of renaming can result in a strong reaction. Khotachiwadi is a Mumbai neighbourhood where many old houses have resisted redevelopment, so an attempt by Bombay Municipal Corporation in May 1982 to rename it after Marathi journalist Apa Pendse resulted in such vehement demonstrations that the corporation had to call off its naming ceremony.

A few days later, ToI published an article with many views condemning the ‘frantic pace’ of renaming. What was found particularly annoying was that “25% of the work quota of the works committee concerns naming or renaming of roads, resulting in neglect of important jobs, like construction and maintenance of roads.” An ex-mayor of Bombay, BK Boman-Behram condemned the spurious grounds on which roads, such as Laburnum Road, were renamed, “as some councillors thought it was the name of a foreigner.” (His views didn’t stop a lane in Colaba being named after him).

LISTEN TO PEOPLE

People aren’t unreasonable. A name change with a real rationale is often accepted, like the 1961 renaming of Frere Road, which ran alongside Bombay Port, after P DeMello, founder of All-India Port and Dock Workers Federation, who really had a connection with that area. But the renaming of Pedder Road after now-forgotten mayor Gopalrao Deshmukh has never been accepted, and the old name persists, despite appearing nowhere in print or in any form of official use.

A complex case is that of Marathwada University, whose proposed renaming after Dr Ambedkar lead to the 16-year-long Namantar Andolan. Marathwada University wasn’t a very old name, having been established in 1958, and Ambedkar did have a connection with the region. But it was the assertion of Dalit identity that resulted in opposition, many furious protests, a few suicides and an apparently endless stalemate before the rather obvious solution of calling it Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University was agreed upon.

It is the overnight renaming of institutions with no local consultation and for obviously political reasons that riles people. The late chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Arjun Singh, for example renamed Bhopal University as Barkatullah University without consulting anyone relevant (he also encouraged the rapid growth of deemed universities, of which 44 were later derecognised by the government). Others were able to resist – Gulbarga University has still not been named after Basaveshwara and Kurukshetra University was able to avoid being renamed after Birendra Narayan Chakravarty, a former Governor of Haryana.

The Congress has been one of the most assiduous renamers, adding to the irritation by repeatedly naming institutions after members of the Nehru-Gandhi family. This may not always have been at direct instigation of the family, but they have some responsibility for creating a culture of sycophancy that has led to this. The BJP can now assert it is just doing the same as it names institutions after its idols, such as Deendayal Upadhyay and SP Mookerjee, but it doesn’t make regular people who have to deal with these politicised name changes any less resentful.

Compared to these changes, the old Western names – or names that appear to be such – can appear less manipulative and less heedless of local concerns. It is perhaps the misuse of political renaming that has really cemented the appeal of Western names in India.