The State Government has embarked on yet another name change spree. Only this time it seems to have covered its tracks quite well. It has announced that as a fallout of the Chief Minister’s earlier announcement that the word ‘colony’ where it occurs will be deemed derogatory and needs removal, streets that still bear caste names will be once and for all given fresh names. The options for these have however not been left to the citizenry but restricted to a list that the Government has put out. Which means we will have the usual tired, timeworn, set of names again. The Opposition has cried foul and declared that if it comes to power, it will reverse this entire exercise.
It is worth reflecting that this move, while laudable in its ultimate objective of removing caste, is nothing more than cosmetic in its impact. The State Government, in its present and past forms, all of which have been on this game at least since the 1980s, have only been tampering with history and not with any view to proactively change caste attitudes for the future. The first such move, during MG Ramachandran’s regime, truncated caste names from real-life historic personalities, in whose honour streets were named. BN Reddy for instance cannot be Dr B Narasimhan. How would the State Government react if some of its cherished leaders’ names were to be altered in public usage?
Likewise, the removal of caste names was selectively applied. To give a DMK example, Dr TM Nair Road, named after the Justice Party leader, has remained as such when in reality it ought to be Taravath Madhavan (who he?) Road. The ADMK in its turn, preferred to rename Chamiers Road as Pasumpon Muthuramalinga (Thevar) Road, the parenthesis reflecting ground reality – caste does not exist, and yet it does!
Would any political party seriously affirm that caste considerations have come down in our State? Not really. While name change is very simple, getting mindsets to move is not so. Electoral mathematics is still entirely caste driven in Tamil Nadu; it is no better than those states up north that we so like to mock. Similarly, our record of preventing caste atrocities, particularly of the intermediary castes against the lower ones, is not edifying. And every time we read of conflicts, we see caste and religion-based subliminal messaging. Even now there are stories of glasses being segregated based on caste in tea shops. You need to just go to the southern districts to see how entire areas are classified and qualified based on who lives in them.
And so what is it that we are trying to change here? And who is addressing those bigger issues? Nobody really. For it is those divisions that come in handy while selecting electoral hopefuls and also for calculating strength in the assembly and municipal councils. In reality, it is only Chennai that seems to have shed caste tags and so this exercise will have minimal impact on the city where the maximum number of streets exist. Let us wait and see what the Panchayats in villages, whose nod is required for name changes there, will have to say.
Whatever it is, we hope the Government makes this a once and for all exercise. More often than not, we see that such steps are implemented only half-heartedly, leaving plenty of scope for future powers to meddle. The party that comes up with such brainwaves too does not look too closely at how the changes are made on the ground. Thus, while all these Brahmin, Nadar, Chetty and other such streets that should have ideally been wiped out in the 1980s itself are still around for fresh changes to be made and touted as pioneering efforts in bringing in equality.