The latest announcement by the State Government has it that the term ‘Colony’ will be removed from all official records and public parlance as the word is derogatory, ‘symbolises oppression and has connotation of untouchability’. At least that is what a report in The Hindu dated April 30, 2025 has to say. Other media have some further clarity, namely that the word will no longer be used in connection with Dalit settlements alone. The nobility of the intention behind this decision is indisputable but the actual implementation of it will be fraught with confusion. More importantly, it may be yet another cosmetic change with no effect on ground reality.

The OED has 21 different meanings for the word, but the most common usage pertains to a country or area that is controlled by another country, often far away. In this the term connotes oppression undoubtedly. But the second most common meaning is that of a place where a group of people with shared interests or jobs live together, apart from other people. In the context of the Government’s announcement, this too makes sense, particularly looked at from the Dalit point of view. But in our city, from a very long period of time, the suffix Colony has been used for housing enclaves. To name just a couple – CIT Colony and Aspirans Garden Colony are two places where departed political heavyweights of the party in power resided for long. They did not seem to mind the suffix at all.

While the present announcement may pertain only to Dalit settlements, this conscious exercise of renaming will only bring them to focus and reinforce the very connotation that is supposedly being erased. And as to the others, what is to prevent an over-zealous administration from imposed a blanket ban on the word? What will be the new suffix? Will it be the ubiquitous Nagar? If so, will Srinagar Colony become Srinagar Nagar? And what about those where the Government itself was an active promoter such as Secretariat Colony and Judges Colony?

Whatever be the outcome, in the immediate short term this move is going to spell chaos. We have just got over the Madras/Chennai change and learnt to live with the old number/new number muddle and now this latest has come. Of course, none of this is new to residents of the city.

In the 1970s, it was decided that the suffix Cheri, originally meaning a settlement, and which had later become synonymous with slums, was derogatory. All Cheri-s were renamed Nagars and if above a certain size, Managars. The names changed but the slums remained and continue to remain, slums. Velacheri, which urbanised later, and others such as Semmancheri, all historic villages, have been left untouched.

Similarly, in the 1980s, we went through an exercise in removal of caste names from streets. This was with a view to eradicate casteism itself. Nothing could have been more fruitless than that move. It merely removed place associations with great figures and names in history. How else can we explain BN Reddy Road, named after the great filmmaker, becoming Dr. B. Narasimhan Road? And here again, some streets continue to bear caste suffixes. It was a half-hearted attempt at best, not thought through, and mired in controversy.

What is to be noted is that none of these really changed ground realities. Slums remained slums, caste continues to dominate every aspect of life, including electoral mathematics. The present move to ‘uplift’ colonies to something else will do nothing to eradicate oppression of depressed classes by their counterparts higher up on the caste scale.