humans: Renaming, it’s such a human thing

Call it decolonisation, deNehru Museumisation, or whatever you will. But never has renaming been taken up with so much vim, vigour and verve. Take the area once called United Provinces, itself a renaming of a place called United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. It would go on, with the addition of the ex-princely states of Rampur, Banaras and Tehri Garhwal, to be renamed Uttar Pradesh. But it remains the same entity, the same terrain as ever before. The state of Uttarakhand carved out of UP is no new chunk imported from, say, Alaska, but a bit of UP now given a new, differentiating name. Yes, humans are big on differentiators.

Naming and renaming things have a divine quality to it even as it is a human activity. So, even though ‘Lord God’ of Genesis 2:19 ‘formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air’ – the Bible seems a bit iffy about who created marine creatures – ‘whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof’. So, god proposes, man disposes of names. Naamkaran is a big deal in all cultures. Now, re-naamkaran is gaining ground. Whether it’s renaming oneself through affidavit or social use, or renaming places or objects to claim or reclaim them, try re-nomenclaturing. Call ‘sky’, for instance, ‘pencil’, or ‘fridge’, ‘fabulous’. You’ll probably feel better without sky or fridge caring one bit.