Name Change Fever Grips The Nation, Now Maratha Group Wants Pune To Be Renamed 'Jijapur'
Wednesday, November 14, 2018 IST
Joining the bandwagon of unusual names that are replacing iconic cities of India, Pune which was the base of Maratha Empire might soon be known as ‘Jijapur’.
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As the centre approved new names of 25 places and towns in the last one year, people can’t help but wonder why is India moving in the backward direction instead of forward? Why are we going back in history, tampering with names and connecting them to age-old traditional names just for the sake of reinstating our values and culture?
Once Allahabad was renamed as ‘Prayagraj’, Faizabad as Ayodhya, Gujarat Chief Minister, Vijay Rupani expressed his interest in changing the name of Ahmedabad to ancient ‘Karnavati’. Hyderabad to Bhagyanagar and West Bengal to Bangla have also been proposed.
It looks as if the trend is picking up with ministers from the government in power as they put forward brand new proposals to change city names in the blink of an eye. Now 'Sambhaji Brigade' has conveyed their demand to the government and want Pune to be renamed. The group also supports the proposal made by Shiv Sena for changing names of Aurangabad and Osmanabad to Sambhaji Nagar and Dharashiv.
The brigade has even issued a letter describing their demands to the state government and has requested immediate action on their proposal, the Pune Mirror reported.
Santosh Shinde, Pune district president of Sambhaji Brigade told Pune Mirror the reason behind the suggested nomenclature. Shinde referred to Chhatrapati Shivaji’s mother, Jijamata who was a great visionary, who ploughed the deserted Punawadi’s land in the 17th century with a golden plough, which is deemed as the beginning of Pune’s prosperity.
He further said that Pune was looted by Bijapur Adilshah’s generals in 1630 AD due to which, not a single person was ready to stay here out of fear. In this case “Jijamata’s contribution cannot be forgotten as it is relevant to Pune’s modernisation,” Shinde added.
He corroborated the statement by saying that both the state government and Chief Minister, Devendra Fadnavis themselves claim that the government has been established with the blessings of Chhatrapati Shivaji.
In order to implement this proposal, he said that they will meet Pune district collector Naval Kishore Ram on Monday to submit their official letter of request. They will explain the contribution of Shivaji and his mother to the collector for appropriate action.
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