The Power of Words

In the 68 years of Mumbai’s life since Independence, much has changed.  It is difficult to extract which changes arose from the transition from imperial subject to autonomous democracy, and which from development.  Perhaps the most evident are also the most symbolic, and ironically, the least concrete.  Names have power in determining identity, as today’s debates over the legacies of slaveholders and racists on college campuses have shown.  It seems that Mumbai is still figuring out its relation to its colonial past--some of the names have changed quite recently.  Other place names made the switch even before the 1940s.  For those renamings in the past few decades, what may look unrelated to British colonialism (such as the rise of Hindu nationalist parties) can be backlashes against British ideologies or derivatives of Partition. Solid physical structures--memorials, plaques, repurposed buildings--occupy but little space in the city; names can expand like a gas to the limits of location and into the public mind.  As Maya Angelou once wrote, “Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things.”