The Garden City’s green cover is quietly vanishing, so it’s back to ‘boiled bean’ existence. That’s what the name-change, from Bangalore to Bengaluru, means to a good majority of city residents. ‘Bengaluru’ is a combination of ‘Benda’ and ‘kaluru’, literally meaning ‘a city of boiled beans’— a title given to the city in the 14th century, apparently by a hungry Hoysala king who was fed beans by a poor woman. The official logic for the name change is that the ‘u’ sound (as in Uruguay) for noun endings is special to the Kannada language and renaming the city would be a special way of commemorating the 50 years of the state’s reorganisation.
But when one scratches the surface of this officialese, the move comes across as a populist reaction to a growing crescendo of local voices that have rued the increasing non-Kannadiga presence. "Kannada language and culture is in a crisis...this is just a cosmetic reassurance to Kannadigas that the city still belongs to them. Anyway, much before the government effected the name change, a popular FM station was using the long drawl of the ‘u’ sound to poke fun night after night," says a Kannada writer.
But even in this politically correct act, CM Dharam Singh has been charged with gross indiscretion. That he has said he had taken litterateur U.R. Ananthamurthy’s suggestion is the bugbear. "The city’s name is common heritage. For the CM to make it look like it was the brilliant suggestion of one writer given to gimmickry is an insult to five crore Kannadigas. He should have said his government was proud to go back to the original name," fumes D.V. Prahalad, editor ofSanchaya, a literary magazine.
But even before Ananthamurthy’s suggestion, in a meeting convened by the CM, the Kannada University language department had submitted a special proposal to the Kannada Development Authority to naturalise all place names, including ‘Bengaluru’. But it didn’t carry well then. Anyway, get ready to spell-check ‘Bengaluru’ from November 1, ’06.
