Christopher Hitchens is apparently arguing that we should stop using the term "Mumbai," which is what the democratic elected government of India calls that city, and go back to using the European term "Bombay." Hitchens bases this opinion on a passage from an old Salman Rushdie book. Terrific. As Tim Fernholz says, "Hitchen's uninformed argument is exactly the kind of thing that screwed the United States in Iraq. Letting a belligerent pundit who ultimately has little local knowledge divide the world into Manichean slices of good and evil is a terrible way to approach foreign affairs." Hitchens' impassioned opinion on this question is the sort of thing that makes for good writing and terrible policy. On the bright side, the discussion did spur one of Andrew Sullivan's readers to send in this useful e-mail:
Hitchens is completely wrong. As someone whose roots go back many generations in Mumbai, let me assure you that we've always called the city Mumbai in our local language Marathi. The name Bombay was given to the city by the British. What do you think the city was called before the Europeans arrived? It was called Mumbai.Here's a paragraph from Wikipedia:The name "Mumbai" is an eponym, etymologically derived from Mumba or Maha-Amba – the name of the Hindu goddess Mumbadevi – and Aai, "mother" in Marathi. The former name Bombay had its origins in the 16th century when the Portuguese arrived in the area and called it by various names, which finally took the written form Bombaim, still common in current Portuguese use. After the British gained possession in the 17th century, it was anglicised to Bombay, although it was known as Mumbai or Mambai to Marathi and Gujarati-speakers, and as Bambai in Hindi and Urdu. The name was officially changed to its Marathi pronunciation of Mumbai in 1996. Seriously, if the Shiv Sena had wanted to impose Hindu chauvinism on the city, they would have called the city GaneshTown. Ganesh is a major Hindu god and very popular in Mumbai. On the other hand, the goddess Mumba is so obscure that the only reason I have heard of her is because she bequeathed her name to my beloved city. The name change was a nod to the locals of the land: their pronunciation would be the official one. And Bombay isn't the only Indian city to have changed its name to its pre-colonial version. Madras reverted back to Chennai, and Calcutta changed to Kolkata; None of these moves were to impose any religion on people. They were simply a rejection of colonial legacy. I don't like the Shiv Sena and hate the fact that I'm defending them, but changing the name of the city is one of the least religious things they have done to it.
So there you have it. Bombay is the term of the colonialist oppressors. Mumbai is the term of the people who live and vote and die there.
