Name changes and the “communal origins” of names came to centrestage in Kerala, after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took umbrage to the name "Hindustan". Speaking at a public rally in Mangaluru, Pinarayi said that India should not be called Hindustan, because India “is not a Hindu country.”
The Kerala BJP immediately hit back at the CM, asserting that he was needlessly communalising secular names, and accusing him of being ignorant of history in doing so.
Writing on Facebook, BJP state President Kummanam Rajashekaran said that Pinarayi had made the statement because he had no sense of India’s history. “Even if he doesn’t know the history of India, he should at least know the history of the Independence struggle,” Kummanam wrote.
Insinuating that the Chief Minister, who leads the LDF coalition in the state, was even ignorant of Marxist and communist history, Kummanam pointed out that even Karl Marx had called the country Hindustan. He also pointed out that the book, The Historic View of United India, written by Karl Marx, was titled Hindustan ki Tareekhi Khaka in its Urdu translation.
Kummanam also asked, “Is Pinarayi aware of the fact that Communist leader SA Dange worked in an organisation called Labour, Kisan Party of Hindustan, which was one of the earliest gatherings of communist leaders in the country?”
He also pointed out that when Ashfaqullah Khan, Ramprasad Bismil and Chandrashekar Azad were arrested in the Kakori Conspiracy case (relating to a train robbery in 1925), they had claimed allegiance to an organisation called Hindustan Republican Association, which later adopted the name Hindustan Republican Association.
Even the song, Saare Jahan Se Achcha, which prominently talks about Hindustan, he added, was sung in Urdu by Mohammed Iqbal, who cannot be called a communalist.
“Pinarayi’s statement that the name Hindustan is communal is an insult to thousands of freedom fighters. He should apologise to those who died for the nation,” he wrote.
Poking fun at the Chief Minister for his own name, Kummanam added, “He should also be ready to change his name – Vijayan is a synonym of Arjunan, which reminds us of Sri Krishna. It is easier for Vijayan to change his name, rather than the name of the nation.”