Bungle-ore

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Bungle-ore

The Asian Age India | H.Y. Sharada Prasad

 

As a born Bangalorean I have been asked what I think of the plan to

change the name of the city into B-E-N-G-A-L-U-R-U. With due respect

for the most articulate Kannadiga of the day, U.R. Ananthamurthy, and

other literary men who have agitated for the change, I think it is

not a very grown-up idea.

 

>From time to time authors get the urge to prove their political

relevance. And politicians want to demonstrate that culture matters

to them. Many historical (and some geographical) changes have

occurred as a result of such convergence — Linguistic States, for

example. Their formation had a logical inevitability, but linguistic

states did not resolve all of border disputes. Many such disputes

persist and agitations flare up from time to time. Territoriality is

a powerful sentiment. Electoral politics keeps many home fires

burning.

 

Then we have this big urge to change names. It is indulged in, I

think, because some people can find nothing better to do. It brings

in a good deal of media attention at little cost. It demands no

blood, toil and tears. So Bombay becomes Mumbai, Madras turns into

Chennai and Calcutta begins calling itself Kolkata.

 

It is possible to invoke the support of solid reasons for some of the

changes. Tamils had always called their main city Chennai or

Chennapattinam. Even Andhras, who formed more than 30 per cent of the

population of the capital of undivided Madras Presidency, referred to

it as Chennapuri. As for Bombay, the rise of the jingoistic and

communal Shiv Sena, and the resentment of the sons of the soil

against intruders who were doing them out of their jobs, made it

inevitable that the city should be shown as deriving its name from

the goddess Mumbadevi for whom there is a temple.

 

The old theory that Bombay was derived from two Portuguese words

which meant "good bay" or "pleasant harbour" was jettisoned. In the

case of Calcutta, it is not so much a change of name with a wholly

different reference point but only an orthographical change

reflecting the curvature preferences of Bengali tongues while

negotiating vowels.

 

These are not the only cities which changed their nameplates. Many

did it out of pride in their ancestry. Some felt impelled to

repudiate their British connection. Poona had a Blimpish ring, while

Pune brought back memories of the Peshwas and their gallant Sardars.

Simla was Indianised by just the addition of an "h". Kanpur conveys a

wholly different mental picture from Cawnpore. Udhagamandalam is ages

away from Ooty.

 

The game seems to have begun in Kerala. Calicut, by changing its name

to Kozhikode, has almost erased the memory of Vasco da Gama. The

romantic Quilon has become plain-Jane Kollam. Thiruvananthapuram does

not announce itself with the same emphasis as Trivandrum. In Andhra

Pradesh the big change was when Bezwada became Vijayawada, but Gopala

Reddy remained loyal to Bezwada. Another Andhra city which lost its

buzz is Vizagapatam which has become Visakhapatnam.

 

The reason advanced for changing the spelling of Bangalore is that it

should conform to the way it is pronounced in Kannada. Folk etymology

has it that a chieftain of the area lost his way while hunting and an

old woman earned his gratitude by giving him some boiled beans to

assuage his hunger. And the name of the village was changed to "Benda

Kaalu Ooru" or "Bengaalu Ooru" (Town of Boiled Beans). There are two

holes in this theory. It doesn't explain how and when the second

vowel "aa" got shortened to "a" contrary to all the Kannada

grammatical rules. It also doesn't tell us how an old document

mentions a Bengalooru (with a short "a" in the second syllable) in

the same location several centuries before the king lost his way

while hunting.

 

There is yet another flaw in the new form that has been prescribed.

And it is a substantial one. Even if the changeover is accomplished,

the sound "l" in the third syllable will be different from the

consonant which occurs in the Kannada original. Phonetically the

English "l" is an alveolar fricative whereas the Kannada "l" (which,

for convenience, I have indicated through "L") that occurs in

BengaLuru is a cacuminal or retroflex fricative. Kannada and the

Dravidian languages, as well as Marathi and Gujarati, have two l's,

the softer alveolar one which is pronounced with the upper tip of the

tongue placed at the ridge behind the upper incisor, and a heavier

cacuminal "L" with the tongue tip curled up towards the hard palate.

English doesn't have this sound at all. Even classical Sanskrit does

not have this sound, although we encounter it in Vedic Sanskrit. In

fact, the very first line of the Rig Veda — Agnim eeLe purohitam —

contains the sound. A scholar familiar with Panini says even the

great grammarian, who does not give a place to "L" in his alphabet,

finds it hard to advance a convincing explanation of how it is

acceptable to the Vedas.

 

Marathi people, when writing the name of Lokamanya Tilak, use the

alveolar "l" in the honorific and the cacuminal "L" in the middle of

the surname. The cacuminal "L" sound is also found in many regional

forms of Hindi such as Malwi, Rajasthani, Haryanvi and Pahadi.

 

This linguistic detour should show that the change will not fully

serve the avowed purpose. It does replace the first syllable, "ban"

by "ben", but is it wise to expend so much of money and energy for

this ego trip?

 

There are some well-known cities whose names are written in two ways,

the local form and an international form, for example Moskva and

Moscow, Wien and Vienna, Praha and Prague, Bucuresti and Bucharest,

Gèneve and Geneva. The international form is not a mutilation of the

local name. The successive rulers of these cities have not insisted

that the international form be abandoned. Should not Bangalore, which

is just becoming an international city, adopt an adult attitude?

 

H.Y. Sharada Prasad was adviser to Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and

Rajiv Gandhi

 

 

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