Thread by @gauravsabnis

For the millionth time, I don't refrain from saying Mumbai. I usually tweet in English and in English, the city is Bombay to me.

मराठीत‌ नेहमी मुंबई.

हिंदी में बम्ब ई

That's how I grew up calling the city and I'm not changing my habits for some nativist snowflakes.

https://twitter.com/NobleAbhiyanta/status/1496145416559202314

But yes, I do make it a point to say it Bombay in English, because of one simple reason.

None.

Of.

Your.

Business.

It's my city as much as it is anyone else's. I'll call it Sabnispur if I want. What's it to you?

Maajhyaashi Marathi madhye bollaat tar tumhala kadhich Bombay aiku yenaar naahi.

The wholesale trolling last week of my sharing my 26/7 and 11/7 Bombay heartfelt memories and my response should show you that I do not take kindly to being lectured on how I should feel or what I should say about my beloved Bombay. It's my city & my tweets. 🤷🏽‍♂️

BTW Uddhav himself seems generally interested in moving his party past the days of making news stories out of bullying innocent businesses to shell out extra money for that Marathi Mumbai name. Rest of us should too.

A stupid stupid non issue already done to death.

People who get bullied or prosecuted over city names are victims of a suppression of human rights. Them I'm always support.

People who get upset that visitors don't refer to their city by their preferred names are nativist snowflakes that I have no problems upsetting.

Same. It's by default Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Bangalore for me when thinking or writing in English. I only change it to "official" names in my academic writing. Never in my tweets.

https://twitter.com/devanand_t/status/1496163734762491905?t=A0JNgBHdQlZu8i-s05Gpng&s=19

Slight history lesson.

I'm old enough to remember the 1995 Maharashtra election. Until then, Bombay being changed legally to *ONLY* Mumbai was not really something the SS-BJP alliance really focused on during the campaign as a key platform. It was a tertiary thing.

Till 1995.

Sure, the zealous hardcore sainiks, especially from Bombay, made a big deal about only calling it Mumbai. Usual nativist complaints. Not a major agenda item. And even then, just limited to changing the LEGAL name, like Poona was changed to Pune earlier and no one cared.

No one was showing up at the Poona Coffee House vandalizing their property for not calling it Pune Coffee House. So even the Bombay-Mumbai change, pre 1995, was sold as being like that.

Never were we told in the 80s or early 90s that "Bombay" itself is a "wrong" name.

But then in 1995, SS-BJP alliance won the state elections, first ever non Congress govt in the state. India's richest state with its most well known city. Bal Thackeray decided to double down and go ultra extreme.

ONLY Mumbai! Any name except Mumbai, mobs will punish you. 🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️

Much like demonetization or Trump's Muslim ban, that bizarre new faultline was opened up almost overnight.

A city that until 1995 was happy with 3 names, was suddenly told only one name "belonged" and others didn't.

Boilerplate nativist party agenda. With violence.

In terms of actual verifiable history, the name Bombay (Bom-Bahia) pre-dates Mumbai (from Mumbadevi). But the "original name" debate is pointless. The city itself didn't exist.

Y'all know today's Bombay was a bunch of separate islands till 200 years ago, right?

Pune, Nashik, Delhi, Ujjain, Patna..all cities that existed for centuries.

Bombay, as a contagious geographical entity, did not exist till the 1800s. So why would it even have one name? Mahim, Matunga are centuries old names. Cos islands.

But Bombay is a baby as a city.

Brits took over the islands from the Portuguese, mostly used its natural bays and harbors for shipping. Then after defeating the Marathas, not wanting to just be based completely out of Pune, they started turning that archepelago into a unified island that we know today.

Bombay was built by British bosses and Marathi labor, with Parsi and Gujarati traders joining in. It was never, *NEVER* a Marathi/Maratha city. It belonged to everyone. Forever, it carried this diverse identity. It had 3 names and no one fought over the "true" one except in jest.

Geographically, of course, it is attached to the Marathi hinterland. So it was and is inevitable that Marathis would have the loudest political voice in a democracy. And the first such nativist/regional party to win in the state was the very Bombay focused Shiv Sena.

And almost overnight, not only did they change the legal name to Mumbai (which, again, no big whoop for a young democratic republic), but they started assaulting, vilifying, yelling at people who used the other two names Bombay and Bambai.

Nope, that I cannot abide!

So this whole Bombay v Mumbai debate is an entirely modern and unnecessary creation of grievance based politics. That did not exist in any meaningful way until 1995.