In 2001, the city of Calcutta changed its name to Kolkata. This change was heralded as a return to our roots and a break with the city’s colonial legacy. Many who grew up in Calcutta–Cal for short– find this change superficial, political and excessively wasteful. In 2001, Pubali Chauduri wrote in Times of India of the massive administrative hassles, including one episode in which the city police replaced 449 English typewriters with Bengali typewriters.
Another angry Bengali, Deeptarko Chowdhury, filmmaker and native Calcuttan sounds off here:
I know only the skin of the earth and it has no NAME!
So, there was this bloke in Bengal, with an ‘itching palm’ and a craving for alcohol, but a promise made to his grandfather on the old man’s death bed did away with all that. In 1756 this bloke succeeded his grandfather to the throne as the Nawab of Bengal – the last one – Siraj ud-Daulah. And around the same time, the English East India Company was getting much too big for its boots. The Company refused to abide by the terms and conditions and was averse to the idea of paying customs duties. And how did the Nawab resolve this dispute? A battle, of course. So the Nawab attacked one of the fortifications of the British traders (Fort William) built in Calcutta, to proclaim his superiority. But unfortunately for the Nawab, his myopic policies failed him. A year later, the opium fuelled Robert Clive and his troops emerged triumphant in the battlefield of Plassey, assisted by a heavy downpour which rendered the Nawab’s firearms useless and one of the disloyal commanding officers of the Nawab, otherwise known as Mir Jafar or Gaddar-e-Hind (Traitor of India).
Thereafter, the Company built a new fortification, a new Fort William, after clearing a site at Govindpur, one of the three villages out of which Calcutta had grown... a fort which could not be attacked easily. After the consolidation of their position in Calcutta, a series of construction endeavours were undertaken along the periphery of the ramparts of the fort and the land eventually evolved into the imperial and majestic capital of the country and remained so, till 1912. Now, this imperial city started out as a factory in Bengal, the headquarter of which was established in what Job Charnock, an administrator of the English East India Company, referred to as Calcutta. Calcutta is the anglicised name for Kalikata (one of the three villages). There are several disputing theories regarding the origin of the name. It is believed that the name is a derivative of Kalikhetro or the land of the goddess Kali. Some say that it has been derived from the Bangla word for flat-land, Kalika.
As the city grew, there emerged a necessity for more educated individuals, who would assist the British in continuing their colonial regime. The introduction of western education created a new class of educated middle-class Bengali intellectuals, who inspired by the ideologies of the French, American and Russian revolution, sought to rectify the whimsical colonial system. Frankenstein! And this struggle continued till the country finally became independent in 1947.
Some fifty years later, when the city was staggering under the burden of its own mistakes and when beggars and the homeless still occupied most of the city’s roads, the politicians decided to promulgate anti-colonial sentiments by boycotting English in the elementary stages of schooling. Around the same time, other presidencies such as Bombay and Madras were changing their names to match the Indian phonetic. So, Calcutta raging with anti-colonial wrath obviously had to join the band-wagon. The Marxist Legislator Robin Mondal passed a resolution which stated that the state was predominantly Bengali and should be pronounced the way ‘we’ say it. But one almost misses the bigger picture: – As the leftist party began losing its support, it resorted to regional politics. And what better way of winning back its support base, than to strike them where it ‘tickles’ the most? And of course, we, like cattle-brained citizens subscribed to and basked in the glory of the erstwhile Bengali Nationalism, which now held no meaning, since the British were long gone. A fortune was spent to formally change the name of the city. Impoverished populace had no bread to eat. But that doesn’t matter… they can always eat cake.
A photo of my grandfather's - Victory memorial in Calcutta
In India 
