By Chiranjib Haldar
In our emotional braggadocio, we often tend to look at historical narratives through a glass prism. While rechristening Port Blair, capital of Andaman & Nicobar Islands as Sri Vijaya Puram, Home Minister Amit Shah reiterated the Prime Minister’s resolve to ‘free the nation from colonial imprints’. If India’s colonial baggage is to be bogged down with a sledgehammer blow, to what extent can we traverse to shed off those trappings? Do nomenclature alternatives implemented periodically assimilate into our national ethos? Dumping the legacy of Bombay Marine Lieutenant and Naval Surveyor Archibald Blair into oblivion since Sri Vijaya Puram ‘symbolises the victory achieved in our freedom struggle and the islands’ unique role in the same’ may be an historical distortion. This fancying of an alternate past is emblematic of umpteen erasures the BJP regime has stamped from chaperoning Shivaji as the father of the Indian Navy to dropping the iconic hymn ‘Abide with me’ at the Beating Retreat ceremony on Republic Day.
The colonisation of Andamans was an offshoot of the maritime politics of the Raj and its need for a strategic foothold in the Bay of Bengal. Its inclusion in the Indian union was the culmination of a settlement process that began earlier than the imprisonment of the Indian revolutionaries in Cellular Jail in 1910. Though settlers were more in number, we have conjured a monochromatic image of the Andamans as a sacred site of nationalism. This image cloaks the mystery of the indigenous Andamese, the convicts, their progenies and domicile islanders. The fillip to this transition started with renaming Port Blair airport after Veer Savarkar and anointing his statue in Cellular Jail under former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Renaming Port Bair as Sri Vijaya Puram is the zenith of this obfuscation to shed all vestiges of colonialism and British legerdemain. The irony is that the more we rename, the more we expunge our colonial past. We singe not the Mughals or British but remnants of our own past. Writing off Archibald Blair’s contribution obscures complex loyalties and horrific memories. Whose martydom does shaheed dweep or Neil Island commemorate; the native Andamanese whom the British eliminated, ones whom the Japanese butchered or Savarkar’s incarceration in Cellular jail ?
Regimes are often reproached for deconstructing narratives. It is a strange quirk of national fate that the demise of Queen Elizabeth coincided with the reaming of the Rajpath to Kartavya Path in 2022. Even if a government is determined to wipe out remnants of India’s undeniable colonial past, will history permit the same? Sceptics point to reinforcing nationhood, but when electoral resurgence churns an alternative version of nationalism to the fore, the froth and broth often mix to produce a concoction. So, Rajpath smacks of imperialism; it was a king’s way, a boulevard with the last vestiges of royalty that needed to be undone. For many Indian nationalists, it is ideologically unbecoming to equate a sense of identity with what was India’s pre-independent status. Thus Indian troops were fighting as mercenaries in the World Wars against British enemies.
History is not only about lauding the past but also about interpreting why something that vexes us today actually happened at that point in time. The naval ensign evolved over centuries and dropping the stripes symbolising the Cross of Saint George cannot snatch its origins. Unveiling a new ensign to drop ‘the burden of slavery’ can never retrace the path traversed by the Royal Indian Navy, Her Majesty’s Indian Marine, and Bombay Marine – all sanctimoniously displayed in the Legacy Gallery of Naval Dockyard Mumbai. While befitting the rich Indian maritime heritage is a proud moment for all countrymen, one cannot deny the evolution of the blue octagonal emblem for centuries from the East India Company’s first trading activities in Surat in 1612.
A moot question crops up. Is the present regime trying to underline its indelible footprint with its hyper-nationalist agenda only to compensate for its unsavoury presence in India’s freedom struggle? Historian Irfan Habib had opined, ‘The point is you want to leave your mark on everything.’ Being obsessed with delinking every colonial vestige in modern India is an imminent paradox. Post-independence, Kingsway and Queensway were rechristened Rajpath and Janpath but that was not to highlight pessimism of the empire. Abolition of symbols of colonial legacy to stress self-reliance maybe an unending saga, but undoing the course of history is a tough assignment which has no orientation. It often obscures complex loyalties as in the case of the Andamans.
Home Minister Amit Shah rightly asserted that the Chola Kings used the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to project their power eastwards and use the archipelago as a strategic base for expeditions against the Sri Vijaya Empire of Indonesia. But this reference to the Chola dynasty may not just be a narrative for erasing Port Blair’s colonial bequest. It could well be constructing a new narrative in the garb of political symbolism. Renaming cities and towns may not decolonise but perpetuate exclusionary divisions. Can history be obliterated so easily with the erasing of colonial legacies of Marine Surveyor Donald Ross, Brigadier General James Neil, General Henry Havelock and Lieutenant Archibald Blair? Sri Vijaya Puram as the capital of Andaman and Nicobar Islands may be a classic moniker of decolonisation being used to conceal spatial majoritarianism.
(The writer is a commentator on politics and society.)