‘Allahabad’ is being changed to ‘Prayagraj’. Sorry, grammatical mistake, the name of Allahabad is being changed to ‘Prayagraj’. Years ago, told a very intelligent writer that there exists nothing in “name”. He was true indeed. There lies nothing in the name but emotions, attachment and some sort of familiarity that develops over time.

Over the thing that now the name of ‘Allahabad’ is being changed to ‘Prayagraj’ there are people who are happy with the decision as they believe that its name is being restored to its past original name and then there are people who are feeling themselves attached with the name and are feeling bad as the it is being changed to ‘Prayagraj’.

It is an official step taken by the government of Uttar Pradesh to rename “Allahabad” as ‘Prayagraj’ and if not letting ourselves to be befooled, it can be seen with no much effort that ‘Allahabad’ is somewhere or the other is related to the Mughals and it is one of the strategy of the ruling party using which they want to own the vote bank who will vote if they got to know that a Mughal name has changed to a name who seems to favor some specific community.

Mughals are a part of history of India and the fact is unavoidable and inflexible. Those who take pride on Taj Mahal but consider Mughal things a blot on the history of India are completely unaware of ‘citizenship by naturalization’ and a person being a Mughal or a Kshatriya does not even pose a difference on being a citizen. Mughals are Indian.

The Mughals changed the name from ‘Prayagraj’ to ‘Allahabad’. The names of many places have been changed from time to time due to the monarchy system. We have travelled from monarchy to democracy.

The step to rename Allahabad as ‘Prayagraj’ is not bad but is necessary, inefficient, cumbersome and has a foul smell of ‘politics that sidelines development’.