Strengthening moves against renaming of the city

BHOPAL: Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan while celebrating 1,000 years of the coronation of Raja Bhoj on 28 Feburary hoped that this city would be renamed as Bhojpal and said he would recommend it to the central government.

After that several people raise their voice against the idea. Also after that more than a dozen pages on social networking sites like Facebook have come up against the name Bhojpal. Over a thousand people have joined these pages, commenting against the idea of renaming.

A researcher Naushin Khan commented on Facebook, “we love Bhopal it’s our identity, no one possess the right to snatch our identity, Bhopalis love Bhopal and say no to Bhojpal.

Commenting on the historical perspectives of Raja Bhoj’s authority in Bhopal a 24 year old software engineer Zeeshan said “We all know what history is like, everybody can make its own. We can’t say that the history past 50 years is perfect, then how can we believe in stories tens of centuries old? Instead of changing name …government should pay attention towards changing its corrupt working style. We don’t want the name change for Bhopal, no Bhopali will ever like this idiot-ism. Indeed its a trick to diverge our attentions form real issues.”

“If renamed, Bhopal will lose it’s identity. Bhopal is a signature place. When one hears the name, they can relate to the city. With Bhojpal, all that will be lost. It will be a disgrace in the name of this great city. We are Bhopalis, and nothing on this Earth can turn us into a Bhojpali,” a student, Atul Srivastava, commented.

Another Facebook user, Sonia Bajpai, said on the page: “We Love the name ‘Bhopal'”, “We don’t want it changed to ‘Bhojpal’, our leaders should realize that there are other better things to do than changing names of our old cities… Please let it be Bhopal. The upliftment of the poor and downtrodden, the beautification of the city should be the priority.”

It was the common believe that the name Bhopal is derived from “Bhojpal”.

However, National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities of the Archaeological Survey of India say there is no archaeological or historical proof of that.

State coordinator Narayan Vyas, said that in his knowledge there were no manuscripts or archaeological findings available to suggest name of the city was earlier Bhojpal.