A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been moved in the Supreme Court by Advocate Ashwini Upadhyay (through advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey) seeking to direct the Union Home Ministry to establish a “Renaming Commission” to discern the original names of “ancient historical, cultural, religious places”, named after vicious foreign conquerors to maintain sovereignty and to attain “Right to Dignity, Right to Religion and Right to Culture” enshrined under Articles 21, 25 and 29 of the Indian Constitution. The Centre, all states and Union territories, and the Archaeological Survey of India were made parties to this petition.
The petitioner primarily raised two questions of law. First, continuing the names of ancient historical-cultural religious places in the names of barbaric invaders is against sovereignty. Second, whether the Centre and States are obligated to change the names of ancient historical cultural religious places in their original name.
The petitioner, citing examples of names of plenty of such cities and places, also sought direction to the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to research and publish the primary names of ancient historical-cultural religious places for securing “right to know” to the citizens under Article 19 of the Indian Constitution. He further sought a direction to the Centre and state governments to amend, bring up to date their websites and records and mention the original names of ancient historical-cultural religious places presently named after foreign invaders.
Arguing that the government is capable of rectifying historical wrongs, the petitioner referred to the Supreme Court’s judgement in S S Ahluwalia versus Union of India, which placed reliance on the 1996 Delhi High Court judgment of Bhajan Kaur versus Delhi Administration to note that “in the expanded meaning attributed to Article 21 of the Constitution it is the duty of the State to create a climate where members of the society belonging to different faiths, caste and creed live together and, therefore, the State has a duty to protect their life, liberty, dignity and worth of an individual which should not be jeopardised or endangered”.
He added that there are roads, municipal wards, villages and assembly constituencies named after invaders and plunderers, and their continuance after more than seven decades of independence breaches the right to dignity, right to religion and right to culture guaranteed under Articles 21, 25, 29 of the Constitution.
On January 29, 2023, the Mughal Garden at Rashtrapati Bhawan was retitled as ‘Amrit Udyan’, “but Government did nothing to rename the roads named after invaders like Babur Road, Humayun Road, Akbar Road, Jahangir Road, Shahjahan Road, Sher Shah Road, Aurangzeb Road, Tughlak Road, Safdarjung Road, Najaf Khan Road, Jauhar Road, Lodhi Road, Chelmsford Road and Hailey Road etc.”, the petition read.
