Why Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus?

pic courtesy: www.ireference.ca

Why Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus?

- Thara Tlau

The first time I saw Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus (acronymed as CST), more than appreciating its grandeur I was overwhelmed by the question: “Why Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus?” I could not reason out the wisdom behind the renaming of Victoria Terminus as Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus. No doubt, Shivaji was a great warrior and king of the Marathas in the 17th Century anno domini. However, the building (station) was built after 200 years of his reign in the later part of the 19th Century and that too not by a ruler of his descendant but ‘foreigners’ who were the rulers at that time under the aegis of the British Indian Empire whose Empress was Queen Victoria.

In the assembly elections of Maharashtra in 1995 the Shiv Sena-BJP combine became victorious and formed a government. The government went on a renaming spree on ‘popular demand’ of which Bombay became the first victim – henceforth to be called Mumbai. Bombay could have retained its old identity had the Bombay Citizens Committee, which had within its ranks industrialists such as JRD Tata and Sir Purushottamdas Thakurdas, been successful with its one-point agenda – to keep Bombay out of the state of Maharashtra when Indian states were reorganized in the 1950s. “The first settlers were Europeans; chief merchants and capitalists Gujaratis and Parsis; the chief philanthropists Parsis. The city was built by non-Maharashtrians. Even among the working class, the Marathi speakers were often outnumbered by north Indians and Christians” quoted Ramachandra Guha, a distinguished historian and political commentator, in his book ‘India After Gandhi’. Even Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was ‘inclined’ to make Bombay city a separate union territory. However, in the end the will of a much larger organization, the Samyukta Maharashtra Parishad, whose leaders had been fighting tooth and nail with almost an ‘unethical tone’ for the inclusion of Bombay in Maharashtra state prevailed. Politics, as you are aware of, is weighed in numbers; truest in case of a fledging democracy like India.

The second high profile victim of the renaming tantrum was the most spectacular structure in Bombay along with the Gateway of India – the Victoria Terminus. The station was designed by a British architect, F W Stevens, and it took ten years to complete the construction. It was inaugurated on the date of the Golden Jubilee of the glorious rule of Queen Victoria over the British Empire and so the name Victoria Terminus. The original name, Victoria Terminus, befits well the time, the place, the people and the architecture associated with it. The time because it was opened on the anniversary of Queen Victoria’s fifty years of reign. The place because Bombay was a flourishing port city of the British Empire in the east. The building would serve as, the builders might have imagined, a souvenir of the glorious past had the empire broken up which was so now but with a changed name bearing no resemblance to what it originally was christened as. The people – the people who ruled over India and who were responsible for the construction of the station – were the British whose Queen Empress was Victoria. Also the people because the people of India were ‘subservient’ to the Empire which was represented by the Governor General. And the architecture – as it is a World Heritage Site since 2004, it will be most appropriate to quote the authority i.e. UNESCO. It describes the design as a ‘high Victorian Gothic’. Nevertheless, it also describes as ‘an outstanding example of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture in India.’ So, where is Chatrapati Shivaji in the picture? Is it not doing injustice to both Shivaji and the British by renaming the station?

Let me make the argument clearer this way. You had a daughter and that’s too your only child. You christened her lovingly after your favourite lady in the Bible as Esther. She grew up under your dedicated upbringing and went to a college. At college she happened to find love in a boy called Babloo Yadav. She confessed to you one day that she fell in love with Babloo and they had decided to get married. You didn’t like the idea; you hated it. That’s absurd for you. Meanwhile, you didn’t want to hurt her because she’s your rose. You had been watching her grow from a young bud to a blossoming flower. Why to spoil the fragrance afterall you decided. So you reluctantly married her off to Shri Babloo Yadav.

They were married and you thought the chapter was closed. You were wrong again. Shri Babloo Yadav felt that since he’s a Hindu it wasn’t appropriate his wife bore a Christian name. He ‘renamed’ her as Laxmi Yadav. Esther became Smt. Laxmi Yadav! You felt cheated but you couldn’t do anything since her ownership had changed hand from ‘you’ to ‘him’. That was when you asked me, “Is it not a kind of injustice?”