New Delhi: Jamal Siddiqui, national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Minority Morcha, has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a request to change the name of India Gate in New Delhi to ‘Bharat Mata Dwar’.
“Under your leadership, the feeling of patriotism and dedication towards Indian culture has increased in the hearts of 140 crore Indian brothers and sisters. The way the wounds inflicted by the Mughal invaders and the plundering British have been healed and the stain of slavery has been washed away during your tenure, the whole of India is happy with this,” Siddiqui writes in the letter sent Monday, seen by ThePrint.
He adds: “Sir, you have changed the name of the road named after cruel Mughal Aurangzeb to A.P.J. Kalam Road, removed the statue of King George V from India Gate and installed the statue of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and renamed Rajpath as Kartavya Path and connected it with the culture of India.”
“Similarly, please change the name of India Gate to Bharat Mata Dwar,” he writes in the letter.
Siddiqui asserts that this renaming “will be a true tribute to the thousands of martyred patriots whose names are inscribed on that pillar”.
Speaking to ThePrint, Siddiqui said that although India got its independence in 1947, the legacy of British colonialism continued during the Congress’s tenure as the “party never thought about changing the names of streets or important places named after the Mughal aggressors or British plunderers”. That, he said, started changing under Modi.
“Names are very important. If we call a sweet a sweet, it carries a different significance and when we call it prasad, it carries different weightage and importance. Changing the name of India Gate to Bharat Mata Dwar will instil respect in the minds of people visiting the site,” he explained.
Delhi’s Rajpath, stretching from Rashtrapati Bhavan to India Gate, was formally renamed as Kartavya Path in 2022.
Referring to the renaming of the stretch, then minister of state Meenakashi Lekhi, who was also a member of the New Delhi Municipal Council, had said the name ‘Rajpath’ reflected a colonial legacy, which had to be done away with since “we are living in a democratic system after Independence”.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)