‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ So said Shakespeare, and Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner Mukesh Kumar cannot agree less. When DNA asked him what the correct way to spell Ahmedabad was, Kumar’s first response was, ‘naam mein kya rakha hai? Write it the way you prefer it.’
DNA posed the query after a presentation made by AMC on Friday, on the plan for fortnight celebrations to mark the city’s status as a World Heritage City, had Ahmedabad spelled in three different ways. The presentation was made at a meeting called by AMC, of stakeholders, experts and conservationists, seeking suggestions for celebrations.
One of the slides was a poster tweeted by Unesco, which spelled the city as ‘Ahmadabad’. Then came a logo, which the civic body had put together overnight after the Unesco announcement. Here, the city is given a ‘desi’ ring — ‘Amdavad’. Another slide had the picture of a banner prepared by the civic body, which said ‘Ahmedabad’.
It may be noted that the dossier presented to Unesco by the heritage department, too, went with ‘Ahmedabad.’
Interestingly, the BJP-run civic body had once made a proposal to replace ‘Ahmedabad’ with ‘Karnavati’. But, that was rejected by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 2004. Even today, the BJP, RSS and VHP in Gujarat, address ‘Ahmedabad’ as ‘Karnavati.’
In August 2010, the civic body changed the spelling from ‘Ahmedabad’ to ‘Amdavad’, that too, without any resolution or proposal. The logo of AMC carries this spelling, but in official communication and correspondence, it opts for the anglicised ‘Ahmedabad’. In the recent twin city agreement it signed with Valladolid city of Spain, AMC has stuck to ‘Ahmedabad’.
“In the civic body’s logo, we have kept it as ‘Amdavad’ to keep a balance,” is all Kumar said, adding, the new logo with the words ‘World Heritage City’, too, will stick to this spelling.
An official with the heritage department, on condition of anonymity, said the source of the error in Unesco’s document may be the notes passed on by the Archaeology Survey of India.
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