New Delhi: A Public Interest Litigation(PIL) has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Home Ministry to constitute a "Renaming Commission" to find out the original names of 'historical, cultural and religious places' that were named after foreign invaders or direct ASI to research and publish the original names. The PIL has been filed by BJP member and advocate Ashwini Upadhyay.
Upadhyay has stated that many ancient historical religious places are still named after foreign invaders, their families and servants even after 75 years of independence. He contends that it is against "sovereignty, right to dignity, right to religion and right to culture guaranteed under Articles 21, 25 and 29". He has submitted that on January 29, the government renamed Mughal Gardens as Amrit Gardens but took no steps to rename roads such as Humayun road, Akbar road, Tughlak road, Chelmsford road, Hailey road and others.
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"It is necessary to state that the Cabinet Ministers, Parliamentarians and the judges, who are the custodians of the Constitution of India and protectors of fundamental rights have bungalows on these roads," read the petition. "The injury to citizens is extremely large because Pandavas, with the blessings of Lord Krishna and Balram, converted Khandavaprastha (deserted land) into Indraprastha (Delhi), but there is not even one road, municipal ward, village or constituency in the name of Lord Krishna, Balram, Yudhishthira, Bheema, Arjun, Nakul, Sehdev, Kunti, Draupadi and Abhimanyu," the petition stated.
"On the other hand, there are roads, municipal wards, villages and constituencies in the name of barbaric foreign invaders, which is not only against the sovereignty but also violates the right to dignity, right to religion and right to culture guaranteed under Articles 21, 25, 29 of the constitution of India," read the petition.
The petitioner seeks consideration of two questions of law. One, whether continuing the names of ancient, historical, cultural, and religious places in the names of barbaric invaders is against sovereignty or not. And secondly, whether or not the Centre and states are obligated to change the names of the ancient, historical, cultural and religious places to their original name.
