India steps up drive to rename Islamic heritage

NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — A proposal to rename Fazilnagar, a town in Kushinagar district in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state, to Pava Nagari has raised fresh concerns among historians, minority groups and opposition leaders about what they describe as a continuing effort to erase Islamic heritage from public spaces under the state’s Hindu nationalist leadership.

The renaming move comes under the administration of Yogi Adityanath, a hardline leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who has governed Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous state — since 2017. 

Since he took office, the state has pursued an extensive campaign to alter the names of cities, neighborhoods, railway stations and administrative terminology, which scholars argue is reshaping historical identity by removing references associated with India’s Indo-Islamic past.

State officials say the renaming effort is intended to correct what they call historical distortions and revive older Hindu nomenclature. 

However, historians note that the overwhelming majority of renamed locations are linked to Islamic rulers, Urdu linguistic heritage or Mughal-era history, raising concerns that the policy is driven less by restoration and more by ideological revisionism.

Over the last seven years, more than 50 place names have already been changed, including the high-profile renaming of Allahabad to Prayagraj, Faizabad to Ayodhya, and Mughalsarai to Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Nagar. 

Analysts say the pattern reflects a deliberate attempt to reshape cultural memory by removing Muslim references from the state’s historical landscape.

Researchers caution that renaming carries long-term implications for collective memory, arguing that place names serve as markers of migration, community narratives and shared histories. 

They warn that the disappearance of such names risks gradually detaching future generations from the region’s multicultural past and reframing Muslims as outsiders rather than long-standing contributors to North Indian identity.

The campaign has also expanded to language. Administrative vocabulary rooted in Urdu and Persian — languages historically central to India’s literary and cultural development — has been replaced by Sanskrit-based alternatives, which scholars describe as part of a broader cultural purge positioning Muslim linguistic heritage as foreign despite its indigenous origins.

In Varanasi, now aggressively promoted internationally as Kashi, residents report that dozens of Muslim-named localities have already been renamed without public consultation, contributing to a sense of displacement and exclusion among young Muslims.

The renaming effort coincides with controversial bulldozer demolition drives across Uttar Pradesh that rights organizations say disproportionately target Muslim-owned properties, deepening fears of both symbolic and physical marginalization.

Opposition parties contend that the renaming campaign is designed to divert public attention from rising unemployment, inflation and deteriorating infrastructure, describing it as a politically motivated spectacle rather than policy reform.

Government sources have indicated that further renaming proposals under consideration include Aligarh, Sambhal, Shahjahanpur, Muzaffarnagar and Farrukhabad — places historically shaped by Muslim rulers, Sufi traditions, artisanal craft cultures and anti-colonial resistance.

Analysts warn that if the trend continues, the cultural map of northern India may become unrecognizable within a generation, with Islamic markers gradually removed from institutional and public memory.