Prayagraj, Allahabad, Purimtal, or Kosambi: it’s up to you, really, what your political orientation (or disorientation) allows you to call this city. I prefer Allahabad, because here I was born, and ‘tis here I call home.
Shakespeare might argue otherwise, but in the case of cities, names shape not just the bearer’s identity but also the perception of its past and the aspirations for its future. This interplay in the case of Allahabad is what I find to be an inherent dichotomy; the city finds relevance not by updating its elements and changing its name accordingly, but does so by changing its name and updating its elements accordingly.
Finding its earliest mention in the Vedas, it was called Prayāga, meaning “place of a sacrifice” in Sanskrit, believed to be where Brahmaji performed the first yagna. The region also bore the name Kosambi during the Mauryan and Gupta periods. It was associated with the name Purimtal in Jain scriptures, meaning “city of the lakes”.
During the Mughal era, Akbar built a fort at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in 1575, naming it Ilahabas, or “Abode of God”, which evolved into Allahabad. It was here that perhaps the most consequential document in this subcontinent’s history, the Treaty of Allahabad, was signed in 1765 between Shah Alam II and Robert Clive, sealing in letter after it was in spirit following the Battle of Buxar, the right of the East India Company to exploit the region as its private fiefdom. During British colonial rule, the city retained the name Allahabad and emerged as an administrative and educational hub, with inpouring of heavy colonial investment. As it has been for educational hubs under colonial rule, it was at the centre of India’s independence movement. Before Gujarat’s dominance, it wasn’t uncommon to find the clique of India’s political machinery to have its roots in Allahabad.
Following decades-long concentrated efforts by the BJP, the city was finally renamed as Prayagraj in 2018, giving a nod to its cultural origins and to the voter base that would keep the renamers in power. It is perhaps from this point that it has become more difficult to ascertain, how many times in 144 years does the as-advertised once-in-144-years Kumbh Mela and its very visibly accompanying infrastructure upgrades occur. But then, who doesn’t like wider roads, and more so the maintenance contracts that follow (the GDP won’t inflate itself now, would it)?
With all due respect to the multitude of coaching centres that have set up shop here, particularly those that advertise themselves as gateways into the much-coveted civil services, the transition of this city from an urban academic and intellectual hub to a seasonal facade of a cultural one was not abrupt; it is not suddenly that the University of Allahabad, the “Oxford of the East”, has embraced a more native character, imbibing native politics in greater proportion to native intellect. Side by side with the seasonal tourist hordes that the much-politicised Kumbh attracts to Prayagraj, it is still the Allahabad High Court and the UPPSC head office that maintains the more regular administrative and judicial relevance of Allahabad.
This change is most visible not only in the outdated and out-phasing Indo-Saracenic architecture of older office and residential buildings, but also in the evolving thought process. What dominates the ideas of today in regards to this city is not of what once accommodated the Oxford of the East, what was once the centre of the independence movement, what has been and continues to be the site of consequential judicial decisions (it was a judge of the Allahabad High Court that passed the order to unseat Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister), but what is, was, and should remain to be, Kumbh-Nagari. It would be wrong to deem it wrong; we must march along with time, lest it tramples over us. However, it would be thoughtful to ask, does replacement really triumph over co-existence when it comes to cultural ethos? Of course, many politically charged moves would be rendered moot, should that question be answered.
Regardless, to be born amidst the change is quite a ride: I know not as deeply what it was to live in Allahabad (I was 11 when it became Prayagraj), and I will know not what it would be like to live in Prayagraj, for I intend not to. Life is multifaceted in the Indo-Gangetic plains; the shivering mornings of January, the sweltering afternoons of June, the moist evenings of August, and the cosy nights of December have all forged the mind that produces these words, comfortable or uncomfortable as they might have been. The process of change in all things but that is visibly forced enough to make me nostalgic for a past that I never experienced and concerned for a future that I’ll never face. Perhaps that’s what lost and rebellious children feel for their homes.