Is the name of Aligarh being changed in Pakistan?

On November 5, the Aligarh Municipal Corporation passed a resolution demanding that the name of the city be changed from Aligarh to Harigarh.

This resolution was presented by Prashant Singhal, the mayor of the city belonging to the BJP, which has been sent to the BJP government in Lucknow for final approval.

This demand has been being made by the BJP since 2019 when the name of Allahabad was changed to Prayagraj.

Aligarh is ruled by BJP for last 10 years. Former President of India Zakir Hussain, former Vice President Hamid Ansari, Hasrat Mohani, actor Naseeruddin Shah, songwriter and poet Javed Akhtar belong to Aligarh.

India has changed the names of more than 100 towns and cities since its inception, initially for various reasons and most of the cities were renamed to get rid of neo-demographic signs.

However, the BJP, born from the womb of the extremist group RSS, has also started changing the historical names of those cities which have a Muslim identity behind them. Due to this, India’s secular circles have become deeply concerned.

Only eight cities had been renamed before 2000, most of which were renamed alphabetically.

For example, Jabulpure was called Jabalpur, Kaunpure was called Kanpur, Broda was called Vadodara, Bombay was called Mumbai, Cochin was called Kochi and Calcutta was called Kolkata, but the names that were changed later were actually based on Hinduism. There were those who wanted to impose Hindu identity in place of Muslim identity of the cities.

The process started by BJP of changing the names of cities has ended up in changing the name of the country and now BJP is using the word Bharat in official documents instead of India because it has come to know that the word India belongs to the Indus Valley and these areas now belong to Pakistan.

In the past Madras was Chennai, Diltangganj was Madinanagar, Mysuru was Maysuru, Bijapur was Vijayapur, Gurgaon was Gurugram, Hoshangabad was Narmadapuram, Aurangabad was Chhatrapati Sambhajnagar, Osmanabad was Dharashiv, Guwahati was Guwahati. Changing Gulshanabad to Nashik, Pune to Pune, Bhopal to Bhojpal, Allahabad to Prayagraj, Faizabad to Ayodhya etc. are some examples of this.

Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, is also proposed to be renamed Agrawan or Agarwal.

Role of Aligarh in Tehreek-e-Pakistan:

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan is said to be the founder of the two nation theory, who founded the Aligarh Muslim College after the War of Independence in 1857, which became a university in 1920.

This institution proved to be the axis of Muslim politics and from here Tehreek-e-Pakistan grew. In the leadership of the Muslim League, the majority were those who graduated from this university.

Even after the creation of Pakistan, the first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, President Ayub Khan, Chaudhry Fazl Elahi, Habibullah Khan Marwat, Governor General Ghulam Muhammad, Khawaja Nazimuddin, all of them graduated from Aligarh University.

Quaid-e-Azam also came here many times to address the students. This Muslim identity of Aligarh University has been a problem ever since the rise of extremism in Indian politics.

First, it was demanded that the pictures of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Quaid-e-Azam be removed from here, then a campaign was launched to remove the word Muslim from the name of Aligarh Muslim University because it affects the secular identity of the university, but the Supreme Court in 2019 Rejected the appeal to change the name.

Now the process of changing the name of Aligarh has started. The Hindu extremists have been demanding to change the name of the city from Aligarh to Harigarh or Ramgarh since the sixties and seventies.

What is the origin of the name Aligarh?

The old name of Aligarh was Kol, which was considered a Jain city till the twelfth century. There are also ancient Jain temples here.

Cole’s cause of fame was the distillation of alcohol. According to the District Gazetteer of 1879, the name Kol is associated with a Surme Bala Rama who was known as Kol in the Ganga-Jumna-du-Aab.

According to another tradition, Kol was founded by Dur Rajputs in 372 BC, when Mahmud of Ghaznavi came to India, the city was ruled by Hardatta of Bourne.

During the reign of Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, Kol became a part of the Muslim Empire. Ghiyas-ud-Din Balban built a minaret here, dated 1252, which was destroyed during the British attack on the city.

It was later preserved by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan during the construction of Aligarh College, which is now a part of the Aligarh Muslim University Museum. It got the status of a province during the reign of Alauddin Khilji.

According to Ibn Battuta, a traveler who came to India in the 14th century, Kul is a beautiful city surrounded by mango groves and hence called Sabzabad.

In 1524, Ibrahim Lodhi built a fort here. During the reign of Akbar, Kol was a part of Agra province. According to Tzak Jahangiriri, Kol was the hunting ground of the Mughal emperor Jahangir.

In the 18th century, Kol was called by various names according to its fort, one of which is Sabitgarh. In the same century, the fort was conquered by the Jats with the help of Raja Jai ​​Singh of Jaipur.

In 1757, the Jat chief Suraj Mal named the fort as Ramgarh after one of his governors, Ram. Dr. Syed Ali Nadeem Rizvi, head of the history department of Aligarh University, researcher and writer, while talking to Independent Urdu, said that Aligarh Mughals. There was a military fort adjacent to the ancient city of Kul during the period of 1900, which was named after its keeper Najaf Ali.

Garh meant a small-scale military cantonment which today you can call a divisional headquarters. During the reign of Najaf Ali, the influence of the Marathas increased in this area and then when this fort was conquered by the Marathas. Even then its name remained Aligarh.

At that time, the French army was stationed here under the command of the French commander General Perron on behalf of the Marathas. He said that later when the French army surrendered to the British army, the name of this fort remained Aligarh and when the British In the era of the railway line was laid here, the name of the railway station was still Aligarh.

He said that the name of Aligarh is a few decades before the establishment of MAO College by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan later bought the fort and converted it into a university and the university was also called Aligarh.

Since then, the entire area came to be called Aligarh, which is taken to mean that the word Ali refers to the fourth Caliph of the Muslims because one of the gates of Aligarh is called Bab Al-Ilam.

He said that even if the name of Aligarh is changed to Harigarh, will there be any impact on the history and civilization of Aligarh?

He said that the next year is for general elections, so the Modi government is doing all this for the political support of the extremists.

Why are the signs of Muslim civilization being erased from India?؟

Muslims are the largest minority in India which is about 15% of the total population, but after the BJP came to power, hatred against Muslims has increased at the official level.

Demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 and massacre of Muslims in Gujarat under Modi’s patronage in 2002, Muzaffarnagar riots in 2013, New Delhi riots in 2020.

All this is actually being done under a well-thought-out plan, the aim of which is to encircle the Muslims.

Dr Muhammad Sajjad, a professor attached to the Department of History at Aligarh Muslim University, told Independent Urdu that the question is whether the Hindu organizations that have been demanding to change the name of Aligarh to Harigarh since the 60s and 70s are the old names of the city. Why is the name Kol offensive? With which the history of the city is connected. Or Ramgarh which was the name of the city till 1750.

He said that one party is doing the politics of the majority sect, which is destroying the overall impression of India. Developing cities is a difficult task, but playing with people’s sentiments by changing names is an easy task and BJP is good at this task.