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03 Dec 2008 08:29 am
It's Bombay
Hitch informs me that the change in name to Mumbai is a function of Hindu chauvinism:
When Salman Rushdie wrote, in The Moor's Last Sigh
in 1995, that "those who hated India, those who sought to ruin it,
would need to ruin Bombay," he was alluding to the Hindu chauvinists
who had tried to exert their own monopoly in the city and who had forcibly renamed it—after
a Hindu goddess—Mumbai. We all now collude with this, in the same way
that most newspapers and TV stations do the Burmese junta's work for it
by using the fake name
Myanmar. (Bombay's hospital and stock exchange, both targets of
terrorists, are still called by their right name by most people, just
as Bollywood retains its "B.")
I wasn't aware of this but now that I am, the Dish will refer to Mumbai by its previous name.
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Tracked: Dec 4, 2008 9:16:54 PM
