Mumbai - Stupidity of Renaming a City

Mumbai City - India

Bombay, now called Mumbai is home to around 10 million people. It is a bustling cosmopolitan, multi-cultural city, and is the centre of India's entertainment industry. 

Ancient Mumbai

Bombay was originally — not one city — but seven separate and amorphous islands separated by swamps: the region was inhospitable to human settlements due to malarial swamps and tropical forests. The Muslim rulers of Gujarat annexed the islands from the local Hindu rulers and governed it from 1391 to 1534. 

Seven Islands

Portoguese Bom Baia

The Gujarat Sultanate was obliged to sign the Treaty of Bassein with the Portuguese Empire and the seven islands of Bombay were surrendered to the Portuguese on 25 October 1535. The Portuguese actively engaged in laying the foundation of Roman Catholic religious orders in the islands. They built several catholic churches and establishe a port fro trading with Portugal. The Portuguese called the place Bom Baía, meaning 'The Good Bay'.

British Bombay

The Seven Islands of Mumbai were handed over to England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, the daughter of King John IV of Portugal when she married King Charles II of England in 1661. 

Portoguese Bombay

The British carried out massive engineering works in Bombay. In 1782, William Hornby, the Governor of Bombay, and initiated the Hornby Vellard engineering project of uniting the seven islands into a single landmass. The swamps were completely filled in, and by 1845 the seven small islands that had previously made up Bom Baia had been turned into one large island - the City of Bombay.

Transformation of Bombay

Mumbai City

In the early 1900s, the Parsi and Marwaris Migrant communities owned majority of the industry and trade enterprises in the city, while the white-collar jobs were mainly South Indian migrants. The locals provided the labor force. The partition of India created a new group of entrepreneurs - Punjabis and Sindhis. Giujarati businessmen also became integral to the commericalozation of Bombay

The Shiv Sena party was established in 1966 by cartoonist Bal Thackeray, out of a feeling of resentment about the relative marginalization of the native Marathi people in their native state Maharashtra. 

Legend of Mumbai Devi

The name of the city was changed in 1995 to Mumbai, after Mumba Devi, the stone goddess of the deep-sea fishermen who originally lived on the islands before they were driven out by the Europeans.

Mumbai Central Station

Mumba Devi Mandir is Hindu temple built in 1675 near the main landing site of the former Bori Bunder creek against the north wall of the English Fort Saint George by a Hindu woman also named Mumba. The creek and fort are now deteriorated to a point at which they are but derelict reminders of the city's past. The temple itself is not impressive but is an important landmark as it is dedicated to MumbaDevi, the city's patron deity.

Mumba Devi Temple - Mumbai

The temple is dedicated to mother goddess in her fisher woman form. Mumba dedicated herself in perseverance of fishermen living in one of the seven islands. The fishermen refer to her as Aai (meaning mother in Marathi), she came to be known as Mumba Aai.

My Conclusion

The Indians do not have to tolerate the name given to their city by the foreign occupiers - the Portoguese and British in this instamce. They have the right to rename the city as they wish. But there needs to be some logic and intellect behind it. 

The name of the city is clearly derrived from the Portoguese term - Bom Baia meaning the "Good Bay", Later the British named it Bombay but the locals continued to call it Bombai. 

The right wing Hindu organizations found a 17th century temple built by locals on the wall of a Portoguese building and reinstated the idol of Mumba Bai, an imaginary native goddess of fishermen. 

Renaming the city after a made up goddess called Mumba Bai looks like an afterthought to me? 

Mumba Aai

The Indians have all the rights to name the city as they wish and I would accept it if you say that "Mumbai" is the correct native pronouncement of city's name. But concocting a mythological tale to authenticate their version of history is logically flawed and will not withstand the test of the time.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Islands_of_Bombay

https://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/trading/bombay/history.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mumbai

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bombay_under_Portuguese_rule_(1534%E2%80%931661)

http://mumbaiport.gov.in/index2_n.asp?slid=843&sublinkid=479&langid=1