(Published in an edited form in the Times of India, March 16 2024)

Ahilyabai Holkar (1725-95) was a woman of high accomplishments. On the one hand were her religious charities: feeding houses, riverside ghats, and temple reconstruction, most famously of Kashi Vishwanath, demolished by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1669. But she was also capable of good government; a British official—who had no special incentive to flatter “native” figures—would describe her as “one of the purest and most exemplary rulers that ever existed”. She showed much personal fortitude too. Widowed before thirty, Ahilyabai watched her son go insane and her daughter commit sati. As a woman in a world of men, she forcefully asserted her right to administer the Holkar dynasty’s lands herself. Remembered as part-queen, part-saint ever since, there is no doubt that Ahilyabai is a historical figure of importance.

Earlier this week, the Maharashtra government decided to honour the queen by renaming the city of Ahmednagar to Ahilyanagar. On the face of it, this is somewhat odd. The rani left Maharashtra aged eight, and her career was largely spent in today’s Madhya Pradesh. She was born in Ahmednagar district, yes, but at Chondi, almost 100 km outside the city that now bears her name. As such, the Holkar dowager had little to do with Ahmednagar. So, we are left with another explanation. Ahilyabai belonged to the Dhangar caste, which has lately been agitating against the government—renaming Ahmednagar is part of a broader package of mollification. Besides, in the general trend of Hindu consolidation, particularly with elections imminent, the erasure of an “Ahmed” in favour of “Ahilya” holds its own subtexts and signals.

The naming (and renaming) of cities has always seen a fusing of the political with the emotional. Not long ago, for instance, Aurangabad was turned into Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. One can see the appeal. “Aurangabad” commemorated Aurangzeb, who bulldozed his way into the area as a conqueror. In what was a traumatic moment in local history, he would also order the brutal execution of Chhatrapati Shivaji’s son and heir. Why then, many might justly ask, should a town in Maharashtra celebrate a man who rained fire and blood on its people? Aurangzeb had named the place after himself to advertise imperial might and make a political statement. Ditching that name is an equally political act. To supporters of the move, it highlights resistance while honouring a more appropriate hero—a bold son of the soil.

The problem with emotion, though, is that it does not always align with the hard facts of history. We must recall that Aurangzeb was despised not just by Hindus. Branding the Shia sultans of the Deccan heretics, the emperor terminated their dynasties. When the region resisted him, it was also under the Muslim rulers of these Deccan sultanates. Indeed, if Aurangabad had to be renamed, it should perhaps have been after Malik Ambar (1548-1626). A general of African origin, this was the man who founded the city in the first place. For some twenty-five years, two generations before Shivaji, it was he who led the movement against the Mughals. In the Sivabharata, a Sanskrit poem Shivaji commissioned, rich tributes are in fact paid Ambar; he is “as brave as the sun” and compared to the gods. Why, the chhatrapati’s father and grandfather both were associated with this slave-turned-warrior.

The simple fact, however, is that such a proposal would not fly. For Ambar, despite his heroic work in the region, was a devout Muslim. And even political parties of the so-called “secular” bent hesitate to stand up nowadays for our Islamic heritage. Popular imagination—and popular imagination is what shapes political sentiment—sees the resistance of the Deccan to Mughal imperialism through chiefly a Hindu-Muslim (Maratha-Mughal) lens. So, in excising vestiges of past conquest and subjugation, it selectively elevates only Hindu icons. Besides, in the age of Hindutva, most things Muslim are suspect. Colonialism too did not begin, from this perspective, with the arrival of Europeans; India’s enslavement started with the advent of Islamic rule long before. So, in this view, even if Muslim figures did good, they were never truly Indian. Hindu icons belong, non-Hindu figures do not.

This becomes almost amusingly stark with this business around Ahmednagar. The city never bore the name of a conqueror or invader. It was founded by the first Nizam Shahi sultan, who was of wholly local Deccani descent. Ahmed I’s family were in fact Brahmins who converted to Islam. In 1518, the Nizam Shahs even went to war against another sultanate to reclaim their ancestral village and present it to their Brahmin relations. On a strictly factual basis, the Nizam Shahs’ connection to Ahmednagar was longer, richer, and more meaningful than Ahilyabai’s, who happened to be born in the general vicinity. But then again, facts too are not immune to cultural currents and political convenience. Ahmednagar has become Ahilyanagar not as part of a resettling of historical scores, but of a political remaking of India as a whole.