On Tuesday, the Uttar Pradesh cabinet adopted a proposal triggering blended feelings among the general population. The state cabinet chose to rename the historic city of Allahabad to Prayagraj.
The CM of UP Yogi Adityanath who last week said that the government would consider a different name for Allahabad, had recently participated in the Margdarshak Mandal meeting for Kumbh where he received this proposal from the viewers. “Prayag means a confluence of two rivers. Here, we have a confluence of three rivers, Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati. Therefore, it should be named Prayagraj.
After making the decision to change the name of the city to Prayag, the UP government has further accepted the conventional name that is used interchangeably with the present one. The fact that the city resonates the name of Prayag despite being renamed for more than four centuries goes on to show the will of the people to guide such a change.

The name Prayag or Prayagraj has remained in the common psyche of the people, even when it was erased legally, a few centuries ago. This is evident in the fact that Allahabad had a railway station named ‘Prayag’. The very famous and iconic train connecting the city to the National Capital is named ‘Prayagraj Express’.
We cannot totally regard the action of the Uttar Pradesh government as being driven by Hindutva or anything else. It is merely a formal acknowledgement of an existing reality?

While some were happy that the identity of the city was revived with the new name, others were not really happy and felt it as the tongue twister. Let’s see what Twitterati has to say about Prayagraj.

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