AMN / WEB DESK
South Western Railway has renamed the Bangalore-Mysore Tipu Express as Wodeyar Express allegedly at the behest of a BJP parliamentarian. This is seen as part of attempt by BJP governments changing the “Muslim” names of several cities and roads across the country.
Mansoor Khan, co-chairman of the state Congress communications wing, termed the decision “communal politics at its laziest”.
“Why has the (name of the) Tipu Express been changed to Wodeyar Express? The train has been plying on the route for 42 years without anyone being bothered about its name. What is the use of this renaming? Does it help the public in any way? This is communal politics at its laziest,” Khan tweeted.
The change of name for the train was announced by BJP Lok Sabha member Pratap Simha, the prime mover behind the move.
“Now Wodeyar Express will serve you instead of Tipu Express,” Simha tweeted, along with the railway notification and his July 25 letter to railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw seeking a name change for the train, operating since the early 1980s.
Tipu Sultan, the 18th-century ruler, is popularly known as the “Tiger of Mysore”. He waged four wars against the British before he died fighting — a record the current flag-bearers and vocal champions of muscular Indian nationalism cannot claim.
The Sangh parivar, however, accuses Tipu of destroying temples and carrying out mass murder and religious conversions of Hindus in Kodagu and Dakshina Kannada of Karnataka and the Malabar region of neighbouring Kerala.
The Wodeyars ruled the kingdom of Mysore from the late 1300s till the 1760s and then remained titular rulers from around 1800 till 1950. While the critics of the controversial move didn’t question the credentials of the Wodeyars, they suggested that the railway ministry could have added a new train to the busy route and named it after the Mysore royals instead of denigrating Tipu.
N.A. Haris, a Congress MLA, saw it as a move to hide the failures of the BJP government. “People should be aware of the BJP’s appeasement regime, which is always bothered about a religion and ideas related to that religion. Religious disharmony is being conducted to hide serious problems like price rise and unemployment,” he tweeted.