'Mughalsarai renaming loss of railway heritage, erasure of public memory'
New Delhi: The rechristening of the over 150-year-old Mughalsarai station in Uttar Pradesh has been red-flagged by historians and heritage experts, some of whom feel "erasing a landmark chapter" in the evolution of railways in the country will lead to "terrible confusion" among travellers.
The Uttar Pradesh government recently issued a notification saying the station, a major railway junction in northern India on the Delhi-Howrah line, has been renamed after RSS ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, with Governor Ram Naik giving his assent. This sparked a public outcry.
"History should be respected as it is. Mughalsarai was a historic railway station and part of childhood memories of millions of people. It was a landmark chapter in the evolution in the Indian Railways. Its name should not have been changed or rechristened after anybody," lamented noted historian Irfan Habib.
He said he has fond memories of travelling in trains and looking forward to arrival of the station, where the familiar buzz of the tea-sellers and food vendors, would fill the air amid the background announcement of the train having arrived at 'Mughalsarai'. "Somehow, the place, will now feel unfamiliar. I will miss it... I feel a part of my childhood memories has been robbed," he told PTI. The historian alleged that for powers that may be, first the British names were a problem, and now anything that has a "Mughal or Islamic identity attached to it" from roads to parks.
Kolkata-based photographer and railway enthusiast Rajiv Soni, 65, recalled the Delhi Express that he used to catch from Calcutta that went via Mughalsarai and the "ceramic-made bowl-within-a-bowl" that he used to haggle for at the platform when the train halted. "All major trains, go via Mughalsarai. The trains were timed so precisely that one would reach for breakfast in Patna, lunch in Mughalsarai and tea in Kanpur. The renaming will now kill all those romantic memories and nostalgia. The renaming was totally unwarranted as Mughalsarai was a very innocuous name with no religious identity," he rued. It was a landmark, transit point, and reference point for going to Benares or Mirzapur. The renaming doesn't make any sense, Soni said. Mughalsarai station was created as part of the Delhi-Howrah line laid in the 1860s and is one of the busiest railway stations of India with a large number of passenger and freight trains passing daily through it both ways. Its marshalling yard is also the longest in Asia. Initially part of the East Indian Railway company, it is now part of the ECR zone of the Indian railways.
