Mumbai or Bombay? A British newspaper reverts to a colonial-era name

The Independent, a major British newspaper and online publication, will no longer call India’s largest city Mumbai. Instead, the publication plans to revert to the city’s older, colonial-era name - Bombay.

Amol Rajan, the left-leaning newspaper’s India-born editor, said that the decision was made as a response to what he argued were the Hindu nationalist connotations of the name Mumbai. “If you call it what Hindu nationalists want you to call it, you essentially do their work for them,” Rajan told BBC radio on Wednesday.

The city has been officially known as Mumbai since 1995 when it was renamed by the far-right regional party Shiv Sena, an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which currently holds national office in India. Shiv Sena advocates the use of the Marathi language, which is dominant in the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. Marathi speakers have long referred to the city as Mumbai, after the Hindu goddess Mumbadevi, the city’s patron deity.

Shiv Sena had argued that the previous name, Bombay, was an unwanted relic of British colonial rule in India. That name is believed to be an Anglicised version of the city’s name from when it was occupied by the Portuguese - “Bom Bahia,” which means “good bay.” Both Bombay and Mumbai are now used interchangeably by locals during casual conversation.

Rajan said the decision was prompted not by a specific event but a general feeling that intolerance was growing in India. “I simply saw Mumbai in a headline on our pages earlier this week and had a strong reaction to it,” Rajan said of the decision, which was made after consulting with many senior staff members.