The Yogi government of Uttar Pradesh continues to push for restoring the Hindu heritage of the state. After renaming the Mughalsarai station into ‘Deen Dayal Upadhyay’ Junction, the Yogi government has approached the centre to rename the airports in Agra, Bareilly and Kanpur. All the three airports are defence airport. Uttar Pradesh civil aviation minister, Nand Gopal Nandi said, “We have reached out to the Centre to get the airports renamed. A meeting with the Union ministry of civil aviation is expected soon.” He also said that renaming of the airport was on the government’s to-do list since a long-time.
According to a proposal from the Uttar Pradesh civil aviation department, the Bareilly airport is to be named ‘Nath Nagiri’, which is believed to be an ancient name of the city. Bareilly is famous for its history of having devoted worshippers of Bhagwan Shiv hence ‘Nath Nagri’ has been proposed as an updated name of the city. Bareilly is surrounded on all sides by as many as seven temples of Bhagwan Shiv— Alakhnath, Trivati Nath, Marhinath, Dhopeshwar Nath, Vankhandinath, Tapeshwar Nath and Pashupatinath. The proposal of the state government provides great historical details about Bareilly.
UP CM Yogi Adityanath, who comes from the Nath sect, had earlier updated the name of the civil terminals of IAF’s Gorakhpur airport after Maha Yogi Gorakhnath, founder of the ‘Nath Pant’ (monastic movement). CM Yogi is the ‘Mahant’ (priest) of Gorakhnath temple. On the other hand, Kanpur’s Chakeri airport is propounded to be renamed after freedom fighter Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi. UP government proposal says that Kanpur City was previously known as Kanha pur and was founded by Sachendi King Hindu Singh. The state government has proposed the Agra airport to be named after the great RSS thinker Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.
According to a One India report, an official spokesperson said that the state government and the Airports Authority of India are in the process of consultations at various levels to facilitate flyers under the regional connectivity scheme. This is not the first time that Yogi is making such moves to restore the Hindu heritage of the state. During his tenure as a member of parliament from Gorakhpur, Yogi Adityanath had made many such changes. There used to be a market called mia bazar in Gorakhpur, its name was changed to Mayabazar. Similarly, urdu bazar was renamed as Hindi Bazar and Ali Nagar was renamed as Arya Nagar. In an interview before the UP elections, before India TV, Yogi Adityanath had made it clear that he will continue to make such changes. He explained that by doing so, nothing is being actually changed or imposed but only the true historical significance of the places in question is being revived. He stated that the names of these places had been changed by outside powers at some point in the history and he was only doing the job of bringing them back to their original identity. He wondered why someone should have any problem if these names which reflect upon excesses in the past are changed.
CM Yogi has thus delivered on what he had promised before the elections. It is clear that he is not going to be bogged down by the extensive propaganda against him. He also announced that Allahabad would be renamed as Prayagraj. It’s good to see that CM Yogi is taking strong steps to undo the legacy imposed by certain invaders in the past. CM Yogi is making sure that we stick to our roots.