Deccan Chronicle 15.06.2010
Tamil makeover for city streets
June 14: Hashing and rehashing street names is still playing out in Chennai. First it was giving up British names and then it was dropping caste names, which led to very strange, mutilated names for streets and roads.
Now begins another exercise. Chennai corporation is targetting over 50 city streets that would be renamed in view of the upcoming world classical Tamil conference.
The streets would be named after Tamil authors, poets and scholars of different periods in another month-and-a-half, Chennai mayor M. Subramanian told DC adding that about 52 streets would be renamed initially.
The decision was taken at an all-party meeting at Ripon buildings on Monday. The resolution would be passed in the monthly council meeting on June 22, a day before the conference.
Another resolution, comprising the list of names that would be finalised after consulting the state government, would be tabled during next month’s council meeting. “Though there were a couple of streets named after a church and a vessel in which English sailors arrived in Madras, we chose not to rename or rather disturb them fearing communal backlash,” Mr Subramanian elaborated.
In order to make pronunciation easy, the corporation would also be avoiding difficult names like Seethalai Saathanar, an ancient Tamil poet. Streets would have names of familiar Tamil littérateurs like Elangovadigal who wrote Silapathigaram.
