What's in a name?

This is really taking politics to the pits. Though the dream of building a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya remains distant, the BJP in Mumbai tried to appease itself by naming the newly built Oshiwara station as ‘Ram Mandir’.

The area between Jogeshwari and Goregaon is known to all as Oshiwara; that is its identity since time unknown. And now to go and give it a name like this, all for some political mileage is so pitiable. And they say that this name is very apt, given the fact that the area has a very “famous” Ram temple. Their question is – why not name a station after Lord Ram, why the tag of 'mandir'?

Nothing wrong at all; so why not Ram station or Raghava, Koshlendra, Ramachandra or Krishna or Hanuman or Lakshmi or Vishnu? The hard fact of the matter is that the station will be known as Oshiwara, people will continue to refer to it as Oshiwara and not Ram Mandir temple.

Naming a station is not an easy task, the process is long and tedious. The state Govt has the right to name a station and it has to first get a report from the district collector. Then, the Surveyor General of India decides the spelling of the new name. Next, Western/Central Railway will give it a station code and then the local authorities will have to add it to the ticketing units and train schedules. Now you know why inaugurations get delayed, right?