While in India my fiancee’s cousin had told me that he had actually heard about Brown Pundits even before he had heard about me (or even before my fiancee and I had met each other, which was Dec’2010 the same time as BP’s birth). So it was very interesting to see that among a certain set Sepia Mutiny, BP and other such sites are very well-known. Furthermore it seems to me that of all the blogs it seems BP is the most direct inheritor to SM if I’m not mistaken.
The same cousin also told me about Sanskritisation trends:
‘Ahmedabad to Amdavad will affect our claim to Heritage City’
Another artist, on condition of anonymity, said that it is not a wise move by Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) to change the city’s name. “Changing name to Amdavad from Ahmedabad will not help in creating better civic amenities. Moreover, the name has been written in this way for centuries and there is no need to create a controversy now by implementing such a change that might affect its claim for a heritage city status,” he said.
Personally every society needs to resolve its internal contradictions so I don’t have any real comments.
Sanskrit name for Ahmedabad was “Karnavati”. Amdavad sounds like a corruption of Ahmedabad than anything meaningful sort of like renaming Thiruvananthapuram as Trivandrum. Though initially it reminded me of another city “Amaravati” in Andhra Pradesh.
Amdavad I think is just Gujarati for Ahmedabad, just like Mumbai is for Bombay or Chennai is for Madras. Perhaps Gujjus can enlighten a bit about this.
I’ve heard some people say Amdavad comes from “Amba” (Durga). Sounds like a revisionist flight of fancy to me.
Amdavad is how Gujaratis pronounce it. It is a natural pronunciation not rooted in history.
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