Name names what otherwise remains unnamed. And what is unnamed despite its being there in all its concreteness or abstraction implies at best anonymity and at worst absence.

Human mind recognizes things material and immaterial by giving them names which function as marks of their identities that become synonymous with what they actually are for us.

Names are not always neutral in the sense that they at times connote more than what they denote; they convey more than what they are meant to apparently signify. They have tiers of meanings; primary and secondary. The former communicates the meaning; it signifies the signified, telling us what it actually is.

The latter communicates the message; it implies an extended content which is not intrinsic to what is primarily being signified.

Take the case of our capital city. When our rulers decided to shift the capital from Sindh to Punjab they planned a new city and gave it a name: Islamabad. The word ‘Islamabad ‘transmits multiple signals; it points to a city but a city built by Muslims displaying its builders’ love for their religion. Being capital city it declares that the religion of its rulers would rule supreme.

The question of names is not as simple as it may appear if you briefly examine the history of past six decades of Pakistan in general and of Punjab in particular. Looking at the process of naming new cities, towns, residential colonies, roads, highways, railway stations, airports, hospitals and public buildings, etc you cannot fail to notice the reflection of a particular view of history shaped by a certain ideology.

The new names in addition to signifying the actual signified also provide clues to the thinking process of the names givers. The specifics of such a thinking process are defined by a world view underpinned by politics born of a selective reading of historical and religious reality.

Soon after the emergence of Pakistan in 1947 the question of national identity raised its head. As the new state came into being on the basis of Muslim separatism, the natural response was to evolve a monolithic identity derived from the dynamics of Pakistan Movement and religious ethos it evoked.

Names form an important element of identity component. So the process of naming the new and re-naming the old started. The names of the founding fathers came handy which emitted an aura of glory.

Who could be more venerable and venerated than Sir Mohammad Iqbal and Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah? Go anywhere in Pakistan, particularly in Punjab, you will see innumerable towns, colonies, roads, town halls, streets and airports etc bearing their names. Of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with these names. Only their excessive use defies sense of proportion.

Re-naming the old is more problematic in the sense that it is an ideologically motivated drive to erase or conceal our diverse historical past that tells the tale of our societal evolution.

Z.A Bhutto, praised for his so-called sense of history, named a cricket ground as Qadhafi Stadium in bonhomie to placate the megalomaniac dictator of Libya. He also gave a new name to Lahore’s Gol Bagh after Egyptian demagogue Abdul Jamal Nasser.

His successor, General Ziaul Haq, the dictator, betrayed rank opportunism when he changed the name of Lyallpur (remember the folk-verse; Lyallpuron banwaya jhumka chandi da?) and named it after Saudi king Faisal in the hope of getting petro-dollars from Saudi monarchy.

The famous pre-partition locality of Lahore Krishan Nagar became Islampura. Wan Radha Ram, a town on the Multan Road ahead of Pattoki was re-named as Habibabad, just to quote a few examples.

The dictator even tried to give a new name to the Lahore’s famous Ganga Ram Hospital built by Sir Ganga Ram who helped plan and construct almost all of modern Lahore.

In Punjab you see innumerable plates or slabs scribed with the names of invaders and kings as if they were our real benefactors. Names of the greats who created Punjab’s social, political, intellectual and spiritual repertoire are a taboo.

Can anybody imagine Punjab without thinking of Panini, Chanakya Kautilya, Porus, Balnath, Data Ali Hijweri, Masood Saad Salman, Baba Farid, Guru Nanak, Guru Arjun, Damodar, Shah Hussain, Dullah Bhatti, Sultan Bahu, Hafiz Barkhurdar, Nijabat, Heer, Sahiban, Sohni, Bulleh Shah, Waris Shah, Aadina Baig, Ranjit Singh, Ahmed Kharral, Murad Fatina, Mian Mohammad, Khawaja Ghulam Farid, Dewan Sawan Mall, Bhagat Singh, Shori Mian, Piro Preman, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Madan Mohan, Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, Tufail Niazi, Pathane Khan and Dr Abdus Salam. The list could be endless if you know who is who in the history of Punjab.

Names assigned to public spaces and places in a region or a country reflect the historical march of its people with all their achievements and failures. But the case is different with the Punjabis who are subjective and selective in revealing or concealing their past when it comes to naming what they need to name. Sadly such a myopic process of naming with the heft of self-loathing never shames them.