ET - Divya Shekhar Series - Albert Victor Road

Here is the link to the 4th June 2015 article by Divya Shekhar: http://bit.ly/1SyfvJD

I have also reproduced the entire text of the article for your ready reference:

The mystery behind naming Bengaluru's AV Road revealed:

Albert Victor Road, named after the prince of Wales, is seeing many changes to its name. ET explains the story behind the names. 

When playwright William Shakespeare famously said "What's in a name?" and basked in the resultant adulation, little would the bard have anticipated that many centuries down the line, a metropolis in south India would go all out to dismiss it, multiple times. 

The case in point is Bengaluru's AV Road, whose nomenclature has repeatedly been in the eye of the storm over the years. Originally Albert Victor Road, it was cleverly changed to Alur Venkat Rao Road sometime in the 1960s. Now again, there are forces at work to rename the road. 

AV Road is the first main road of Chamarajpet, which was the first extension created outside the old Pete area in 1892. Historian Suresh Moona said the rationale behind naming it Albert Victor Road was simple. 

In 1888, the then prince of Wales Albert Victor visited Bengaluru. He laid the foundation stone for the Lalbagh Glass House. The plaque commemorating this is found at the Lalbagh entrance even today . 

"Even though the British transferred administrative powers to the Mysore maharaja in 1881, they still had a strong hold over important decisions," said Moona. "So when the first extension to the Pete was formed barely four years after the foundation stone for the Glass House was laid, they decided to name it after Albert Victor as a mark of respect." 

Moona added that when the city went on a renaming spree towards the end of 1960s, the only thing it retained of the old name were the initials. It was called Alur Venkat Rao Road. 

Popularly referred to as the Karnataka Kulapurohita, Alur Venkat Rao was an eminent literary personality and historian who led the Karnataka unification movement. He edited and pub lished a newspaper called 'Jaya Karnataka' whose sole aim, he announced, was Karnataka's statehood. In all probability, the renaming of the road was on the heels of Rao's demise in February 1964. 

Although locals and several establishments in the area have adopted the new name, official BBMP records still refer to the road as Albert Victor Road. 

"Irrespective of what the name means, people just call it AV Road," said Moona, adding that re-renaming the road at this juncture would only lead to unwarranted confusion for the administration and disappointment for the people. 

A proposal submitted by the city corporation council to rename AV Road as Tipu Sultan Palace Road was recently met with opposition by a BJP-led delegation. A greater controversy threatened to break out when the corporation claimed that AV Road was officially registered as Albert Victor Road, and nowhere in government or postal records is Alur Venkat Rao Road mentioned. 

ET - Divya Shekhar Series - M.N. Krishna Rao Park

In my post about Professor Chandan Gowda, I had mentioned a book that he gifted me, which was about a German G.H. Krumbiegel and his contributions to Bangalore.

As I read this piece I was struck that another German -- Otto H Koenigsberger has also made a significant contribution to Bangalore.

Now, enough about my musings about Germans and their contributions to Bangalore, let me reproduce the entire text of a recent article by Divya Shekhar in ET for your ready reference.

Here is the link to the 29th October 2015 article: http://bit.ly/1Rm8Xgd.

Bengaluru's MN Krishna Rao Park -- ­ Designed in 1940s exclusively for women and children

MN Narendra recalls that in the early 1940s, a security guard outside the MN Krishna Rao Park in Basavanagudi stopped a man from entering the premises. The park, possibly the first of its kind in the country, was meant only for women and children.

The man who wanted to use it as a shortcut to his daughter's home smiled understandingly and walked away. The dutiful guard never realised that he had refused entry to the very person the park was named after! "Such was the humility of my grandfather, who never flaunted his position and titles," says Rao's 73 ­year­ old grand son Narendra, who lives in the 108 year­ old home built by the former acting dewan of Mysore.

Spread across 25 acres, the square­shaped park is named after Sir MN Krishna Rao, who was the acting dewan of the Mysore princely state in 1941 when Sir Mirza Ismail travelled to England for the Round Table Conference. Rao was conferred knighthood for his contribution to the Mysore state administration.

In the early 1940s, Rao contributed Rs 20,000 from his personal funds to build the park and also laid its foundation stone.

An additional Rs 15,000, Narendra continues, was spent in building the two­storeyed Krishna Rao pavilion at the centre of the park.

The structure was designed by Berlin­ born Otto H Koenigsberger, chief architect and planner of Mysore state, whose repertoire also includes iconic structures like Bal Bhavan and buildings in the Indian Institute of Science. Now neglected and dilapidated, it was once a vibrant space with music and cultural events. The park, with its lush greens, was planned specifically for women because they had very few spaces for recreation.

Rao's own bungalow was just the third home built in the Basavanagudi extension, formed at the aftermath of the bubonic plague in 1898.

Ulhas Anand, a nature enthusiast and cofounder of EcoEdu that conducts tree walks in Bengaluru, said the park is surrounded by three large trees that date back to the 1940s.

"Though it has lost some of its green cover, the park retains many rare trees. The avenue trees, however, were destroyed when the underpass was built."

What a surprising find!!

Today I was looking for some other information in day-before-yesterday's paper. I accidentally stumbled on to this really interesting article on page 2 of The Economic Times Bangalore edition.

Who would have guessed, that a business newspaper might carry an article on Bangalore's history!! It appears that they have been doing so for some time now under the by-line "Date with History: ET Explains the story behind the names".

I just googled and found out that Divya Shekhar a journalist with The Economic Times has been running such a series for a while. I will e-mail her just now and see if I can meet with her. I hope she will encourage and guide me to take City Idols forward. Thank you, Divya Shekhar!

I will provide links to her stories on this subject in separate blog posts.

Resources - 1

As I have mentioned several times in the past, our main motive is to crowd-source information on places named after people. And to make a beginning we intend to reach out to interested people to participate.

One of the main concerns has been verification of content that people will submit. But chronologically thinking our primary concern should actually be creation of content. Some of you may now wonder what possible concern there may be, with regard to the creation of content.

The main concern regarding creation of content is that a lot of information on several people, is not available on the Internet. This makes it tougher to gather information on these people.

So now as we know, there is a constraint with the current level of information on the Internet. To meet this issue, we should look up to alternative sources of information.

During my meeting with Professor Chandan Gowda, I was introduced to several books containing very relevant information on prominent people in Bangalore.

I list below the titles of these books:

1. Jnapaka Chitrashale - by D.V. Gundappa

2. The City Beautiful - by T. P. Issar

3. Monkey Tops: Old Buildings in Bangalore Cantonment - by Elizabeth Staley

4. Notes and Monographs - by Kora Chandy

5. Bangalore Roots and Beyond - by Maya Jaypal

6. Bangalore: A Century Of Tales From City & Cantonment - by Peter Colaco

7. Bengalurina Itihasa - by B.N. Sundara Rao

8. Bangalore Through the Centuries - by Fazlul Hasan

This is the first set of resources that I have mentioned, and I intend to post more such resources in the future blog posts as I come across them.

I hope this is useful!

Meeting with Professor Chandan Gowda

Today I had an excellent meeting with Professor Chandan Gowda. He is a professor at Azim Premji University. He is also a prolific writer and is widely read. The main purpose of this meeting with him, was on how to verify the crowd-sourced content.

We met Prof. Gowda at the "Cafe Coffee Day Square'' on Vittal Mallya Road in Bangalore. On meeting me, he gifted me a book called-- "G.H. Krumbiegel 'Whatever he touched, he adorned'" which contains a section authored by him. This book is about a German who settles in Bangalore and the contributions he makes to the erstwhile state of Mysore.

Soon, we had ordered the beverages and were set to commence the meeting!

In a couple minutes after our initial meeting, we were soon very deeply engrossed in a conversation!! Prof. Gowda also recalled several anecdotes about interesting things that used to occur in Bangalore.

Prof. Gowda had also brought along with him three books about Bangalore history, which he suggested were very relevant to the idea and could be used to develop content as well as verify it. These books he had brought, are:

1. Bangalore: A Century Of Tales From City & Cantonment - Peter  
    Colaco
2. Bengalurina Itihasa - B.N. Sundara Rao
3. Bangalore Through the Centuries - Fazlul Hasan

Prof. Gowda also suggested some new ideas. I have mentioned these below: 

• The Department of Information (Govt. of Karnataka) provides small grants to film makers to produce short documentaries. Some of these might be about prominent individuals in Bangalore.
• Reach out BBMP and see if there is any naming policy for roads or rather, on what criteria roads are named.
• Reach out to BBMP and see if there is a list of all roads/parks in Bangalore, and filter it out to only those named after people.
• Reach out to the "Indian National Trust For Art and Cultural Heritage" (INTACH) and see if they will be willing to partner, or contribute information.

I was struck by the fact that despite the fact that Prof. Gowda was meeting a high-school student when he came to meet me, he was fully prepared. He carried three relevant books from his personal library, and a very appropriate book to gift to me.

This was a major learning for me: No matter what the meeting is, one should be thoughtful and go prepared. 

Thank you, Prof. Gowda!

Meeting with I Change My City

Today, I got the opportunity to meet with I Change My City (http://www.ichangemycity.com/). As you might know I Change My City (ICMC) is an initiative that closely works with the people of Bangalore to help report civic issues.

I made a presentation of this idea to a senior team of five members which included Ms. Sylvia Veeraraghavan, the head of this initiative. We also had Mr. Vivekananda (Marketing Manager), Mr. Venkatesh (Content Head), Ms. Gayatri Nair (Editor content). It was a privilege to have the opportunity to present this idea to them!!

Initially as I entered the building, I was very nervous despite a lot of preparation and practice. But the moment I entered the room the entire ICMC team was so welcoming and courteous, that I felt very comfortable. 

I had a 10 slide presentation. I started by explaining how I came up with this idea. We had a funny moment when I said that I want to start with a "pop quiz" about some road names in Bangalore:-) 

By this time I was at ease in the room. I then made the presentation for around 15 minutes. After I ended, the ICMC team asked very good questions about content creation and verification. They also came up with some ideas about how this initiative can go forward.

Here are some highlights of that conversation:

1. We discussed the challenges of doing research on people who may not be very well known.
2. One of the important questions that came up in the discussion was verifying the content that is crowd-sourced. An advisory group comprising people such as Mr. Suresh Moona might be able to address this issue.
3. There were several good ideas that were made by the ICMC team. I am listing them below as I understand them. 

• We should reach out to schools and crowd-source information through a Heritage competition/quiz.
• Each week ICMC could post a couple of road/park names on their website, and ask their users to write in information about these personalities.

If this partnership makes sense for ICMC, it would be wonderful to work with this team to take the idea forward!!

I am planning to reach out to my school Principal, Ms. Deepa Sridhar, and seek her guidance for this project. It would be great if more Kumaranites will be able to participate in this process. 

I am also hoping to meet another historian of repute. Keeping fingers crossed, I will let you know if I am able to get the meeting.

A Talk on the Origin of Bengaluru's name!!

In one of the earlier blogs I had mentioned about meeting with Mr. Suresh Moona who is a popular Bangalore historian. In the talk he has given at Takshashila Institution, he discusses the various legends and stories that suggest the origin of Bengaluru's name. I paste below, an excerpt from the blog for your reading pleasure:

The story behind the name stretches across several centuries and civilizations.

The earliest reference to the name ‘Bengaluru’ appears in the ninth century Ganga inscription on a ‘hero-stone’ (vira kallu) found in Begur. The inscription makes a reference to the battle fought at ‘Bengaluru’. The name is believed to owe its origins to the Ganga rulers. Bengavalu was the name of the hamlet that the rulers built for their security guards. Bengavaluru, the name of the guards’ residences is believed to have morphed into Bengaluru. The city has had other names-Devarayapattna in the 16^th century and Kalyanpura. During the British rule, the city came to be known as Bangalore. At the 2005 golden jubilee celebration of Suvarna Karnataka, UR Anantha Murthy proposed that the city’s name be changed to Bengaluru. In 2006, BBMP passed the resolution to implement the change of name. On November 12, 2006, the then Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy declared ‘Bengaluru’ to be the city’s official name.

Several legends actively compete with facts in the narration of the history of Bangalore. Among the most popular ones is the story, set in the 12^th century, of the tired Hoysala King Veera Ballala who was offered boiled beans (benda kallu in Kannada) by an old woman. In praise of the boiled beans, he named the town Bendakaluru (town of boiled beans). Such stories add a highly interesting dimension to a city’s history, but are not backed by any evidence.

Here is a link to the original post: http://bclip.takshashila.org.in/tag/suresh-moona/


Despite Bengaluru being such a prominent city of the world and having a long history, there are still only legends and myths to trace the origin of its name. This is indeed quite unfortunate. That is why I have started this blog with the intention of making sure that places such as roads, parks, circles etc. that are named after prominent people who have contributed to society, do not have legends or myths about the origin of their names. Instead, the memories of such eminent individuals must be honored appropriately by making sure that their contributions to society are chronicled and spread for generations to come.