Govt: Working for 8 years to erase colonial past

New Delhi, September 8

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On a day Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated a refurbished “Kartavya Path” (earlier called Rajpath) to the people, the government said efforts had been made for eight years to erase India’s colonial past.

It cited the new naval ensign with the seal of Chhatrapati Shivaji instead of the St George Cross, the renaming of Race Course Road as Lok Kalyan Marg, the repeal of more than 1,500-old colonial-era laws and the merger of the Railway Budget with the Union Budget. In 2017, the government ended a 92-year-old tradition by merging the two Budgets.

The presentation of the Union Budget on the first day of February was also a deviation from the colonial-era practice of Budget presentation on the last day of February. Citing the replacement of Beating the Retreat hymn “Abide With Me” with Kavi Pradeep’s seminal piece “Aye mere watan ke logon”; the merger of Amar Jawan Jyoti with National War Memorial; the renaming of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands – Ross Island as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep; Neil Island as Shaheed Dweep and Havelock Island as Swaraj Dweep and the inauguration of Biplobi Bharat Gallery at Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata, the government said, “In what has been named after an erstwhile British Empress of India, the PM inaugurated a gallery displaying the contribution of the revolutionaries of the freedom struggle.”