Jinnah Nagar, Palakkad
By Shankar Raj*
Jinnah’s label jeered in Palakkad’s push for a new road sign!
Thiruvananthapuram: At a time when India is preparing to take a stern action against Pakistan following the Pahalgam incident, a cross-section of the people in Palakkad, the agricultural bowl in northwest Kerala, has mounted pressure in changing the name of a crucial commercial area in the district town from Jinnah Nagar to Chettur Sankaran Nair Road.
Palakkad is one of the rare towns in India where one can find a Jinnah Nagar and a Saddam Hussein Square.
Of late, there has also been stiff resistance from the Congress party and the Communist Party of India – Marxist over the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Palakkad municipal council’s decision to name an upcoming skill development centre after Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar. There were fisticuffs over the issue on Tuesday, April 29, 2025, in the municipal council meeting.
Following this, in an urgent notice to the municipal council, BJP councillor Sasikumar M demanded that Jinnah Nagar be named after Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair, the only Keralite to have served as the All India Congress Committee president and the sole Indian member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. Chettur was a brilliant lawyer and hailed from Palakkad. The movie Kesari 2 starring Akshay Kumar is based on the life of Chettur.
It is claimed that a resolution passed by the municipality in 1977 named the locality Jinnah Nagar after the founder of Pakistan.
The BJP leaders argued that honouring the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, by naming a place in India after him is “deeply inappropriate” and that “Pakistani symbols have no place in Palakkad”.
They claimed Jinnah was solely responsible for the Partition, which led to widespread bloodshed and the enduring conflict between India and Pakistan. They also cited the Pahalgam terror attack as evidence of ongoing threats linked to the consequences of Partition.
“It is unacceptable that an area in an Indian city still bears the name of a man who advocated the two-nation theory and divided our country,” Sasikumar told journalists.
“It was in 1977 that the Palakkad municipality took the disgraceful step of naming a major locality after Jinnah. Congress and IUML ruled the civic body at the time. We demand the decision be reversed,” he said.
The proposal for changing the name of Jinnah Nagar is expected to be taken up for discussion in the next council meeting.
*Shankar Raj is a former editor of The New Indian Express, Karnataka and Kerala, and writes regularly on current affairs.
