India's north-eastern state of Assam has been renamed Asom to cast off its British-era label, a state minister said Tuesday. The move is the latest in a series of name changes in India in which Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata (formerly Bombay, Madras and Calcutta) reverted to their original names to shrug off the legacy of British colonial rule.
An Assam government spokesman said a council of ministers approved the name change late Monday at a meeting in the state's main city of Guwahati.
"It was the British rulers who distorted the original name. There was lot of debate over this and after prolonged consultation and going by the public sentiment, we decided to revert back to our roots," Himanta Biswa Sharma, a senior state minister, told AFP Tuesday.
Unable to pronounce Asom correctly, the British rulers dubbed the state Assam in 1826. In the past quarter-century, thousands of people have been killed in a separatist insurgency led by the United Liberation Front of Asom, which wants independence for the state of 26 million people.
Although many Indian cities have been renamed in recent years, the last state to change its name was Mysore, which became the southern state of Karnataka in 1973.
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