Keralam vs Kerala-TNIE

All the burning problems in the State have been settled by the LDF Government! If one still remains unattended it is the renaming of the State into ‘ Keralam’. I would like to say the demand for changing the official spelling of the state to ‘Keralam’ to make it conform to the way it is pronounced in Malayalam is unnecessary and wasteful. The advocates for ‘Keralam’ may have arguments with many examples of change of name such as ‘Bombay into Mumbai, Calicut into Kozhikode, Trivandrum into Thiruvananthapuram etc. What did we gain from these changes? If one writes Thiruvananthapuram instead of Trivandrum he has to write 18 letters instead of 10. What a terrible waste!

Keralites are mostly world citizens disposed to see beyond any language barrier. The discussion to change name of the State may kindly be kept in vault.

K A Solaman
The New Indian Express, dated 19 July 2010