NEW DELHI: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday reacted with wordplay after the Union Cabinet is understood to have approved the proposal to change the name of Kerala to ‘Keralam’, asking what Anglophones would now call residents of the state.The Thiruvananthapuram MP asked how people from the state now would be referred to, and what happens to terms like “Keralite and Keralan”. “All to the good, no doubt, but a small linguistic question for the Anglophones among us: what happens now to the terms ‘Keralite’ and ‘Keralan’ for the denizens of the new ‘Keralam’? ‘Keralamite’ sounds like a microbe and ‘Keralamian’ like a rare earth mineral…! @CMOKerala might want to launch a competition for new terms resulting from this electoral zeal,” Tharoor said in a post on X.The Union Cabinet, at a meeting held on Tuesday, approved the Kerala government’s proposal to rename the state. The meeting was the first to be held at Seva Teerth, the newly inaugurated Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Secretariat complex.The move follows a unanimous resolution passed by the Kerala Assembly on June 24, 2024, urging the Centre to amend the First Schedule of the Constitution to reflect the name ‘Keralam’. The assembly had earlier passed a similar resolution in August 2023, but the ministry of home affairs suggested technical changes, prompting the state to adopt it again.Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who moved the resolution, had said the state is referred to as ‘Keralam’ in Malayalam and that the demand for a unified Kerala for Malayalam-speaking people dates back to the national freedom struggle. “The name of our state is written as Kerala in the First Schedule of the Constitution. This assembly requests the Centre to take immediate steps to amend it as ‘Keralam’ under Article 3 of the Constitution and have it renamed as ‘Keralam’ in all the languages mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution,” Vijayan had said.The resolution sought changes in the First Schedule under Article 3. Upon review, it was indicated that the amendment would be required in the First Schedule of the Constitution.Assembly elections in the state are expected in April-May.
