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MUMBAI….Christopher Hitchens is feeling peevish:

When Salman Rushdie wrote, in The Moor’s Last Sigh in 1995, that “those who hated India, those who sought to ruin it, would need to ruin Bombay,” he was alluding to the Hindu chauvinists who had tried to exert their own monopoly in the city and who had forcibly renamed it — after a Hindu goddess — Mumbai. We all now collude with this, in the same way that most newspapers and TV stations do the Burmese junta’s work for it by using the fake name Myanmar.

Andrew Sullivan approves: “I wasn’t aware of this but now that I am, the Dish will refer to Mumbai by its previous name.”

Hold on a second. The Burma/Myanmar issue hinges on whether you think its ruling military junta is legitimate. No such ambiguity attaches to Mumbai. The Shiv Sena party may indeed be Hindu chauvinists, but Mumbai’s name change was eventually approved by the democratically elected municipal corporation of the city, the state of Maharashtra, and the federal government of India, and they’ve stuck to it for over a decade now. Like it or not, there’s no question that this was a legitimate change. Comparing it to the renaming of Burma is absurd.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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