Union Cabinet Approves Renaming Kerala to Keralam, Reopening a Long Debate Over Colonial Names on the Map

On 24 February 2026, India’s Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved a proposal to rename the southern state of Kerala as “Keralam”, the name the state has always carried in its own language. The decision, the first taken at the newly inaugurated Seva Teerth PMO complex, was announced by Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and sets in motion a multi-stage constitutional process that could see the change formally enshrined in the First Schedule of the Constitution.

The word “Keralam” is itself a compound of two Malayalam terms: kera, meaning coconut, and alam or ilam, meaning land of origin, together, the “land of coconuts.” The name in its current official form, “Kerala,” is widely regarded by linguists and historians as a colonial distortion. Professor Shaji A. of the University of Kerala has explained that British administrators, unable to comfortably render names ending in “m” or “n,” routinely truncated them, resulting in a constitutional record that has never accurately reflected the state’s own language. References to the region as “Keralaputra” appear as far back as Emperor Ashoka’s Rock Edicts of around 257 BCE, and the state has been called Keralam in Malayalam throughout its cultural and literary history.

The formal push for the change began in August 2023, when the Kerala Legislative Assembly, under Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s government, passed a first unanimous resolution requesting the Union government to act under Article 3 of the Constitution. The Ministry of Home Affairs raised technical objections, prompting a second, revised resolution on 24 June 2024. That resolution was again passed unanimously, with both the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) in agreement, and noted that when linguistic states were reorganised on 1 November 1956, the name recorded in the Constitution was “Kerala,” not the Malayalam “Keralam.” The resolution called on the Centre to amend both the First Schedule and the relevant Eighth Schedule entries to reflect the correct form in all recognised languages.

The Constitutional Road Ahead and the Question of Cost

Cabinet approval is only the beginning. Under Article 3 of the Constitution, Parliament has the power to alter a state’s name, but a bill to that effect can only be introduced on the recommendation of the President and must first be referred to the concerned state legislature. The President will now send the Kerala (Alteration of Name) Bill, 2026, to the Kerala Legislative Assembly for its formal views. Once those views are received, the Centre will seek the President’s recommendation before introducing the bill in Parliament. Final passage requires a simple majority in both Houses before the name officially enters the Constitution.

The political timing has attracted considerable scrutiny. Kerala’s state assembly elections are expected in the first half of 2026, with the sitting assembly’s term ending in May. Critics across party lines have noted that the Cabinet’s first act at its new premises, a name-change bill, rather than an economic or developmental measure, carries unmistakable electoral symbolism. That said, the broad cross-party consensus in the state suggests that cultural sentiment around the issue is genuine, and not wholly manufactured for the polls.

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…

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) February 24, 2026

The financial implications, while not yet formally quantified, are significant. A constitutional amendment changing the First Schedule will require corresponding updates across every tier of government: official signage on buildings, highways, and borders; government stationery, letterheads, and official seals; passports and identity documents issued in the state’s name; legal and judicial records; school textbooks; and all digital portals operated by state and central authorities. Precedents from comparable changes, such as Orissa becoming Odisha in 2011 and Pondicherry becoming Puducherry in 2006, suggest that such transitions are typically phased over several years to manage administrative disruption, with costs borne by both state and central governments. 

No official estimate for Keralam’s transition has yet been published, though critics caution that the expenditure involved warrants public disclosure before Parliament votes. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, while not opposing the change, raised a droll linguistic question on social media: what would residents be called, “Keralamites” or “Keralamians”? The point, beneath its wit, is a practical one; derived nomenclature in English, used widely in tourism, international education, and branding, will need formal resolution.

A National Pattern, and West Bengal Waiting in the Wings

Kerala’s renaming does not occur in a vacuum. India has a long and by now well-established tradition of correcting colonial or administratively imposed names in favour of those used by the people who actually live in these places. Madras state became Tamil Nadu in 1969. Mysore became Karnataka in 1973. Uttaranchal was rechristened Uttarakhand in 2007. Orissa became Odisha in 2011, with the concurrent renaming of the Oriya language as Odia. Pondicherry was renamed Puducherry in 2006. In each case, the driving logic was the same: the English name was a colonial approximation that had outlived its utility, while the indigenous name was what residents had used all along.

Within hours of the Cabinet’s decision on Kerala, West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee renewed her own long-running campaign to rename her state. The history of that demand is notably tortured. It was first raised in 1999 by the Left Front government under Jyoti Basu, though it was never formally pursued. When Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress came to power in 2011, the government proposed “Paschim Banga,” the Bengali equivalent of “West Bengal.” That proposal stalled. In 2016, the state assembly passed a resolution for a trilingual solution: “Bengal” in English, “Bangla” in Bengali, and “Bangal” in Hindi, but it, too, awaits parliamentary approval, with the BJP and the Left Front both having opposed the resolution at various stages.

Smt. @MamataOfficial warmly congratulated the people of Kerala on the Union Cabinet’s approval to rename their state ‘Keralam’. At the same time, she reminded the Centre that a similar proposal to rename West Bengal as ‘Bangla’ has been lying buried for years.

Every election… pic.twitter.com/ut43s4P5LG

— All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) February 24, 2026

Banerjee’s argument has never been purely cultural. She has long complained, with some justification, that because West Bengal’s name begins with “W,” the state consistently appears last in alphabetical listings, causing its representatives to speak last, or not at all, at national meetings. A change to “Bangla” would, she argues, serve both symbolic and procedural justice. The Centre, however, has shown considerably less urgency about West Bengal’s request than it has about Kerala’s, prompting Banerjee to accuse the BJP-led government of political bias. Her renewed demand in the wake of the Kerala decision makes that accusation structurally difficult to dismiss: if linguistic authenticity justifies one name change, it is hard to see why it would not justify another.

What India’s rolling programme of state renaming reveals is not merely a series of individual administrative corrections, but something closer to a slow, decades-long decolonisation of the map. The names the British left behind were, in many cases, neither the names people used nor those that carried cultural meaning. Keralam has been called Keralam by its own people for two thousand years. That the Constitution will, in all likelihood, finally say the same is, whatever one thinks of the timing, a long overdue correction.