Madras High Court Upholds State's Renaming of Caste-Based Streets

Caste names should eventually disappear into oblivion, the Madras High Court recently said while upholding the Tamil Nadu government's decision to remove caste-based and derogatory names from streets, roads, residential areas and other public places [S Paramasivam v. State of Tamil Nadu].A Bench of Justices CV Karthikeyan and R Sakthivel said that any confusion arising from the removal of such names would only be temporary. The Court said that any confusion arising from the removal of such names would only be temporary. Court said, "There would be confusion only in the minds of those who retain the names of the caste in their minds, but there would not be any confusion in the minds of the persons who remove caste from their minds."Hence, it dismissed a petition challenging a 2025 government order that laid down guidelines for identifying and renaming public places carrying caste or objectionable names.The bench also went further and said that some of the existing names were so derogatory that they could not even be uttered in open court."This step should have been taken many years ago," the bench opined.Hence, it called upon the State to identify further places that had been left out and issue another government order to rename them.Justices Karthikeyan and Sakthivel of Madras HCThe case concerned a Government Order (GO) issued by the Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department. The order sought to identify residential areas, streets, roads and water bodies bearing