India, May 3 -- Billionaire realtor and Maharashtra minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha's proposal to rename KEM Hospital, the state's largest public health facility, has outraged the medical community, including several in the diaspora who were trained there.

Decolonization is an ongoing process in much of the world--from toppling Cecil Rhodes's statue at Oxford to renaming monuments like Flora Fountain in Mumbai or Connaught Place in Delhi. Up next is a plan to rename Civil Lines-those British-era enclaves of order and tranquility amid the chaos of Indian cities.

But setting aside the semantic contortions of turning King Edward Memorial Hospital into Kaushalyashresth Eklavya Memorial Hospital, there is still something tin-eared about the re...