India, Feb. 27 -- For seven decades since its formation, the state went by the name Kerala, though its natives always added an "M" to it, making it Keralam, as if to rhyme with the local language, Malayalam. Now the Centre has cleared the state's demand that it be called Keralam, instead of its anglicised variant. This small act of cultural assertion could add up to little other than forcing the cash-starved government to undertake a renaming marathon, including the high court, a university, numerous departments, and even its Ranji team. Kerala could have easily coexisted with Keralam (as is written in Malayalam) just like European cities are spelt differently in different languages. This near-pointless exercise is different from similar acts from the 1950s through to the 1970s when the state of Madras became Tamil Nadu, Mysore became Karnataka, and Bombay became Maharashtra. Those demands arose with the formation of linguistic provinces, which also saw the redrawing of borders, and were meant to instil an inclusive identity in the residents of the new states. Kerala, born in 1956 after the merger of the princely states of Travancore and Kochi with Malabar, a part of the Madras Presidency and later, Madras State, had already made that journey. One origin story called the region the land of keram trees, keram being one of the Malayalam words for coconut. An extra "M" in the state's name doesn't cost the Centre much, unlike the demands of neighbouring Tamil Nadu that involve a more relevant "M", money. A third state set for elections doesn't find all this amusing. CM Mamata Banerjee has demanded to know why there is step-motherly treatment to West Bengal in the case of renaming. She wanted the state renamed Bangla since the prefix West is more a legacy of Partition, which, Banerjee complains, pushes residents to the back rows because of W's position in the English alphabet. Such obsessions, a vacuous form of sub-nationalist assertion, may add ballast to the political rhetoric on Centre-state relations, but it is anybody's guess if they can ignite political passions....