What’s in a name? ‘Pakistan Mukku’ sparks political row in Kerala as BJP pushes for name change

A rather innocuous place name which used to evoke nothing more than curiosity, has now been entangled in a cultural controversy dictated by larger geo-political events. For decades, a small region in Kunnathoor grama panchayat, located near the border of Kollam and Pathanamthitta districts in Kerala, has been known as Pakistan Mukku. ‘Mukku’ means Junction in Malayalam.

Now, after the Public Works department (PWD) put up a board indicating the place name after a road renovation work, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Kerala State general secretary Anoop Antony Joseph has attempted to rake up a controversy.

“In today’s Kerala under CPM rule, you can’t celebrate Operation Sindoor… but you can ‘proudly’ have a village named after Pakistan. There’s a place called ‘Pakistan Mukku’ (junction). When BJP moved to rename it, even the common public agreed. But the Communist govt refused to change, and PWD has reinstalled the board (sic),” he wrote in X (formerly Twitter).

In May 2025, in the aftermath of the India-Pakistan conflict after the Pahalgam attack, a BJP member of the Kunnathoor panchayat had raised a demand to pass a resolution to change the name.

“The panchayat committee did forward the demand to the State government to change the name as the panchayat does not have the powers to make name changes. Now, this is probably being made an issue because elections are approaching,” Kunnathoor panchayat president K. Valsala Kumari told TheHindu.

N. Thulasi, a CPI(M) member of the panchayat, who made the sole dissenting opinion against the renaming, says he had opposed the move as the opinion of the residents of the area was not sought.

“We all have been hearing this name since we were born. It is a place where people of all religions live peacefully. No one from there has raised a demand for a name change, nor was a survey conducted to collect their opinions. That is why I took a contrarian stand. Years ago, someone made an attempt to change the name to Shanthisthan Mukku and later to Indira Nagar. But none of these names stuck,” he says.

Another Pakistan Mukku

The Kallara grama panchayat in Thiruvananthapuram also has a place named Pakistan Mukku.

Maniyan, ward member of the Aruvippuram ward in which the place is located, says there has been no demand from the people to change the name.

However, no one in either of these places is sure about the origins of the name.