Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said on Tuesday that his government has decided to rename dragon fruit as “Kamalam” as the shape of the fruit resembles a lotus, IANS reported. Kamalam in Sanskrit means lotus.
“We have applied for the patent of the dragon fruit to be called as Kamalam,” Rupani said. “But as of now, we, the Gujarat government, have decided to call the fruit as Kamalam.”
The chief minister said that the name of the fruit did not sound appropriate. “The word Kamalam is a Sanskrit word and the fruit does have the shape of the lotus, so we have decided to call it Kamalam, and there’s nothing political about it,” Rupani added.
Rupani refuted attempts that drew parallels between the fruit and the state Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters in Gujarat, which is also named Kamalam, according to The Hindu Business Line. “There’s no need to seethe due to the similarity with BJP’s Kamalam,” he said.
The Congress mocked the decision, saying that the government has run out of matters to work on.
Earlier, Gujarat’s forest department had applied to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research to rename the fruit. In September, Kutch farmers had requested the Gujarat government to rename the fruit to Kamalam.
The fruit is also called pitahaya or strawberry pear in different parts of the world. In India, the fruit is cultivated in Gujarat, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha and Andaman and Nicobar islands.
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