CasteLESS Names

 Would you name all the Prime ministers of India…?? Let us not break our head in recalling all the names…let us do the obvious, Google it and see the list in Wikipedia…. The names are listed below (Acting Prime Ministers not included):-

1.    Jawaharlal Nehru

2.    Lal Bahadur Shastri

3.    Indira Gandhi

4.    Moraji Desai

5.    Charan Singh

6.    Indira Gandhi

7.    Rajiv Gandhi

8.    Vishwanath Pratap Singh

9.    Chandrasekar Singh

10.   PV Narasimha Rao

11.   Atal Bihari Vajpayee

12.   HD Deve Gowda

13.   Inder Kumar Gujral

14.   Atal Bihari Vajpayee

15.   Manmohan Singh

16.   Narendra Modi

            Would you kindly separate the given name from the Surname from the above list…?? Keep it aside.

Let us list the Chief Ministers of Tamilnadu…again, same cycle, list from Wikipedia…have taken the list from 1947 onwards (to be in sync with above list).

1.    Omanthur P Ramaswamy Reddiar

2.    PS Kumaraswamy Raja

3.    C Rajagopalachari

4.    K Kamaraj

5.    M Bhakthavatsalam

6.    CN Annadurai

7.    M Karunanidhi

8.    MG Ramachandran

9.    VN Janaki Ramachandran

10.    M Karunanidhi

11.    J Jayalalithaa

12.    M Karunanidhi

13.    J Jayalalithaa

14.    O Pannerselvam

15.    Edappadi K Palaniswami

16.    MK Stalin

Repeat the same….write down the surnames of the Chief Ministers of Tamilnadu…

Voila….noted the difference….??? Yes, maximum Chief Ministers of Tamilnadu did not have the so called Surnames. To name few celebrities hailing from Tamilnadu, Rajinikanth (Shivaji Rao Gaekwad is birth name but that is not what he is addressed in our part of the country, Kamal Hassan, AR Rahman, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar (although a Delhi born, he is from Tamilnadu), Sir CV Raman, Nirmala Sitharaman, Anbumani Ramadoss, Kamala Harris, General PP Kumaramangalam, MS Subbulakshmi, Major Ramaswamy Parmeshwaran, Mariappan Thangavel, Viswanathan Anand, Sundar Pichai…..

Not only the Chief Ministers or the celebrities, check with any of your friends from the Tamilnadu, you will be surprised to know that they also do not have a surname.

Let us first understand a bit about SURNAME. Like any intellectuals do, search in Google and reach Wikipedia page on SURNAME. It is the portion of one’s name that indicates one’s family/tribe/community. Thus the surnames in rest of the country represents the caste they are born into. In other words, the SURNAME announces the caste very openly along with their names.

You may try to explain it lamely as ‘gaon ka naam’, ‘khaanthaan ka naam’, ‘TITLE’ (I find this particular explanation to be the most hilarious… “NO, NO…. THIS IS NOT CASTE, BUT TITLE”….duhhhh) etc… But don’t you agree to the fact that this word, which most of these people are carrying around like a badge of achievement denotes a group of people holding on to that identity, either by choice or default, for over a period of time to invoke a particular image associated to every SURNAME…..???

I can give numerous examples…just want to say this much to show the impact of these so called SURNAMES in our society, that one particular family changed the name of the person to whom their daughter got married to so as to embrace that particular SURNAME. With no rhyme or reason or logic or cultural example, even the subsequent women of that family is using the same SURNAME even after getting married to persons of different SURNAME. This is because the surname is the hottest currency in major portion of our country.

Not only those big names, even in other cities, towns and especially in villages, people stress upon telling their surnames first or rather, tell only their surnames. I have experienced the terror/impact/telling effect of certain surnames in numerous occasions. Why is this a point of observance now…???

On one side, everyone in the country says ‘let us abolish CASTES….everyone is same…we are equal and all stories…’ But are they really meaning it…??

Just imagine, a person walk into a hall full of people with an automatic weapon in hand and preach the gathering about non-violence…..??? Which will be more effective, his speech or the image he is representing there ….???

Exactly, you may shout at the peak of your voice for equality, against castes, against various atrocities, all the while being called to the stage to address the mass gathering along with your TITLE….. “Now our best speaker, KARTHIK CASTE1 will speak against the caste system in India……..” (For obvious reason, I have included my name as BEST SPEAKER and used the ‘CASTE1’ as name of a CASTE).

                                                       NOW YOU SEE THE POINT..???

Even the greatest human being of our country while being vocal about social injustice, denounced only the un-touchability and not the caste system itself. He himself carried his SURNAME with him always.

So how come one state seems to have escaped from this stigma….?? One word reply is DRAVIDIANISM.

No, pl don’t jump in to any conclusions….Am speaking about one of the greatest contribution of a social movement, which happens to be known widely as DRAVIDIANISM. It was not a single man/group/party people who did this social movement. It was not even in same time frame…it was the self-realizing thoughts put into actions by numerous people over a period of time. That’s why it’s a social movement. (Details are worth a separate blog….may be in future)

What is the single most contribution of this so called SOCIAL MOVEMENT…??? Just changing the names into something more fashionable…??? No…It is one strong and sure step towards reducing/removing the impact of caste to those at such places where it matters…..

Presently, we are aware of one party which is widely identified with Hinduism. Even the Gen Secretary/State Head/Leaders of that party in Tamilnadu don’t have these SURNAMES. Do you see the difference now…??? Realizing the impact…???

My Grandfather from father’s side had a SURNAME. My father did not have one. My Grandfather from mother’s side had a SURNAME. My mother never had one. Obviously I don’t have one. Even more obvious, my son doesn’t have it….. It is the result of the social movement, where in the people were made aware of the evils of the CASTE and stigmatized the words of caste. Has the CASTE system abolished in Tamilnadu…?? Not yet, but it is not rampant and not very obvious (Remember, BHARATMATRIMONY has community wise sites… ;P ).

But, this is a major step towards reducing/removing the impact of caste at the place where it is needed and for those whom it matters. Now, am saying, giving up the SURNAME is THE solution about the ills of castes…..No, but it’s a firm step in that direction.

Now people of Taminadu still know the caste of most other people whom they know. Otherwise also, with one’s name in Tamilnadu, a Tamilian can still guess certain aspects. But this trend of giving up the SURNAME has certainly reduced knowing/asking about the caste of any person whom you are meeting for the first time, for sure….

During my school days, once I have been asked in my own town by an elderly guy, “Neenga enna aalunga…??” (‘YOU ARE WHAT PEOPLE…??’). Basically that guy asked my name first and then asked this question…look at the smoothness of the question…without using the word CASTE, he asked me my caste…. Even around twenty years back the question was such a smoothie…..imagine now….nobody asks it for sure (there may be couple of villages/places where this might still be happening; also, am not ruling out the scenario wherein one doesn’t have to ask to know about the caste of a person, like in a remote/small village).

But don’t you think this is a sure way ahead…?? So what have the people of this one state replaced their SURNAME with….?? In Tamilnadu, everybody has a given name and approx. 97% will have their Father’s name as the second part of the name. This way of naming anybody is called as PATRONYMIC. Like my given name is Karthikeyan and second part of my name is my father’s name. Most of the times the first letter of father’s name is written as INITIALS instead of writing full name. Patronymic method doesn’t limit itself to Fathers’ alone, it may name of any male figure of the family.

Now, one may say, this male-chauvinism. I leave it that to you. (I mentioned approx. 97% use father’s name; this means people are using their wife’s name also as initials).

Mahakavi Bharathiyar (Subramania Bharati), almost all of Tamilnadu knows his caste, not by reading his name…. but by reading or knowing or watching his history. One more even more cherished Poet/writer of almost equally sweet language, whom the country will have to remember always, always wrote with his SURNAME. When I read that particular poet writing against the evils of the caste system, I get caught thinking the irony….

Try doing it….INDIA, try doing it…It is possible and it is for our good and future. CASTELESS names are possible…..CASTELESS SOCIETY is possible…