Last names are far bigger impediments to forging national unity than public expressions of identities, which the Uttar Pradesh government has forbidden
On the orders of Uttar Pradesh government, the traffic police cracks down on caste indicators on vehicles in Noida. Pic/Getty Images
The Uttar Pradesh government has prohibited public expressions of identities such as caste-based rallies and display of jati names on vehicles and signboards. These measures have been taken on the directive of Justice Vinod Diwakar, of the Allahabad High Court, who thought the flaunting of caste militates against the “spirit of national unity and progress” and is, therefore, “anti-national.” His formulation presumes that caste pride among the people of India subordinates their sense of being Indian to that of belonging to a social group.
Yet the national unity the UP government and Diwakar wish to forge can’t be achieved as long as India has thousands of surnames, with most of them reserved for the exclusive use of countless subcastes spread across all religions. Surnames are like neon lights, silently flashing the caste identities of those bearing them. They have immense relevance in cities, whose citizens, mostly having atomised, anonymous existences, rarely know, unlike those in villages, the intimate histories of each other — their surnames are codes that are cracked for identifying their caste, without having to be ‘impolite’ or ‘casteist’ by asking them about it.
The anonymity of city life inspires parents to give caste-neutral or caste-ambiguous surnames to their children, hoping they wouldn’t be discriminated against on account of belonging to subaltern groups. Their fear is real. In 2007, academicians Sukhadeo Thorat and Paul Attwell sent by post three sets of applications — one each by a Muslim, a Scheduled Caste candidate and a high caste candidate, all easily identifiable by their names — with matching educational qualifications in response to private sector jobs advertised in newspapers. They found SC and Muslim candidates fared significantly less than their high-caste counterparts.
Yet the adoption of non-specific caste surnames can have severe implications, as researcher Rajnikant Parmar found in his study of urban Gujarat. It enabled middle-class Dalits to reside in colonies dominated by the upper castes, but the chance discovery of their caste invited ridicule and, at times, expulsion. They refrained from participating in community programmes, fearing it could expose the camouflage concealing their caste identity. Dalit students without caste surnames had the cruel option of availing scholarships for SCs and outing their identity — or foregoing them in order to continue posing as non-Dalit.
Anthropologist Bhawani Buswala, in his study of Rajasthan, narrates the story of Karan, a Dalit, whom a private company hired to sell its products door-to-door in the villages of a district adjoining his. Karan found people were more curious about his caste than the products he was hawking. Believing his caste was depressing sales, Karan took the name ‘Prithviraj Singh’. His sales soared, as did his fear of being discovered as a fake Rajput. Karan quit the job.
These anecdotes prove that surnames are far bigger impediments to forging national unity than caste-based rallies, which are often quests for equal rights and empowerment. Surnames do, indeed, create their own hierarchies of pride and contempt, oppressors, and the oppressed.
This truism has prompted periodic endeavours to drop surnames. The most successful of these was spearheaded by EV Ramasamy, popularly remembered as Periyar, in Tamil Nadu. In 1929, Periyar dropped his surname, Naicker, the use of which he thought implied conforming, and preserving the social order oppressive of non-Brahmins. Thereafter, at the 1944 Salem Conference of the Justice Party, a resolution asked people to immediately abandon the “suffix to names which connote caste.” In today’s Tamil Nadu, few employ surnames that proclaim their caste.
The Socialists, too, raged against surnames in the Hindi heartland in the 1960s, but they failed to endureingly alter the naming practices. Vignesh Rajahmani, author of The Dravidian Pathway, credits the near-obliteration of caste surnames in Tamil Nadu to schoolteachers, whose parents, in response to Periyar’s call in the 1930s, didn’t give them a caste surname. These schoolteachers, in turn, refused to record the caste names of students, mostly choosing to write their father’s name as surnames. Schools used to be the sites where children were given legal names, as the registration of birth and death, made compulsory only in 1969, took decades to become universal. A naming revolution was serendipitously spawned!
Yet caste discrimination and inequalities persist in Tamil Nadu, arguably to a lesser degree in comparison to its prevalence in most states. Indeed, caste will not go away with caste surnames falling into disuse. Nor do caste-neutral surnames impenetrably conceal caste identities of those who bear them. Kishor isn’t a Brahmin surname, but Bihar is aware of the caste identity of Prashant Kishor, the emerging leader there.
Nevertheless, it makes greater sense to officially abolish caste surnames than to ban caste-based rallies. The former will enhance the possibility of lower castes escaping discrimination and the scorn of those who inherit surnames that soundlessly trumpet their presumed superiority. A country without surnames would, with time, deprive citizens of the clue necessary for deciphering caste in cities. India needs to travel in the direction opposite to that of Turkey, where, in 1934, all citizens were asked to choose a surname for their families. Until then, they mostly turned their nicknames into surnames. For starters, official India, as academic HS Komalesha proposed, should cease asking individuals to mandatorily reveal their surnames.
The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
