The true antecedents of most people, remain amorphous, given the human proclivity for changes in identity
What's in a nameIJ Plenty, avers BJP leader Vinay Katiyar, while commenting on Mr Varun Gandhi's elevation to the post of party Parliamentary Board general secretary.
He credits the young Gandhi's rise to his family name, which he shares with his cousin and Congress-scion Rahul, and the original illustrious bearer of the title, Mahatma Gandhi.
like Varun, Rahul Gandhi and his blood kin all bask in the Gandhi name, which has catapulted them to great heights, having become synonymous with political glory. In Varun Gandhi's case, reports suggest that BJP will now deploy him to corner the Brahmin vote-bank in Uttar Pradesh, which once staunchly supported the Nehru-Gandhis on account of their Kashmiri Pandit credentials. Yet, Gandhi is a name borne by the Gujarati Vaish community or Sanskritised Parsis. Varun Gandhi himself has mixed ancestry, given his mother Maneka Gandhi's Punjabi-Sikh origins.
Mahatma Gandhi, a staunch Hindu, belonged to a Gujarati merchant family. The story goes that he bestowed the name Gandhi on the Parsi Feroze, a young freedom fighter, who wanted to marry Indira, daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru. The latter, as Gandhji's protégé, was the front-runner in the race to lead free India. This was supposed to be a deliberate ploy to vest Feroze Gandhi with legitimacy in the public sphere as the Gandhi name, on account of its association with the Mahatma, had gravitas.
However, many Parsis too bore the Gandhi name from birth. Perhaps, the most glaring anomaly concerning his identity was the fact that after death, Feroze Gandhi was buried in Allahabad's Parsi cemetery. He had lived and studied in that town. His grave, located some kilometres away from Anand Bhawan, the erstwhile Nehru home, is not a national mausoleum. But that is not relevant here. Of significance is the fact that his ashes were buried. That is, the body was cremated and then entombed, signifying a combination of Hindu and Muslim last rites.
Under Parsi religious norms, the dead are neither buried nor cremated but devoured by vultures and other carrion birds in Dakmoos, towers of silence. Feroze Gandhi's grave has triggered fierce speculation about his ancestry, whether he also had a Muslim family line among his forbears.
It was not uncommon, as it is not now, for people to change religious affiliations, and along with this, names and identities. Inter-faith and inter-racial marriages facilitate the process. While Gujarat's Bohra Muslims are clearly of Arab origin, Khoja Muslims, for instance, adhere to their Hindu past by continuing to revere Vishnu's ten avatars on earth. And in Rajasthan, Hindu and Muslim identities are interchangeable among the Cheta-Merat, a Rajput community.
Punjab's Hussaini Brahmins exemplify the coalescing of Islamic and Hindu identities. This community, which has a non-vegetarian diet, as opposed to orthodox Brahmins in other parts, who shun even onions and garlic and root vegetables, like Jains, claims that many forbears fought on the side of Hazrat Imam Hussain in the Battle of Karbala.
The true antecedents of many, perhaps, most people, remain amorphous, given the human proclivity for changing locales, homes, names and work, and dignifying lineage. Many among Hussaini Brahmins claim Guru Dronacharya's son Ashwathama as their ancestor. Yet, this legendary figure was known never to have married and borne progeny, having been cursed by lord Krishna to wander alone till the end of Kaliyug, the present age, as punishment for having violated the strict code of warfare. The lineage claim is sought to be justified via accounts of divine intercession, bestowing the accursed youth with wife and progeny, and, by extension, descendants up to our time. This is myth-making of the most obvious kind.
Swami Vivekananda remarked on how identities are changed on the basis of his extensive travels, a fact corroborated by contemporary studies in anthropology and sociology. Delineating the process whereby Adi Shankaracharya in the 8th century revived theism after centuries of onslaught by heterodox and agnostic sects, he averred,“Shankaracharya and others were the great caste-makers. I cannot tell you all the wonderful things they fabricated and some of you may resent what I have to say. But in my travels and experiences I have traced them out, and have arrived at most wonderful results. They would sometimes get hordes of Baluchis and at once make them Kshatriyas, also get hold of hordes of fishermen and make them Brahmins forthwith”.
This possibly accounts for the sharp differences in diet and customs among people claiming the same social identity in culturally disparate regions.
That the process of changing identity continues is evident from the fact of sarod player Aashish Khan, son of sarod maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, converting to Hinduism in 2006. He changed his surname ‘Khan' via a court affidavit in Kolkata to ‘Debsharma', denoting Brahmin identity. He claimed that he was merely reverting to his Hindu past, before his forbears converted to Islam. His incensed father, based in the United States, refuted the claim.
And in politics, certainly, names are the game-changer.