India Without Last Name

India Without Last Name

: A Foresight in Preventing Fragmentation on Religious & Caste Lines

"A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a full name. Many dictionaries define 'surname' as a synonym of 'family name' and 'last name'. In concentrated population, only first name for individuals is insufficient to identify an individual, therefore the first name with the last name intimates to address an individual."

To validate above theory, I tried combinations of name on Google to find one individual, but found multiple records for each name. Also typed my own name Nirnay Bansal on Google and found 2 records (including me). And that's true, there is no-way you can identify a human by the combination of few meaningful words.

I went to the history and found that, before 14th century only name, title, or epithet concluded the person's name. The Etymology Dictionary written by Douglas Harper suggest that, family name first appeared in the early 14th century. It was called “over” name. The new noun “over” or “sur" meaning “above” became “sur-Noun” and finally “surname”. Ever since many countries have adopted and enforced the use of family names including France, Netherlands (1811), Japan (1870s), Thailand (1920), and Turkey (1934).

India is a country of utmost cultural, religious and linguistic diversity. Since there was no common ground, people started adopting last names based on patronymics (Agrawala- descendants of King Agrasen), occupations (Chamar, Patwari, Purohit), caste (Pillai, Sindhi, Vaish), name of places (Marwari, Mangeskar, Kapoor) and bestowed titles (Nawabs, Rao, Thakaran).

After India gained independence, the Constitution of India listed some erstwhile groups as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The framers of the Constitution believed that they might deny equal opportunity in Indian society and though need reservation. It was started in India in 1902 with 50% reservation in ONLY "services" for backward classes/communities in the State of Kolhapur. The system was later extended to private and public educational institutions. At present, in day to day practice, with creamy layer theory the reservation works out to near 69%.

The quota system was fundamental in mitigating backwardness of the socially and educationally backward communities who did not have adequate representation in these services and institutions. Currently, categorization on caste or religious bases is nothing but "vote-bank politics". Recently, students in the primary and secondary schools of Muzzafarpur were even asked to mention their caste in the annual exam answersheet to avoid any discrimination between students. ouchhh.....

I tried finding out the cause of being "denied equal opportunity in Indian society" and "racial discrimination".

Answer is simple and straight... Caste/Religion.

Then I tried finding root cause of this cause.

And the answer I found is, "Last name". Yes, actually last name discriminate caste and religions.

You never being discriminated, never being denied respect, never loose opportunity in Indian society... iff you get rid of last name. Can we get rid of this great cause of all the problems?

Why not. We can, infact we did similar things in the past. Whenever last names became a liability to threaten human existence or to impose restrictions and deny equal opportunities to the people, they have been either removed or modified. Few well known examples are:

1. Jews, Chinese Indonesians and Thais replaced there surnames to avoid prosecution during World War II.

2. Many people from Tamil Nadu and Kerala use initials in front of their names to avoid cast discrimination. For ex "Prashantha A", where "A" might stands for Anjuri (OBC), Arji (OBC), Adusumilli (General), Adapa (ST) or etc.

3. Dravidian movement. Since many companies in the industry managed to filter candidates just by looking at their names, the Dravidian movement in the beginning of 20th century was instrumental in knocking off the concept of surnames from TamilNadu.

If we did it in the past, then why can't we do it now? After removing last name, you might face initial problems, either in filling application for passport or within the society. But let's join Indonesia, where some Indonesians still don't have last name. Going forward in life they just use Dr. Er. Jr. or Ir. (BSc in Arts) as last name in there passport and other Govt Documents. Some Javanese also use there parents first name as part their full name. On the birth certificate, the child's name would be written as:

Rita child of Jon and Angela

On a diploma and certificate, the child's name would be written as:

Rita child of Jon

They never want you to be united. Do you remember "Divide and Rule" policy? Instead of solving country's problem of denied respect and discrimination, politicians are increasing problems by categorising us. Let's gather and remove last name. Let's deny mentioning your caste in UID (Aadhaar) program of India. Let's stop writing last name of your kids during admissions in school and give your child a discrimination free India.

Politicians have their five year plan, Do you have yours?

- Nirnay

- Sujat (MD)

(without last name)

Special Thanks to: Kalavathi, Anurag