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Our names, our pluralism
MY columns earlier this year on the vexed subject of Indianness provoked quite a barrage of mail, and I am sorry it has taken me so long to get back to the subject. The one aspect of the issue that most interested this column's readers was the question of names. In a throwaway line in one of my pieces I had observed that "Muslim Indians still feel obliged to adopt Arab names in deference to the roots of their faith" (a remark prompted by my allusion to the Hindu names of the Christian tennis-playing brothers Anand, Vijay and Ashok Amritraj). This provoked a flurry of correspondence, many from other Christian readers who themselves do the same as the Amritrajes, a few from Hindus citing examples of friends of other faiths adopting Hindu names, and several from Muslims explaining to me why their names were as they should be.
The clearest explanation in the latter category came from my friend Prof. Mohammed Ayoob, the eminent scholar from Orissa who currently teaches in Michigan. Ayoob-sahib pointed out that most Arabic names adopted by Indian Muslims are, in the perception of Muslims, Quranic (and therefore, Islamic) rather than "Arabic". In other words, such names imply no extra-territorial allegiances, only loyalty to the wellsprings of the Holy Book. Some of the most common Muslim names, Prof. Ayoob tells me, are names of Prophets mentioned in the Quran. For example, Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Moses), Isa (Jesus), Yaqub (Jacob), Yusuf (Joseph), and of course Ayoob (Job). The same principle applies, naturally, to Muhammad and Ahmed (which is a variation of Muhammad — literally one who sings the praise of God).
There is a second set of Muslim names that have the prefix Abdul (literally servant or slave, the equivalent of Das in Hindu names). Abdul is prefixed to one of the 99 names of God in the Quran which identify His various attributes, which gives us Abdul Rahim, Abdul Rahman, Abdul Karim, Abdul Latif, Abdul Qadir, and so on. "These are equivalent to Bhagwan Das or Ram Das among Hindu names," says Prof. Ayoob. (Or, for that matter, "Jesudas" among Indian Christian names.)
The third set of names came from those of the Prophet's companions or from his family: Ali, Abu Bakr, Omar, Usman, Jaafar, Saad, Hassan, Hussein, Aisha, Fatima, etc. "These were adopted not because they were Arabic," writes Prof Ayoob, "but because these figures are held in high respect by Muslims all over the world." Fair enough.
These three sets make up the bulk of Arabic names among Muslim Indians, but there is also a fourth category. Prof. Ayoob explains: "Non-Quranic Arabic names have been recently adopted especially as a result of the Gulf oil boom and the sizable number of Indian Muslims who have migrated to West Asia temporarily to find livelihood. They come into contact with Arabs who have non-Islamic Arab names, mistakenly think they are Islamic, and sometimes give such names to their children. Since the returnees from the Gulf are perceived as role models among low-middle class and working class Muslims because they have made money, the latter begin to name their children after those of the returnees and the contagion spreads." However, non-Quranic and non-Islamic Arab names, he stresses, are in a very small minority among Indian Muslims.
Why is this issue important at all? The question of the "foreign origin" of the names used by Indian minorities has become one element of the Hindutva assault on them for being insufficiently Indian. In one passage of his 1923 book, Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? Veer Savarkar questions the patriotism of India's minority Muslim and Christian communities because "they do not look upon India as their holy land", he wrote. "Their holy land is far off in Arabia and Palestine. Consequently their names and their outlook smack of foreign origin. Their love is divided." The implication is that the Muslims should seek inspiration in India's culture rather than Arabia's.
Prof. Ayoob argues that "Arabic names are assumed by Indian Muslims not because of cultural affinity. Islam came to India (with the exception of Kerala) from the Turko-Persian lands of Central Asia. The cultural influence is, therefore, Persian more than Arab. Persian was the court language and the language of literature and of high culture. A cultured gentleman in north India until the turn of the 20th Century had to know Persian and had to be able to quote Persian couplets (this applied to both Hindu and Muslim old elites). Muslim elite families, therefore, adopted names of Persian origin for reasons of cultural and linguistic affinity. This had little to do with religion. Therefore, names like Parvez, Parveen, Firoz, Firoza, Shireen, Mehnaz, Mehjabeen, Shahnaz, Humayun, once adopted by elite families, also gradually became popular among the lower strata of society, although I would wager that Persian names are more common among the elite than they are among the `subalterns'. Some Arabic names come through Persian because Arabic words, including names, have over time been adopted in Persian." In other words, he concludes, these are "cultural" names, not religious ones. "I do agree that the adoption of such Islamic/Quranic and Persian names is tied to the preservation of Muslim identity in India, but I do not think this should be a target of criticism. After all, one finds names like Kallicharan and Ramadhin among West Indian cricketers. This does not make them any less West Indian."
I should like to thank this eminent scholar and friend for his valuable contribution to the debate on this issue. More important, I agree that no Indian should feel obliged to take on elements of Hindu culture as "proof" of his or her own integration into the national mainstream. Equally, Hinduism can serve as a framework for the voluntary cultural assimilation of minority groups, if they want it. Yusuf Khan is no less Muslim because he chose the name Dilip Kumar to put on the marquee; but Shah Rukh Khan is no less Indian because he retained his Muslim name. In a country of such great cultural diversity, our names are, after all, one more tangible sign of the pluralism that is India's greatest strength.
Shashi Tharoor is the United Nations Under Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information and the author of seven books, most recently Riot and (with M.F. Husain) Kerala: God's Own Country.
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