Prerna 1

Prerna
ENG104
Subhashim Goswami
Final Draft 1
August 30th 2016
The Name Game
Names are an integral part of our daily lives. They are so commonplace that we hardly
pay any attention to the nuances of its implications. Though, on the surface, a name must seem
like just an identifier, there is more to it than what meets the eye. On the basis of Sunil Kumars
essay Naming from his collection of essays, The Present in Delhis Pasts, we try to analyze
how naming is rather a manifestation of power, both in its presence and absence and how naming
is a game of power.
The ability of names to stir a multitude of images and emotions lends it its power. Certain
things or places or even just words tend to make us really uncomfortable while some make us
nostalgic or even sad. It all depends on what emotions and memories that name triggered in our
minds. This is one of the reasons why India saw a wave of naming and renaming of popular
places in the nation post-independence, as stated by Sunil Kumar. When a place is named after a
freedom fighter, it would trigger valor, righteousness and other noble emotions in people, for
these freedom fighters and their tales of heroism illustrate these qualities in abundance. It was
this power that the act of naming possessed that our leaders were taping into. Post-independence,
our country needed these sort of feelings in the hearts of people so that they all can collectively
strive towards leading such an impeccable lives, which would in turn take our country towards
greater horizons, and Sunil Kumar captured this essence by saying, If in the past Indians had
been led to freedom by their heroes their memory guided the residents of Delhi in the present.

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Sunil Kumar visits the idea of a different composite identity of Hindu nation through
differences in the names people gave to places, post-independence. Lajpat Nagar, Janakpuri and
Vasant Vihar were a few he named. This is again a manifestation of the power of act of naming.
Just as one word can conjure a myriad of different pictures and emotions in the mind of a person,
what every person associates to a word is also highly varied. These differences in perception are
due to various social and cultural reasons. It is influenced by the geography, demography, social
strata and many more factors. While each sect gave their locality a name, which they saw best
suited their beliefs or ideologies, they were in unison building a collective Hindu nation without
compromising on their individual identities. Every collective had an entity to symbolize their
beliefs in the form of the colony names, but at the same time all of these were coming together to
form a larger identity. Also, these names resonated a common theme of prosperity and
auspiciousness and also went on to instilled these emotions in the minds of people
As humans, we are constantly trying to classify things around us in to disjoint groups so
that we can figure out or rather, get an insight into what the object is, what its properties are and
so on. After putting an object into one of these groups, we coin a name for it and there by
impose an identity over it. The identity that we now associate with that object is not its own
but the one we imposed on it after dissecting it. The same dynamics apply to people as well. We
constantly keep trying to classify each other into these circles, social constructs as we call them,
so that we can put a finger on who the person is and how he is likely to behave. One of the
instruments of this sort of classification is our names. When we hear a persons name we
automatically bring up all the stereotypes or prejudices we associate with that name and serves as
a head-start for us in the process of decoding or understanding the person and his behavior. In
essence, we are associating a set of behavioral characteristics with a name and by classifying a

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person into one of these social construct and imposing a name on it, we are masking and
imposing an identity over his own identity. This renders the act of naming power. This is the
nature of power that Sunil Kumar is indicating towards when he says Names serve as identifiers
of who you are, and how others should know you within a larger social constellation. This
imposition of identity by classification into stereotypes defines who you are in the society,
instead of your own unique identity.
Naming is also an act of territory marking. When I choose a region and give it a name of
my choice, I am in essence, making a personal claim over that place for every time anyone has to
refer to that place, he is going to use the name that I gave it. And when the name I gave gains
popularity, it is effectively, the triumph of my name over the names other people might have
given it. The triumph of my perspective over other perspectives. Through popular acceptance of
the name I gave to that particular place or even an object or an idea, my claim over it is
legitimized. It is a manifestation of the validation of the correctness of my claims. This is the sort
of manifestation of power that Sunil Kumar discusses in detail by tracing the history of the
names of places like, Hauz Rani and Saidlajab and other popular places. Another manifestation
of the same, as observed by Sunil Kumar, were the efforts of Congress (I) towards renaming
Connaught Place to Rajiv and Indira Gandhi chowk. By renaming, they were not just giving the
general masses a glimpse of their political power but were also actively engaging in this act of
territory marking.
Naming also wields the power to rewrite histories. And rewriting histories is a form of
power in itself. By rewriting a sects history we are not only dismissing certain claims made by
them, but are also fiddling around with a chunk of the collectives identity. Our identity is not
just made up of who we are now, what our beliefs are or what our occupation is. It also

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comprises of our heritage and who do we trace our roots to. It also comprises of the journey of
our ideologies, beliefs and culture through various social elements at various junctures in time. It
is a cumulative of the experiences, choices and mistakes of our ancestors and the wisdom that
they acquired through it and passed on through generations. And when we are rewriting history
by playing around with names, what we are doing in essence, is showing utter disregard for
someones culture and their ancestors. Sunil Kumar talks also talks about how by fiddling around
names of what the collective holds as sacred, as was done in the case of Qutb minar or Said
Lajab, we are making an open statement of distrust and questioning of the collectives heritage
and their claims. We are also making a vulgar and ostensible display of power over the group. By
renaming those places, the collective in power was making, an ostensible display of dominion.
They were dismissing the importance and veracity of dominated groups figures and beliefs that
lent the areas significance. This naming was an act of questioning the identity of suppressed
group.
Sunil Kumar, in his essay, also unravels the intersection of politics and naming. He
illustrates through examples, the political agendas hidden behind naming of places of cultural or
economic significance after historical figures. He says, more contemporary heroes had to be
celebrated to legitimize succession within the collateral lineages of the ruling elite to account
for all the naming and renaming. If we probe into the psychological dynamics of how we look at
lineages, we are left two rationales to explain this legitimization. By putting into limelight the
multitude of sacrifices a persons ancestors have given to the nation, the person is making a
rightful claim to what he might call the fruits of their sacrifice-leadership and ruling power. The
latter rationale is that by celebrating his lineage, the person is trying to prove to the larger masses
that he has whatever it takes to be a great leader in his blood. He was brought up in a family

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where such leadership skills were taught and passed on from one generation to another along
with the accumulated wisdom of ages and no one but him, is hence, capable enough to hold that
ruling position. And in this manner, naming manifests as a power in the politics of power.
While through all these different rationales we saw how the presence of a name wields
enormous amount of power, the absence of a name in itself also wields power. Surnames serve
as an entry point into a trove of experiences, stereotypes and other types of biases. Sunil Kumar
stresses on how the act of naming is one of considerable reflection and deliberate choice. It,
as he suggested, is an open indicator of the ideological and cultural choices of the person.
However, we ourselves are seldom responsible for the name we carry through our lives or for the
religious, ideological or other social associations the name carries with it. These serve as a
hindrance in our expression of our ideals and belief systems. The absence of a surname is hence
liberating for Sunil Kumar. When people encounter the absence of surname, they are baffled and
unnerved, for now, they are in a position where they are unable to categorize Sunil or his family
members to social or cultural categories. The sense of control that a surname gave into their
hands is not present anymore and hence now they are encountered on a smaller scale, the fear of
the unknown. They are not really sure what to expect from them. And this serves as a vantage
point for Sunil and his family. They, due to the absence of any caste name or surname, are in a
position where they can control what the other person makes of them. They are not burdened by
the trainload of stereotypes, prejudices and other responsibilities that a surname might bring
along with it. They dont have to worry about the consequences of public acceptance of their
beliefs or religious or political inclinations on the legacy that they would pass on along with the
surname.