William Shakespeare once said, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Unlike this famous line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, if anyone asks me what’s in a name, I will say – Everything!
It’s my name which decides whether I will return home or not, if I will meet a similar fate as Akhlaq or Junaid, if I will receive free ration and whether or not I will be asked if I am a Bangladeshi in a passport verification office.
I was born in 1987 and was named Moumita – a typical Bengali Hindu name. Many of my cousin brothers and sisters of that time have names like Toni, Jimi, Swapan, Bablu, Mita and so on, all being common Bengali names.
It was the pre Babri masjid demolition and pre liberalisation era. Our parents, who lived in West Bengal – then ruled by a Left government – had a secular perspective. I had never seen any Maulavi deciding the names of newborns.
The post Babri trauma left a dent of fear in the mind of the Muslim community
Even in my parents’ generation, my aunts had names such as Mira, Mina. Rina and Hina etc. But things started to change by the mid nineties. I heard people inside my community say that a Muslim should have a “proper Muslim name” to get a place in jannat (heaven). It’s also the time when the villages of Bengal saw the rise of the Tablighi Jamaat.
Around the time of 9/11, we got acquainted with the word Taliban.
The post Babri trauma left a dent of fear in the mind of the Muslim community. Even though there was no significant rioting in Bengal during and after the Babri masjid demolition, the impact the event created pushed the Muslims to find a place where they could feel secure. Conservative sects like the Tablighi Jamaat gave the Muslims that comfort of brotherhood and security.
The Bengali Muslims who were always believers of the Pir sect – which is more diverse and plural – started leaning towards relatively more conservative sects like the Jamaat.
Name is like the cover of a book that often becomes the determinant for many to judge the content. So, my name has always brought its advantages and disadvantages for me. When I was in college, it helped me get accommodation. Much like other cities in India, it’s always difficult for a Muslim to find accommodation in the cities in various districts of West Bengal or neighbouring Assam, where I went to complete my Bachelor of Education.
It’s my name that got me a place to stay! Thankfully, the landlord was satisfied with my first name and didn’t bother to ask the title. By the time they got to know it, I was almost at the end of the course!
It’s my name which brought a lot of nagging questions in my in-laws’ mind too. They asked me many questions about why I don’t have an Arabic, Persian or Urdu name. They wondered that my family must not be “Muslim” enough.
Thankfully, Shakespeare wasn’t born in the Modi era
In the post 2014 Modi era, the focus has shifted. It has shifted from my first name to the title – Alam. Now I’m just a Muslim who can be lynched over any pretext.
Thankfully, Shakespeare wasn’t born in the Modi era. Had that been the case, he would have surely not written “what’s in a name?”. In this age, an Aadhar card is akin to the Jewish identification card in the Third Reich. If you don’t possess it or if there are any mistakes in it, you are at the receiving end of every harassment, and may also cease to exist digitally.
As a teacher working in a government-run madrassa, where all of my students are first generation learners coming from the marginalised class, mistakes in names are very common. Is there any relationship between mistakes in names and the class, caste and gender identity of a person? Yes it surely has.
Most of my students live with their grandparents, and their parents either leave them behind to work in cities as migrant workers. Sometimes they take their children with them for a few months and before long, the kids are again sent back to live with their grandparents. In this process, some parents lose their papers in transit.
When people don’t have any guarantee of their next meal, maintaining papers and keeping them safe become a travesty. The grandparents take the kids for Aadhaar enrolment to school admission and often pronounce their names with a strong influence of local dialects in the accent.
The officials fail to understand the names, and as a result, their names remain misspelt. No wonder I often find students who have three different names in different papers. So Sumaiya becomes Chhumaiya or Chumaiya depending on the officials and whether they paid attention.
In my first workplace in Murshidabad which has a majority of Muslim population, most of my colleagues used to think that I converted after marriage because they didn’t know that a Muslim woman’s name can be Moumita.
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During the NRC-CAA protests in 2019-20, I wanted to update my address right after my divorce. I was traumatised to see the long queue before the Aadhar correction centres and the fact that most of the married women’s names needed to be corrected as either the family or the officials changed their titles to “Bibi” from whatever titles they used to have before marriage.
This is also a violence, killing one’s name by putting a stamp that the women are property of their husbands.
In February, 2021 I was traveling to Murshidabad by train. The fellow passengers started their discussions with usual stereotypical narratives of Muslim vilification. I was hoping in bated breath that they wouldn’t know my identity. I was scared. Just then the ticket checker arrived. Shivers ran down through my spine! Will I face the same fate as Akhlaq or Junaid and all those who were lynched to death? I somehow managed to say my first name and showed him my ticket on my mobile so that he won’t utter my name! I was saved.
As a Muslim living in India in the present times, we constantly carry the burden of our names. Is Shakespeare listening?
Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. She has two published collections of poetry. Her works have been translated in Telugu and Tamil.
