Our Names And What They Mean

Indian names have meanings, though we don’t expect people to live up to their name. Jammu and Kashmir’s new chief minister, Sheikh Abdullah’s 38-year-old grandson Omar, is named for the second caliph of Islam.

His father Farooq Abdullah is also named for Caliph Omar, who was called al Farooq for his ability to distinguish (farq) good from bad. Omar Abdullah’s primary rival in Kashmir will be the Jama Masjid’s Mirwaiz, who is his schoolmate from Srinagar’s Burn Hall School.

The Mirwaiz, 35-year-old Omar Farooq, is also named for the second caliph. In his superb biography of Nehru, written after he spent six years in Delhi as Australia’s ambassador, Walter Crocker refers to Nehru’s name Jawaharlal, as meaning Red Jewel. But in this case lal does not stand for the colour but indicates masculine, youthful. Nehru’s father, Motilal, was also named for a jewel.

His daughter’s full name was Indira Priyadarshini. Indira means magnificent, beautiful. The unusual name Priyadarshini also means that, but is taken from Priyadarsi, the epithet used for India’s greatest ruler Ashok (died 232 BC), the first sovereign of the entire subcontinent from Afghanistan to deep South India.

Ashok means he who does not mourn, but Emperor Ashok was actually famous for an act of mourning. After his savage conquest of Kalinga, modern-day Orissa, he rejected all war in repentance and became Buddhist.

Sonia Gandhi’s son Rahul (moon) is named after the Buddha’s son.

The Khilafat movement’s leader Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar (died 1931) shared Nehru’s name. The jewel theme is also to be found in the name of Surat-born Parsi industrialist Ratan Tata.

Gujarati, which is a merchant’s language, has a rich Arab and Persian vocabulary. A common surname in Gujarat for those working with jewellery is Jhaveri or Zaveri, derived from zevar or jauhar.

In the famous Gujarati novel, Bhadrambhadra, a man called Daulat Shankar decides to rebel against Arab and English words in the Gujarati lexicon and invents words in pure Gujarati. Upset that his name Daulat is actually Arabic, he changes it to Bhadrambhadra. The novel is a satire and Gujaratis who use highly Sankritised language are laughed at as using Bhadrambhadra language.

The mercantile nature of Gujaratis means many names are professional.

Wala (belonging to, or related to) is a common Gujarati suffix. Hindus, Muslims and Parsis all have surnames that end with Wala. Bollywood’s singer Kunal Ganjawala’s family name is derived from trade in cannabis.

Jinnah was actually the Quaid’s father’s name, and he was called Jhinabhai Poonja. Jhinu means small in Gujarati (poonji means capital).

In the Gujarati magazine Visami Sadi (20th century) Jinnah is interviewed and he signs his name in Gujarati as Jhina, with the stressed ‘jh’ and the rolled ‘N’ (not used in Urdu), which indicates how it was actually said.

Jinnah spoke Gujarati well, and would have to use it daily in South Bombay. But why was his father called small?

Sickly infants are sometimes given names that are off-putting (I have heard of a man called Kachra - garbage) so that death would not want him. The cruelty actually comes from a parent’s love.

One such Bengali name is Maran (death). It is the opposite of another famous Bengali name, Amartya (undying, eternal). In Hindi and Gujarati, this name is Amar or Amrit.

Jinnah’s Khoja community were converts from the Luhana caste of merchants. And many Khojas still have Hindu names like Vishram, especially Ithna Ashari Khojas (non-Aga Khani). Their dress was also Hindu in the village.

The recent Islamising of Sunnis through tableegh has also touched the Shia and now their names are more likely to be religious than not.

One of India’s software billionaires is Azim Premji, a Khoja.

Indians cannot separate Sunni from Shia by name, and other than in Gujarat and Bombay, where the sevener Shia is recognised as a trader, and doesn’t have a ‘hard’ Muslim identity, Shias are not seen as having a separate identity.

Shia names often have a quality of sadness and may even be haunting, like Muntazar he who is awaited.

The ecumenical nature of Indian Islam is seen in qawwali which has many traditional songs in praise of Ali but none on the first three caliphs.

Punjabi names are chosen by opening the Sikh text, the Guru Granth. The name must begin with the first letter of the first word on the opened page.

Punjabi men and women may have the same name, but an honorific separates men (Singh) from women (Kaur). Singh means lion. Manmohan means he who can charm the mind, but we find our prime minister unemotional and tepid. Manmohan Singh was appointed finance minister by Narasimha Rao.

Narasimha is an avtar (incarnation) of one of Hinduism’s three primary gods, Vishnu. In appearance, Narasimha is half man and half lion. Nar means man and Simha is the same as Singh. Gandhi’s favourite poet Narsinh Mehta (died 1480) also had the same name. In Gujarati lion is sinh.

Hinduism folded Buddhism into it by making Buddha the tenth avtar of Vishnu. Though their hearts beat for Lord Ram, who is also one of the ten avtars of Vishnu, the names of many BJP leaders are actually associated with another avtar of Vishnu: Krishna.

Atal Behari is a synonym for Krishna through Behari which means to roam (Krishna was raised a cowherd). Atal means steadfast, but Vajpayee surrendered to Jaish-e-Muhammad at Kandahar. Lal Krishna Advani is obviously named for Krishna, but so also is Murli Manohar Joshi.

Murli is flute, the instrument of Krishna.

While Vajpayee is Brahmin, his middle-caste opponents from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar both have links to Krishna.

The cowherd caste of Yadavs raised the boy Krishna, and both Mulayam and Laloo are from that caste.

Gandhi’s name, Mohan, is also a synonym for Krishna and the famous Urdu journalist and poet Hasrat Mohani’s hometown also has the same root.

The boy Krishna is one of India’s most popular gods and is also called Bal Keshav, the real name of Thackeray. Thackeray is actually Thakre from the Chandrasenia Kayastha Prabhu caste. But in his vanity, when he was a cartoonist at the Free Press Journal, he used the name as spelled by English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray.

A famous Bombay disc jockey calls himself Whosane? which is clever. Not as clever is another Hussein, the artist Maqbool Fida, who for a while became Macbull.

Artists have always had an interest in how they were seen. Ghalib means conqueror, and is in the very moving emblem of the Moorish kings of Alhambra: Wa la Ghalib il Allah there is no conqueror but god.

Patras Bokhari took on the name of St Peter, which comes from rock.

Amitabh Bachchan’s name comes from his father, poet Harivanshrai’s takhallus: ‘Bachchan’ or vachan, speech. Very appropriate for this magnificent voice.

Of late India’s entertainers have begun to follow numerology, in which they change the spelling of their names, adding vowels and consonants. The serial Kasauti Zindagi Ki was spelled Kasautii Zindagii Kay. The young Ekta Kapoor, only 33 but already having dominated television for a decade, is a big believer in numerology, in which spellings are changed but only in the Roman script, showing its recent origins.

Ekta’s name is secular and means unity.

Names have become more secular in India and fewer names are religious. Mine means form, or shape.

At the billionaire Vijay Mallya’s birthday party Salman Khan said he did not know what his own name meant. Salman is derived from peace. But Vijay of course means victory. It can also be a woman’s name, as in Jaya, Amitabh’s wife.

The other famous Indian Salman is Rushdie, whose name comes from ibn Rushd, the great Aristotelian, who also got into trouble with Muslims for what he wrote.

Dilip Kumar, Yusuf Khan, changed his name because he feared his Muslim identity would have made him less acceptable as an actor in India, though now we know that this is not true.

Haribhai Jariwala of Surat (jari is zari, spun gold) became Sanjeev Kumar, Bollywood’s finest actor ever.

India is of course named for the Indus river and the RSS says Hindu should be used to refer to all inhabitants of the country, not just those of a particular religion.

The End of the Kashmir Jihad

On Jan 12, 2002, President Pervez Musharraf banned Laskhar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad. He promised that "no organisation would be allowed to carry out terrorism on the pretext of Kashmir."

On Sept 17, 2002, Jammu and Kashmir went to vote. In the two months before polling, 570 people died, including 327 militants.

The average vote was 44 percent. The lowest turnout, 7.8 percent, was in Sopore, home to the Jamaat-e-Islami's Syed Geelani; the highest, 78 percent, was 10 times that, in Kargil, a stronghold of Shias, always more wary about Jihad. US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill acknowledged a dip in infiltration across the Line of Control and called the turnout "remarkable."

On Nov 2, 2002, Mufti Mohammad Saeed and the Congress Party formed the government, agreeing to split the six-year term between the two parties with Mufti Saeed as chief minister for the first three years and Ghulam Nabi Azad the last three. They focussed on governance, not identity, for almost the whole of their terms. But then, in the manner of the subcontinent, identity appeared.

Amarnath, 90 kilometres from Srinagar, is where Hindus pray to a giant ice stalagmite, which they believe is a representation of Shiva's phallus. The Amarnath shrine was discovered by a Muslim shepherd in the 19th century, and pilgrims walk 42 kilometres from Pahalgam in the Hindu month of Sravan (July-August) to worship there.

On May 26, 2008, the Jammu and Kashmir government agreed to give 100 acres of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Trust, for the setting up of tents for pilgrims. In Srinagar, this was immediately shown as evidence of how Kashmir would slowly be taken over by India. (The Indian Constitution's Article 370 gives Jammu and Kashmir separate status from the rest of the Union and Indians cannot buy land in that state.)

Kashmiri Muslims came to the streets to oppose the transfer; Jammu's Hindus came to the streets to defend it. Hindu groups, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, blocked the road to the Valley from Jammu, threatening an economic blockade and alarming the country. The government cancelled the land transfer, but Mufti Saeed withdrew support from the Congress government, which resigned on July 7, 2008.

On Oct 19, the Election Commission of India announced Kashmir's elections would be held from November 17 in seven phases till December 24. Few believed the elections would be successful.

The communist Yusuf Tarigami said "elections were no solution to the Kashmir problem." The secular Yasin Malik said his group, the JKLF, would campaign actively for a boycott and that the elections would fail just as they had in the past. "To boycott the elections was every Kashmiri's right," he said. Sheikh Abdullah's grandson Omar said his party, the National Conference, would contest but he worried that "turnout would be low." Hurriyat spokesman Abdul Ghani Bhat said elections were a non-issue and, "whether or not they were held, would cause the Hurriyat no consternation." The Jamaat's Geelani said that the "so-called elections were no solution." The JKDFP's Shabbir Shah promised a "total boycott." Mirwaiz Umar Farooq asked people to stay away from the elections "or face social boycott."

On Nov 17, Bandipora, Leh, Kargil and Poonch polled 69 percent; on Nov 23, Ganderbal and Rajouri polled 68 percent; on Nov 30, Kupwara polled 68 percent; on Dec 7, Baramulla, Udhampur, Budgam and Reasi polled 59 percent; on Dec 13, Pulwama, Shopian and Kathua polled 58 percent; on Dec 17 Anantnag, Doda, Kishtwar, Kulgam and Ramban polled 66 percent; on Dec 24 Jammu, Srinagar and Samba polled 55 percent.

Why did this happen?

In 2003, there were 3,401 incidents of violence in Kashmir. In 2005 this fell to 1,415 incidents. In 2007 this fell to less than 900. Infiltration across the Line of Control also plummeted.

Without the leverage of the Lashkar-e-Taiba's and Jaish-e-Muhammad's guns, the Hurriyat showed it had little influence. In a democracy, there is no substitute to rallying people, other than through daily contact on daily issues. Leadership on one grand, emotional issue cannot be sustained.

Musharraf ended Pakistan's jihad; Kashmiris have put a moratorium on identity issues. Kashmiris have damaged the credibility of the Hurriyat Conference, and made it irrelevant for the next six years.

The Mirwaiz is conservative, as religious leaders must be. But along with worrying about Bida'a, in the manner of all South Asian maulvis, he fought a political battle—but without ever fighting an election. He has lost. After the results were announced on Sunday, Dec 28, he said this was a "lesson for separatists."

Who were the winners?

Thirty-eight-year-old Omar Abdullah will become chief minister. He is secular (married to a Hindu), intelligent and experienced. Exactly the kind of man the state needs. His grandfather, Sheikh Abdullah, and Rahul Gandhi's great-grandfather, Nehru, had a friendship that fell apart and Nehru jailed the Sheikh for a dozen years. This was after Nehru fought against Hari Singh before Independence to have Sheikh Abdullah released. Now, these two young men, who are also close friends, are at the doorstep of history.

The BJP was rewarded for its opportunism in inflaming Jammu and won 11 seats, 10 more than last time. But it has polarised Jammu from Kashmir in its recklessness. It says the issue is of discrimination against Jammu, not Hindu versus Muslim, but this is untrue. Where it has the opportunity to use bigotry—in Gujarat, and elsewhere—it does so without qualm.

The BJP talks tough to Indians, but in December 1999, Vajpayee surrendered to the Jaish-e-Muhammad after the Kandahar hijacking and released Masood Azhar and Omar Saeed Sheikh. This act of myopia under pressure from a few dozen middle-class families led to more terrorism in India, including the attack on Parliament in December 2001. It also led to the attacks on Musharraf, whose death might have led to a different story in Kashmir, and to the savage murder of The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl.

The Congress calmed tempers even at the cost of being hurt by angry Hindus in Jammu and elsewhere in India—and it is down three seats to 17. Under Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, it remains the party that puts nation above self.

What about the separatists? They are fighting the wrong people.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq's father was killed by the Hizbul Mujahideen in May 1990. Sajjad Lone's father, Abdul Ghani Lone, was killed by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in May 2002.

I met Abdul Ghani Lone in his Srinagar house, and while showing me out he pointed at the Indian army soldiers protecting him and referred to them as "these butchers." But I wondered who they were protecting him from.

Mufti Mohammad Saeed's daughter Rubaiyya was kidnapped by militants in December 1989, when he was India's home minister. The V P Singh government released five prisoners to get Saeed's daughter back.

These people are the victims of militancy, but they became its champions. As it now fades away, they will become irrelevant, unless they separate their message from violence.

Yasin Malik's young face bears testimony to the brutality of the Indian state, whose guest he has been for much of his adult life. He says elections are not the solution to the Jammu and Kashmir issue.

But India has no strategy beyond offering secular democracy and the recurring right to vote, which it has been begging Kashmiris to take—and which they have finally taken, at least for now.

Yasin Malik talks about Gandhian protest, but Gandhi did not fight for a theocratic state. In a truly Azad Kashmir, Yasin Malik will be stamped out by Mirwaiz, Geelani and the Kashmiri population that will get down to the mischief of Hudood, Riba, Zina. Pakistan thinks it inherited it from Zia, but that actually came from the Muslim League and Liaquat's 1949 Objectives Resolution.

Having predicted that Kashmirs would boycott the election, Indian liberals are now urging the government to act to resolve the Kashmir issue with some sort of geographical solution. They are wrong.

Elections are the solution. Secular democracy is the only goal. It is what Jinnah wanted. Kashmiris already have that.