everytime someone's like how do we even dare go around abolishing the family its like the organising principle of the world and. well. you're so wrong this fight has been going on forever. you have to look at the anti caste movement and its desire to weaken caste by attacking what was rooted in its familial clan bonds in the subcontinent. encouraged by periyar tamilians replace clan based surnames with patryonmics or straight up adopted the names of russian communists. anti caste sikhs argue we're one family and everyone has to be either a singh or kaur.
Is there anyway to read the full article without joining the website it 💔 the paywall removers don't have it
www.thejuggernaut.com
Why Tamilians Drop Their Last Names | The Juggernaut
Surina Venkat
11 - 14 minutes
When my father filled out my birth certificate, he shortened his last name, Venkatachalam, to Venkat in what he told me years later was a “last-minute decision.” In doing so, he broke with not just one naming practice but two: children taking the father’s surname and one my family has practiced for generations — children taking their father’s first names as their last names.
In the southernmost Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the Tamil diaspora — unlike in many other Indian subcultures — this latter patronymic naming practice persists. Some famous examples include actors Dhanush and Trisha Krishnan. For them, their last name is their father’s first.
“My Dad’s always told me that we take our father’s names, but he hasn’t really given me a proper reason — other than that it was their decision two generations ago,” Keshav Anand, a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told me. But the answer lies in one anti-caste movement, almost a century old.
Since the Sangam Age (300 B.C. to 300)., Tamil Nadu, like much of India, has had a caste system, a social hierarchy initially based on one’s work. For about 90% of Indians today, their last name reveals their caste.
In the early 1900s, the British reinforced the caste divide. “British policies of divide and rule contributed towards the hardening of caste identities,” wrote Manali Despande, a researcher at California Polytechnic State University. Dalits, for instance, couldn’t change their surnames to common Hindu names and had to instead use occupational or lower-status names, such as ‘Kachara’ (garbage), ‘Dhobi’ (washerman), ‘Mushahar’ (rat-eater), and ‘Mala’ (dirt). Such conventions significantly increased the chances of Dalits experiencing discrimination and socioeconomic inequality. Since families passed down names, this enforced discrimination for centuries.
Many tried to change these dynamics, but it would ultimately be one man from an affluent Tamil merchant family, E.V. Ramasamy — or Periyar — whose work would lead to lasting social reform.
Periyar and the Self-Respect Movement (various sources, X)
Born as E.V. Ramasamy Naicker in the town of Erode in western Tamil Nadu in 1879, Periyar was “rebellious by nature, barely went to school, and had a difficult relationship with his father.” In 1904, during a pilgrimage to the Hindu holy town of Kashi, Periyar attempted to partake of the free meals a Shiva temple offered to Brahmin pilgrims. He tried to disguise himself as a Brahmin, the highest caste, but the gatekeeper noticed his mustache and threw him out. Periyar would never forget the incident.
After years of working in the family business, in 1919, Periyar, almost 40, joined the Indian National Congress, better known as the Congress Party. While there, Periyar introduced bills to increase the political representation of non-Brahmins five times, which all failed to pass. When his fellow politicos barred him from his sixth attempt in 1925, he left government entirely.
Around the same time, Periyar’s friend S. Ramanathan, founded the Self-Respect Movement in 1921 in Tamil Nadu. The movement believed that, regardless of caste and circumstance, all people deserved respect and dignity. At a time when many activists focused solely on colonial oppression, the movement sought to tackle the internal inequalities that undermined the fight for freedom.
After Periyar left government, S. Ramanathan invited his friend to lead the Self-Respect Movement. Periyar’s participation helped popularize its mission to such an extent, people commonly (and incorrectly) credit him as the Self-Respect Movement’s founder.
“What made Periyar particularly significant was that he led a mass movement of different castes and communities,” Karthick Ram Manoharan, an assistant professor at National Law School of India University, who has researched Periyar for over a decade, told The Juggernaut. “His movement reached out to broader sections than what his contemporaries or his predecessors were able to do.”
While many had tried to effect change before him, Periyar did the unthinkable: he encouraged the mass participation of women in the Self-Respect Movement, not as “subordinates” but as “comrades.” He believed that no serious social reform could take place without their inclusion. Two of Periyar’s closest advisors, Veerammal and Annai Meenambal, were Dalit women.
Periyar and the Self-Respect Movement (various sources, X)
In 1929, at the first Self-Respect Conference in Chengalpattu, Periyar further made waves when he said he was dropping his surname, Naicker. He believed caste names violated one’s self-respect by preserving a social order that oppressed non-Brahmins. That belief led him to advocate for others to drop their caste names as well.
“Periyar and his movement passed a resolution that the people of Tamil Nadu should stop using caste surnames [at the conference],” Manoharan said. “His reasoning was that this creates a notion of hierarchy among people and promotes discrimination.”
Before Periyar, Tamil names usually consisted of the initial of their village name, the initial of their father’s name, their given name, and then their caste name. Indeed, Periyar’s given name, E.V. Ramasamy Naicker, follows this structure: “E” is the initial of his birth village, Erode; “V” is the initial of his father’s first name, Venkatappa; Ramasamy is his given name; and Naicker is his caste name.
By 1938, he earned a new name after a women’s conference: “Periyar,” or Tamil for “respected one.”
Throughout history, many activists may have proposed radical changes, only for them to remain relegated to only the most progressive circles. However, recent research, including that of Vignesh Rajahmani, a fellow at the Royal Netherlands Institute, reveals that Periyar had an unlikely ally in implementing his proposal: school teachers.
Before 1969, the registrations of births and deaths were not universal, and so schools were often the first place that recorded legal names. Teachers, whose parents dropped their names in the 1930s, wanted to ensure that the next generation also followed the principles of the movement. So, from the 1950s to 1980s, those school teachers refused to record student’s caste names, either giving them their father’s name as their surname or a separate Tamil name.
Periyar and the Self-Respect Movement (various sources, X)
Rajahmani noted that several naming traditions emerged due to the Self-Respect Movement, including what Rajahmani called the “Moscow” naming tradition. “Periyar was enamored by his visit to the USSR [in 1930-1931],” Rajahmani noted. Soviet Russia was also notably Communist and shared many of Periyar’s ideals, including the equality of women as “comrades” and removing class markers. Per the tradition, several Tamil families dropped their caste names in favor of Russian surnames, including Lenin, Khrushchev, and Marx.
“Make no mistake, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu is called [M.K.] Stalin,” Rajahmani said.
Then there were Enlightenment, Buddhist, and Shaivite naming traditions, which saw Tamil people taking on the names of Western thinkers or words associated with Buddhism or Sanskrit. “There are people named Garibaldi in Tamil Nadu. There are people who are named Voltaire,” Rajahmani said. And in the secular Dravidian naming tradition, Rajahmani said people started bringing back older Tamil names, thanks to newfound pride in their Tamil identity.
Still, Periyar had his critics. Dominant-caste groups, particularly Brahmins, accused him of being confrontational. They said that, by rejecting Brahminical hierarchy, he put social cohesion at risk. While many dominant-caste families kept their last names, others who supported Periyar or caved to social pressures abided by dropping them.
“Even today, he’s not like Ambedkar,” said Rajahmani, referring to the scholar who is celebrated as a national hero for promoting Dalit rights and writing India’s constitution. That said, Ramakrishnan Naganathan, an assistant professor at Tamil Nadu Teachers Education University, told The Juggernaut that Tamil secondary schools and institutions of higher education still teach students about the Self-Respect Movement and Periyar.
Yet, many first-generation immigrants are unaware of the Self-Respect Movement. “I knew it was something related to caste and to get rid of [the] caste system…but I wasn’t sure of the exact reason,” Madhumita Subbiah, a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said.
Periyar and the Self-Respect Movement (various sources, X)
Sanjana Venkatesh, a student at Princeton, said she didn’t know the reason at all. “[I wondered] all the time,” she said. “It was kind of difficult to not have the same last name as anyone else in my family, except for my sister. Especially being at a private school where I was one of two Indian people in my grade, it definitely made me question, ‘Why does the naming system work like that?’”
“I was not aware of the practice of taking on first names or last names at all,” Ranjani Koushik, who has the same last name as her father, told The Juggernaut. “I didn’t really grow up in a Tamil community. I lived in Bangalore when I was in India, and then here, [where there were] maybe two Indians in a very white school.” However, Koushik knows her parents took on their fathers’ first names as their surnames.
Both Anand and Koushik said that, among the diaspora, the Self-Respect Movement’s naming convention is not only changing but also has lost the urgency that originally propelled it.
In India, though Manoharan and Rajahmani believe the practice of dropping caste names has reduced caste discrimination — Tamil Nadu is among the leading states in the country when it comes to Dalit representation in politics — it hasn’t eliminated it. “Marriages in Tamil Nadu pretty much happen on caste basis only,” Manoharan said.
Tamil Nadu also has India’s third-highest rate of honor killings — murdering usually kin to preserve the “dignity” or “honor” of a family or community when one of its members intermarries or transgresses social norms. Rajahmani believes that despite Tamil Nadu’s progressive politics, outdated marital traditions persist because of the violence that often comes with integrating different social groups. You might be okay with electing a Dalit politician, but not with your child marrying a Dalit.
“At the end of the day, caste is a rooted social, political and economic problem,” Manoharan said. “While these sort of cultural gestures, [such as] removing caste names and so on, are definitely important to foster, [there’s still] this idea that having those surnames is bad. A lot more needs to be done for caste to be changed.”
Dropping one’s caste name — an idea that is radical to this day in several Indian states — is still a form of assimilation, a new norm one must follow. How the practice came to be is a powerful connection to one’s heritage, honoring the legacy of a Tamilian anti-caste movement. But, at the same time, the naming convention creates a disconnect, leaving individuals bereft of some aspects of their family history. And, despite including women in the Self-Respect Movement, the practice still involves the father’s first name, not the mother’s.
My father’s decision to give me a shorter version of my last name was also one of assimilation: he wanted Americans to be able to pronounce my last name with less difficulty.
“Moving to America is something that might have changed the way that people name their children,” Koushik said. “That, more than the Dravidian movement, is what affects my generation now, especially [since] a lot of my friends and parents are immigrants.”
Still, the idea of the Self-Respect Movement’s naming practice dying in the diaspora feels bittersweet, especially since it hasn’t even taken flight in most of India. While it is by no means a solution to addressing casteism, the practice has stopped the perception of caste in our first encounter with people: their names.
Surina Venkat is a reporter based in New York City.
