In classrooms of generations past, an attendance register could sometimes sound like a roll call from India’s freedom movement. Many parents named their children after national heroes. Today, those names are hard to find. But you can still come across a Gandhi, Nehru or Bose.Take Hyderabad’s Jawaharlal Nehru. Born in the 1960s to freedom fighter and Congress member Mutteswara Rao, Nehru says his father was determined on the name of India’s first PM. Rao reached out to him.The PMO pointed out Nehru was a surname and suggested the child be named Jawahar. But Rao was adamant.“Being Jawaharlal Nehru, I feel, needs commitment,” he says. He encouraged his only son to join the Army. “I stand for the country. I can proudly say my son is a Major.”‘Names bring history into an ordinary life’ My father insisted he had a letter from Nehru giving his permission. That’s how I became Jawaharlal Nehru,” says the man who now heads Telangana govt’s Tele-MANAS Centre. Nehru’s sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, also has a modern-day namesake in Hyderabad. She was originally named Vijayalakshmi by her mother. Her father, a freedom fighter, later added Pandit to her name after the original became president of United Nations General Assembly.For Subhas Chandra Bose, a 33-year-old employee of Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences, the name came with expectations from childhood. “Everyone told me I should not do anything mediocre or bad because of my name,” he says. “I still feel that responsibility. I don’t even lie.” His father didn’t stop with one famous name.
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Subhas’ brothers are named Chandrasekhar Azad and Ambedkar.There’s also CLN Gandhi, a retired additional commissioner in the transport department, known simply as Gandhi in bureaucratic circles. “My father named me after Mahatma Gandhi as suggested by our neighbour, who was in the Army,” he says. “I was always conscious of the values associated with my name.”Socio-political analyst S Ramakrishna said: “When a child is named after a historical figure, that memory travels with the person. The name brings history into an ordinary life.”
