The burden of the name: What about the Aurangzebs and Afzal Khans on the street?

Historical whim or politically motivated? Even as the jury is still out on what necessitated New Delhi Municipal Council's decision to rename tony Aurangzeb Road in Lutyens Delhi after the late APJ Abdul Kalam, it has brought to fore the baggage of bigotry some names carry even hundreds of years after the original name-bearers have gone.

Just ask Aurangazeb Zafarullah Khan who resides 1,400 km away in the distant Mumbai suburb of Kalyan. "Since the news broke, my close friends haven't stopped ribbing me about how 'unpopular' my name is," smiles the 39-year-old. "Just because a few people are trying to change the name of a road in Delhi, why should I feel ashamed?"

The self-employed computer hardware engineer refuses to consider his name a cross to bear. "Both my parents are teachers. They chose this name after careful deliberation because of Emperor Aurangzeb's qualities of fearlessness, persistence and piety."

The vilification of the Mughal emperor, in his view, stems from communal prejudice. "If we borrow a contemporary phrase like 'human rights excesses' to describe what transpired in those times then no ruler will emerge smelling of roses. In those times, all of them were guilty of the same in one way or the other. To merely isolate the Mughal emperor and uncontextualise what he did from his times and circumstances is not only unfair but comes across as ill-informed."

Unlike the Kalyan resident, Aurangzeb Alamgir Mansoor Syed, the 36-year-old resident of Behrampada in Bandra East, nearly 50 km away, says he's grown up in dread of his name. He begins chortling, shyly at first and then uproariously, mopping his eyes with his sleeves as he remembers the gigantic movie hoardings of the Arjun Kapoor-starrer Aurangazeb at the Mahim church signal which he clicked on his phone for memory. When he catches his breath, he remembers how friends would make fun of his name adorning hoardings.

"Finally I'd felt vindicated about my name after so many years," remembers the taxi driver as he lovingly feeds morsels from his own lunch to his only child Zoya. "I'm out the whole day at times on my taxi and all I can think of is her," he says, holding the three-year-old close.

He was named by a pir (holy man) in his native village who told his parents it meant the 'pride of the throne'. His parents thought nothing of it. That was till he began going to school. He remembers Classes 4 and 6 being the worst years of his life. "We were staying in Chembur then. In school, the history books showed Emperor Aurangzeb as an anti-Hindu tyrant. Since most of my classmates and the teacher were Hindu, I'd regularly be subject to jibes in class and teasing in the breaks over this. This led to many nasty fights."

Aurangzeb's description only as a temple vandaliser, as someone who enforced the punitive jiziya tax on Hindu pilgrims, his imprisonment of Shivaji and finally his torture and slaying of Sambhaji had such a detrimental effect on the young Aurangzeb Alamgir that he dropped out of school.

"After the first round of riots in December 1992, our Hindu-majority locality became unsafe. We moved in with my maternal uncle's family in Behrampada. Later, my father invested in a small kholi where I still live."

According to the Class 7 drop-out, the break in schooling during the riots came as a relief from the teasing and fights at school over his name. "I was determined not to allow it to happen again and braved both my ammi's shouting and my abba's beating to stay away from the local school they put me in." Tired, they let him apprentice at a local garage for a few years, before he began driving a cab. "I realise that it was in my fitrat not to work for anyone. The taxi-line has its problems but I'm at least on my own."

Not just Aurangzeb

If the name Aurangzeb can get you into trouble for all the wrong historical reasons, can someone called Afzal Khan fare any better? "It wouldn't perhaps be as bad with either the name or surname, but together it was devastating. I went through school cringing at barbs, many poisonously communal," says garment trader from the Tata Colony chawls at the Bandra-Kurla complex named after the medieval general killed by Shivaji.
"Every time I complained, I'd end up being punished along with those who teased me," says the Class 12 dropout. The Aurangabad native changed many jobs and businesses before settling into garment retail. As a satellite-van driver for a leading TV news channel, he recounts what he describes as a hilarious incident during a communal flare-up in Pratapgad – where Afzal Khan battled Shivaji in 1659 – when Hindu organisations were objecting to an "encroachment by the Afzal Khan Trust".

"I was driving the OB van which went to the site with the reporter and camera person. The Satara collectorate under which the fort falls was making security passes for media to go to the fort. A clerk was asking us details and writing them down. When he asked my name he began smiling, but almost fell off his chair laughing when told that the OB van engineer was Shivaji Patil. 'Ekdum Afzal Khan aani Shivaji jodiney aalat (So Afzal Khan and Shivaji are travelling together),' he'd laughed."

History in black and white
Many like historian Dr Shailesh Srivastav find it strange that history books dwell so little on humanising the much reviled sixth Mughal emperor. "While his tyranny against the Sikhs and Marathas is often brought up, the fact that he refused to use any money from the royal treasury for his personal upkeep is often just brushed off as side-note just like the fact that he sewed prayer caps and wrote handwritten copies of the Koran from which he met his own expenses. It's almost like Indian mythology, where the more you demonise one character the more you lionise and deify the other. Even if there are slip-ups by Ram they are always rationalised. But anything that Ravan does has to be painted in the darkest of blacks so that the aura around Ram glows extra bright."

Underlining Aurangzeb's role in Maratha history, he adds, "While it's true that Sambhaji was slain at the behest of Aurangzeb on 11th March 1689, his son Shahuji spent his entire childhood and youth, from age seven to age 25, in the custody of the Mughals. It was there that Aurangzeb and his daughter who was very fond of him, ensured the young prince learnt to run court, swordsmanship and the art of warfare from a very young age. When he became free and took over reins as Chattrapati at 26 he led the Maratha empire to glory like never before. Since he was well-acquainted with the way Mughals thought and strategised, he was able to keep them on the run after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 and the Maratha kingdom spread almost across the subcontinent."

What about Ashoka?
Jaipur-based historian Biswajeet Pande wonders whether Delhi's civic authorities will also change the name of Ashoka Road – also part of Lutyen's Delhi and housing many colonial era bungalows as well as the headquarters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). "However much one defends Ashoka and demonises Aurangazeb, what's clear beyond any doubt is that Ashoka killed lakhs of more innocents in his quest for unchallenged power -- he killed his brothers, had execution chambers, which remind of Hitler, and converted almost all of Hindu India into Buddhism. Will they rename Ashoka Road and all other buildings and roads after his name?"

He also suggests that Ashoka Road be renamed after the late prime minister VP Singh, "the greatest champion of equality in post-Partition India, known for extraordinary honesty, in public and private life."

"Apart from being one of the best finance ministers of India, he ended the dacoit menace in Uttar Pradesh and also donated a big chunk of his land to Vinoba Bhave during the Bhoodaan movement," he adds.

Dr Srivastav in fact takes this a notch higher. "The renaming of the road in Dr Kalam's name is also a direct signal to the community to fall in line. While his missile-man identity was in keeping with the narrative of India as a superpower, you can't discount how he never asserted his religious identity, was open to visiting temples and even played the veena. The signals are right there."

…and Meera?
Interestingly, its not only Muslim names which face this problem. Borivali resident banker Jaydev Singh Rathod remembers how elders in his Agnihotri Rajput family had baulked at his Tam-Brahm wife Padma's suggestion for a name for his first-born. "She suggested Meera thinking it'd have the right Rajput ring to it and come across as an olive branch to my parents who were bitterly opposed to our marriage," says the 33-year-old.
It was left to his aunt to explain that nobody names their daughters Meera in their community. "I learnt, its still used to disparagingly discipline young girls who show signs of a crush," he points out. "Kyon ri bawli? Badi Meera ho gayi tu? (Are you crazy? Have you become Meera?), is a rebuke young girls often hear."

Curious, we want to know what he's called his daughter. "I have to deal with my folks only when I go to Udaipur. But my wife I have to live with. In the interests of peace at home I have gone with her suggestion," he smiles with a knowing wink.

Still wonder, what's in a name?