Branding

There are elections in India. The only thing we were looking forward to, was to see the incumbent Congress party go. Looks like that is happening. 

We have been getting updates from supporters of different parties on the Facebook feed more than from any news media. This morning, decided to see what Google news presented for me and here it was (link)

Now for someone who is not that much into Indian History and knows Nehru as Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi as Mahatma Gandhi... 

Ok, I know the desi's who read this are going "not possible", but seriously! Today's American textbooks have three pages for Indian political history. Not much mention is there of the fact that Indira Gandhi, who gets mentioned as the first woman prime minister of India is not related to the Mahatma. People put two and two and come up with four!

In all of Indian history, this move by Indira to marry a dude with the same last name as Mahatma Gandhi, was probably the most brilliant branding or marketing idea! 

In South INdian families we stopped using caste or religious sub sect related last names post Indian Independence. Then folks started using their fathers first name as their last name, as "expanded initials". That is why I am now Sundar Narayanan instead of Sundar Iyer. My fathers first name is now my last name. Still it made sense in a way that we were all part of the Narayanan family. Unlike family names in the US, this gets to be tricky. My wife does not want to take my fathers first name as her last name. She was okay with being Sangeetha Sundar (which is how it works in India if a woman wanted to change her last name, she took her husbands first name!) and that also made sense.  

This is a common issue in desi families when they apply for a US passport. They all want to fill out one customs form and have the same last name but cannot agree on one. So the new trend is that the entire family changes their name to the old system. Either go with sect, subsect names or their Gothrams(lineage) in Brahmin families. 

If we ever cross that bridge, we should take a page from Indira and find a "nice" family name to change to!