{"id":5712,"date":"2007-04-13T10:46:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-13T05:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indiauncut.com\/?p=771"},"modified":"2007-04-13T10:46:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-13T05:16:00","slug":"father-husbands-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indiauncut.com\/father-husbands-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Father\/husband\u2019s name."},"content":{"rendered":"
There is much hoo-ha<\/a> these days about bizarre new government guidelines that make women give details of their menstrual history on appraisal forms. S Mitra Kalita correctly points out<\/a> in Mint<\/i> that there is an equally invidious requirement that women in India constantly face on every form that they fill in: Father\/husband’s name.<\/p>\n Kalita even spoke to an official in the labour ministry who told her that there is no law that requires such a question to be answered, but that “for 60-80-100 years blindly, we have been asking this question.” Don’t expect that to change. Inertia is a powerful beast.<\/p>\n The one requirement that has irritated me in forms that I’ve had to fill up in Pune and Mumbai is of “Father’s Name.” Why so? Well, in Maharashtra there is a custom of the father’s name being the middle name of a person, and the government here assumes that the custom holds across the country. So, say, if I wrote my father’s name as Cthulhu, my name would automatically go into the records as Amit Cthulhu Varma. Punjus and Bongs—I’m half of each—have no such custom, and I don’t have a middle name, but try explaining that to a ration-card officer.<\/p>\n Or even to Cthulhu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is much hoo-ha<\/a> these days about bizarre new government guidelines that make women give details of their menstrual history on appraisal forms. S Mitra Kalita correctly points out<\/a> in Mint<\/i> that there is an equally invidious requirement that women in India constantly face on every form that they fill in: Father\/husband’s name.<\/p>\n Kalita even spoke to an official in the labour ministry who told her that there is no law that requires such a question to be answered, but that “for 60-80-100 years blindly, we have been asking this question.” Don’t expect that to change. Inertia is a powerful beast.<\/p>\n The one requirement that has irritated me in forms that I’ve had to fill up in Pune and Mumbai is of “Father’s Name.” Why so? Well, in Maharashtra there is a custom of the father’s name being the middle name of a person, and the government here assumes that the custom holds across the country. So, say, if I wrote my father’s name as Cthulhu, my name would automatically go into the records as Amit Cthulhu Varma. Punjus and Bongs—I’m half of each—have no such custom, and I don’t have a middle name, but try explaining that to a ration-card officer.<\/p>\n