What's in a mayor's name?
We now have two mayors. Not long ago the city of Dhaka was split in two, each requiring a mayor. My allegiance, however, lies unshakably with Dhaka South: the Dacca of Bakshi Bazar of my youth, the Dacca of Dacca University, Ramna, Shahid Minar, and teeming streets, the Dacca in short with a history, very unlike Dhaka North, which has none.
A mayor is not a mere cleaner of streets or provider of water and light; the government of the country could appoint someone to do the job. Indeed we had government-appointed administrators for the two Dhakas, though their performance admittedly left huge room for improvement. Do we really need a mayor to do a better job? No. But a mayor represents things loftier than his indispensable function as someone who sees to it that the city streets are clean. Most important of all, he is a leader of a large citizenry.
A mayor is a city father. That term signifies leadership, care, responsibility and wisdom. And note that the Dhaka South mayor has been directly chosen by a far larger electorate than individual Members of Parliament, including the Prime Minister, have been. Remember cities are the birth place of democracy itself...
Being chosen a mayor of Dhaka South is thus a weighty affair. It is curious therefore to see how he makes light of himself by continuing to use his childhood name, Khokon. That name is of course a pet name, a term I prefer to the more familiar 'nickname', because of its more endearing ring.
We Bangalis are fond of showy and long names. These are official or legal names. In Bangla this is bhalo naam. In addition, many of us have pet names, the Bangla daak naam. My generation, people born in the early thirties, has seen plenty of pet names in our time too, mainly given by doting parents, but sometimes originating from special circumstances surrounding the early life of the individual in question. But pet names rarely embedded themselves into the official names. The pet name was used mostly within the family circle. Sometimes it even faded from memory of those on the fringes of the family. Pet names were none of the business of the unacquainted or the faintly acquainted. Where the pet name survived, it co-existed with the official name but quite independently of each other, with the latter clearly dominating. When putting it on paper, one wrote only her or his bhalo naam. The daak naam was too immaterial to come into the picture. But now the pet name is an organic caudal end to the official name. The two often go together even in the loftiest of positions in society. That position can be one of a high official, not excluding a cabinet minister. The caudal pet name can sometimes wag the official name.
Over the last few decades there has been an infectious proliferation of the use of pet names, most remarkably of the caudal type. The variety too is astonishing. Some of the names we hear today in the media were unknown when we were young. These are as remarkable in variety as in number. There are the plainly meaningless (Falu or Dudu), the demeaning (Potol or Tepa), and the ridiculous (Stalin, Samrat). This still leaves us with a huge miscellany of Alal, Bulu, Inu, Maya, Mintu or Tuku. And there are terms of endearment like Babu, Khuki, Khoka or Khokon. But it is important to go beyond mere enumeration of names.
Note, first of all, that even where parents' doting is involved, pet names are sometimes bestowed without a thought of the child ever growing up. Imagine: why would the father or the mother name their child Baby, Babu, Bachchu, or Khoka, if they believed the child will one day be prime minister of the country? In all probability, they did not think of such possibility, or did not think of the future at all. Despite all that doting, the name was a triviality. Even if the parents had thought of the future, they must have assumed that the name would fade away while the bhalo naam alone would prevail. This does not seem to happen anymore; the pet name acquires a life of its own; and its bearer in adult life continues to flaunt it, quite oblivious of its frivolity.
In public life, a pet name conjures up a closed circle of chums and sycophants, a coterie, a clique, with the pet-named politicians at the centre. The scene may be somewhat exaggerated, and the politician in question may remain impervious to ingratiation. But the reality of it being played out around the country, especially among low and middle level politicians, is beyond question. It is true that other politicians, those with mature names, can also be surrounded by a coterie, but the circle of politicians with appended pet names seems to belong to quite a different world, one that is fast expanding.
Most importantly, pet names trivialise politics in public eye. Perhaps many will agree that politics today is not what it was. Faith in politics and politicians is crumbling. Politics has been de-idealised. It has been criminalised. Fewer pet names will not of course restore respect to politics. But it might go some way towards that end.
Won't Your Honour, Mayor of Dhaka South, lead the way?
The writer is a former United Nations economist and author of a miscellany of books.