'I am a A Person in My Own Right'

On a day when everyone from saree brands to online fish vendors offered a 'Women's Day discount'; on a day when social media forwards, news stories and television vied to offer us the stories of 'strong women who overcame obstacles'; on a day when event after fluffy event 'honored', 'celebrated' and 'saluted' women, one woman's story stood out: in the highest Court of the land, senior counsel Indira Jaising stood tall and declared 'I am a Person in My Own Right.' This was when another senior counsel referred to her as her lawyer husband's wife in a matter that was before the Court. That, for me, was Women's Day. A day like any other but one that saw a powerful individual assert that she was far more than her gender or marital status. A day when a woman used her surname as a powerful statement of her refusal to be boxed into stereotypes. 

Indira Jaising

It was quite disheartening to see an internationally acclaimed lawyer like Amal Alamuddin give up her own name after her marriage to actor George Clooney. Priyanka Chopra now goes by Chopra-Jonas, adding her husband's name to her own just like any other school friend of yours or mine. Why? 

Family as a concept is an ever-changing one. Behind the romantic notions of 'you and I are now one' and 'we are one in flesh and blood' lie considerations of possession and property. Time was when women could not own property and they themselves were simply the possessions of their husbands. When they left for the marital home, it safeguarded the interests of their fathers' heirs to have them change their surnames. And in the husband's home, they were simply added to the list of things in the husband's ownership. There was no romance involved, sorry to say, at any point. The romance was imputed to the custom when people started choosing their own partners (as opposed to having the parents pick them out) because there needed to be a justification for an old custom that was not fitting in with new social mores. Then came in the undying proclamations of unity and other alleged complications in paperwork if a family unit did not have a common surname. 

Times have changed. Women have their own income and can own property at will. It is illegal to treat sons and daughters differently and ancestral property has to be equally shared between the heirs irrespective of gender. There is more than one kind of marriage with same-sex marriages becoming legal in several parts of the world. And most women use their maiden names on social media to connect easily with the people who knew them from before. Has anyone ever been denied entry to a county because their surname was different from their husband's? Has anyone been denied of rights over their children because they chose to keep their own name? Wake up and smell the equality clauses. NOTHING happens if you keep your own name. These imagined difficulties are simply perpetrated by people who are keen to maintain the social order as it is. 

American rights activist Lucy Stone, who in 1855 took the historic decision to retain her own name after marriage. 

I am a wife of 15 years in what you would call a 'love marriage.' I cherish what we share and adore my husband. I am proud of his accomplishments and glad to be introduced in his circles as his wife. But in my own social network, I prefer to be known as me. My husband is simply the person I am married to and not the source of my identity.  I don't foresee my kids growing up with an identity crisis because their parents don't share a surname. Their own surnames are different from ours - we coined a brand new surname of their own for them which sounds nothing like either of our names. But we have our government-mandated documents, bank related documents and everything else in order, in our own names. We have also traveled together as a family without encountering any problems (so far.) 

My mother-in-law, a respected college professor - and an immensely popular teacher - went her entire career with her maiden name. My father-in-law is a well-known personality and it would have been easy, convenient and natural for her to adopt his name. She once mentioned that it was not her choice to keep her maiden name (remember, this was the '60's) and this happened because of some certificate issue in the early days of her career which turned out too cumbersome to change later, especially when she had already started to gain popularity among her students as Ms. Daisy Luke. My point is, it allowed her to own her well-deserved and hard-won acclaim in the name she was born with, instead of having her identity overpowered by that of her more famous spouse. They have one of the strongest marriages I know of. Their children suffer from no psychological harm from having parents with separate surnames. 

There is no law that requires a woman to adopt her husband's name after marriage and in most countries where such rules existed, they have been repealed. An increasing number of women the world over are questioning the need to do so. Some have tried a mid-way approach with the hyphenated surname phenomenon. But there isn't and there never will be a satisfactory answer to the question of why only women are required to do this transformation act to preserve the sanctity of marriage. I think the larger question for the present is, is this really necessary to preserve the sanctity of marriage? Or maybe, both individuals entering marriage should give up on their surnames and adopt a whole new one which will uniquely be the identity of their family unit. 

When something has served its purpose and no longer deserves to be preserved, cast it off! Marriage no longer involves power equations. Subsuming one's identity into another's serves no purpose other than a willing submission into an archaic and outmoded social order. You can't change who you are born as and you cannot obliterate the first couple of decades of your life that shape you into whatever you turn out to be. A new chapter in life does not merit a change of name. Showing your love for your husband does not have to be by declaring yourself a brand new person in law from the date of marriage. Be you. Be.