Adolf Lu Hitler Rangsa Marak

It is somewhat easy to change the name of a shop, like what the clothing outlet in Ahmedabad, named Hitler, did recently. But what if the name-changing is not related to a shop exactly?

Adolf Lu Hitler Rangsa Marak, the suspended Nationalist Congress Party legislator from Northeast India's Garo Hills has no issues with his name and has no plans to change it in the near foreseeable days.

However, he corrects: “I am no dictator” and continues that people in his constituency so far has never questioned him about his name, made notorious by the German dictator.

The legislator said he had no say in the naming ceremony as an infant when his father fondly called him Adolf Lu Hitler and then completed it with the surname.

“I have never asked my father why he chose this name for me. And people in my constituency or in Meghalaya never asked me why my parents have chosen this name,” Marak, known more popularly as Adolf Lu Hitler and sometimes Lulu, said.

But, recently in Ahmedabad a small garment outlet was forced to change its name (Hitler) after protest from the Jewish and the local community.

The Jewish community was particularly upset as the German dictator inflicted untold misery and violence on the Jews during World War II. Jews by the thousands were massacred in concentration camps. The name Hitler became synonymous with mass murder world over.

But, the general notion in India is that Hitler is associated with someone who is strict, like as the shop owner in Ahmedabad explained that he named his shop after his partner’s grandfather who was a strict disciplinarian.  

On a similar plane, a somewhat popular soap, which is running on air, calls itself “Hitler Didi” after the protagonist, who is depicted as a strict disciplinarian. In India, there were no issues with the name of the soap whatsoever, but, in the US the same soap is titled as “General Didi.”

“Indians are more sensible. We don’t believe a name represents a person’s true character. A person who goes by the name, Hitler can be a good person or a bad person… Similarly, a person who may have the name of a God can also be a good person or bad. The name has got nothing to do with it. Names are characterised in jest only,” political scientist, Apurba K Baruah from the North Eastern Hill University said.

Baruah quoted Shakespeare’s famous quote “what’s in a name… that which we call a rose…to home in his point of view, but you ask the Hitler from Meghalaya and he goes on to lament how he was mocked by US airport authorities years back when they all stood up in unison, after reading his name on the passport, and hailed him as Hitler - the infamous German dictator.