‘What’s in a name?’ is perhaps not the question the Indian navy would like to be asked when it is grappling with the death and devastation on INS Sindhurakshak. But once the pain wears off and when the significance of the week gone by sinks in—when INS Arihant, an indigenously developed nuclear submarine, achieved ‘criticality’ and INS Vikrant, the indigenously developed aircraft carrier, was launched—a question well worth asking is: what kind of signal does this secular republic send when most of its naval vessels, whether they are developed in India or acquired from elsewhere, are given mostly Sanskrit names, often picked up from Hindu mythology?

From 1948 onwards, India had formulated its own policy of naming new naval vessels. They were to be given Indian-origin names. Accordingly, the light fleet was named after mountains or their peaks, cruisers after national capitals and major Indian cities, destroyers in a manner so that each flotilla would have the same initials, aircraft frigates after rivers,...