What's in a surname? A great deal if you are talking about India. It gives away not just your caste, but your standing in the social order and possibly your economic status as well.

When the man sitting beside you in a bus or a train asks you for your name, he's not satisfied with an Ashok or a Rajesh for an answer. He wants to know whether you are Ashok Chaturvedi or Ashok Yadav, Rajesh Tripathi or Rajesh Gupta.

It's his way of finding out your caste. Ideally this shouldn't matter. Unfortunately it does, one hell of a lot. It is in this backdrop that the move by 200 Kanpur IITians — to do away with surnames that denote their caste and adopt a common surname 'Bharat' — needs to be viewed.

Rahul Gupta has been rechristened Rahul Bharat and Akhlaq Hussain Akhlaq Bharat. Anything that seeks to remove divisiveness in society and strengthens an Indian identity should be welcomed.

Critics argue that renaming Rajeev Paswan as Rajeev Bharat will not shield him from caste prejudices and social discrimination. Sure. It may take time, but it is a step in the right direction.

The move to drop caste surnames is an acknowledgement of the undesirability of such differentiations. Even if this attempt at unity is in response to the government's move to hike reserved quota seats in educational institutions, so what?

Isn't the government's decision to ram excessive quotas down their throats itself an example of politically fostered divisiveness, that will also downgrade the quality of our premier institutions?

Students surely have a legitimate right to protest by changing their names. It might be regarded as an example of tokenism in some quarters, but such tokenisms do help.

Didn't the use of words like "chairperson" in place of "chairman" and "visually impaired" instead of "blind" help sensitise society about these issues?

Not surprisingly, OBC and Muslim students on the campus have also accepted Bharat as their surname. It's a way of expressing oneness and placing country above caste and community.