V. Raghunathan is a former Director of the Schulich School of Business (India Program), York University, Toronto, a former professor at IIM Ahmedabad and a former President of ING Vysya Bank. A prolific author, he has written over 15 books, including the national bestseller Games Indians Play (Penguin). With more than 600 published papers and articles, his latest books include The Lion, The Admiral, and A Cat Called B. Uma Vijaylakshmi (Westland, 2025) and To Every Parent; To Every Child (Penguin, 2025) and Irrationally Rational: 10 Nobel Laureates Script the Story of Behavioural Economics (Penguin 2022), among others. LESS … MORE
Ah, India! A land of vibrant colours, rich traditions, and an administrative system that could make even the most patient of saints question their faith. I recently wrote about the labyrinthine process senior citizens face to keep receiving pensions, redemptions, and insurance returns — the Life Certificate Odyssey, if you will. I was especially scarred by my own LIC encounter. Yet, a twist of fortune saw a friend forward my piece to a former senior functionary at LIC, and soon after, the Chief of Customer Relations reached out. He pleasantly and patiently guided me until my problems were resolved, and he assured me the system was being upgraded for everyone — which was my original intent in writing the piece.
But today, let’s turn our gaze to a challenge that transcends age and afflicts the entire population: the honorifics – Mr, Mrs. Ms, Sri, Shri, Srimati, Shrimati, Sow (for Sowbhagyawati) or Km (for Kumari, often used for young girls) etc. — that are often prefixed to one’s names. You might think, “Honorifics? What’s the big deal?”
But in India, where bureaucracy feels like a never-ending game of shifting goalposts, the issue is anything but trivial. It’s a veritable minefield for anyone navigating the treacherous waters of Aadhar, PAN, driving licences, passports, birth certificates, bank accounts, ration card and even school or university certificates. You name it, and honorifics lie in wait, ready to pounce.
Picture this: you stroll into a government office, feeling like a conqueror stepping into the realm of rightful documents. You bring your birth certificate, your Aadhar card, a smile that could charm the socks off a bureaucrat. Then, a glitch — your birth certificate lists you as Rajesh Kumar, while your Aadhar card says Sri Rajesh Kumar. You’re not just a man; you’re a walking identity crisis. You could be Mr. Rajesh Kumar, or Dr. Rajesh Kumar if you’ve earned the title or even Tiru or Thiru Rajesh Kumar, if happen to be a Tamilian.
A friend of mine recently woke up to a driver’s license that bore the honorific Tiru before his name. It hadn’t mattered during renewals for years, but this time as he went for renewal, the old honorific raised its hood like a cobra. His license wouldn’t renew because his name no longer matched the record. To fix it, the authorities insisted it had to go back to the point of first issuance — decades ago. Another friend found himself unable to seed his State Bank of India account with Aadhaar because one or the other record carried the honorific “Sri,” making cross-record corrections a Kafkaesque exercise.
And nor may an honorific necessarily a prefix. In Maharashtra, many records show “rao,” “bai,” or “ji” appended to names as suffix; in Bengal, you’ll encounter “babu” and “didi” or even “devi” creeping in. These become “official” if a clerical hand once adds them. Fortunately, states have not yet adopted different dating conventions; otherwise, we’d be hopping between 2nd March and 3rd February in perpetuity when faced with 3/2/xxxx, chasing an elusive consistency across systems.
The problem isn’t just about appended honorifics. Consider a Tamilian named Ramesh, whose school certificate reads V. Ramesh. When a new system demands a “full name,” the initial V. — standing for Venkateswaran in his family lineage — now forces a reshuffling of given and surname slots. Expand the initials, and suddenly Venkateswaran becomes your first name, while Ramesh’s given name becomes a second name. Perhaps the passport forms need to provide some handholding in this regard. By the way, in some bureaucratic document, even the “dot” matters. if your Aadhar card says V. Rajesh, it may not match a bank record labelled V Rajesh, because the clerk may have treated the dot differently.
It’s as if your name multiplies overnight, and you’re left to prove your existence to the powers that be. “Excuse me, sir, but according to our records, you are not you. You are a different you, and we need you to prove that you are indeed you.” If that sounds like a parody of reality — or like Nityananda, the flamboyantly controversial figure who fled to Kailaasa to escape arrest in Gujarat — welcome to the club.
The absurdity doesn’t end there. Clerical assistants in government offices have, bless their hearts, a knack for adding honorifics before names with seemingly little thought. You may have long forgotten the formalities of your youth, but the clerks have you covered. They’ll address you with reverence befitting a minor deity in the bureaucratic pantheon. The problem is that this well-meaning habit becomes a double-edged sword when it comes time to renew a driving licence or passport.
So honorifics in India are not just embellishments; they’re potential triggers that set off a bureaucratic chain of amendments. One might even argue that honorifics act as a kind of bureaucratic GPS — except instead of guiding you to your destination, they lead you on a wild goose chase through the annals of red tape.
To add insult to injury, government forms often come pre-printed with these honorifics. You may not want to be addressed as Sri or Smt., but there it is, stamped on your form like a badge of honour. And when that form is dutifully copied by another clerk in another office, the ghost of your honorific follows you to your next bureaucratic rendezvous.
One could laugh off this typically Indian chaos, except that often the joke is on us, it’s harder to chuckle, especially as we have to run from pillar to post, trying to “fix” the issue, sometimes resorting to hiring a tout or, worse yet, applying for a brand-new document under a newly minted name, at additional cost.
So, what’s the takeaway from this bureaucratic ballet? Perhaps it’s a reminder that in the great Indian administrative circus, one must be prepared for anything — even a name change you never asked for.
One can’t help but wonder: could our bureaucrats save themselves time and energy if they could distinguish honorifics from first names at the outset? A simple, practical reform would be to make extra efforts to separate titles from given names in databases, forms, and identity proofs, so that a Tiru or Sri isn’t treated as part of the legal name but as a courtesy prefix that travels with the person rather than governs the person’s core identity. If the system could reliably separate honorifics from the actual name, the lines wouldn’t blur, the mismatches wouldn’t multiply, and the endless looping through forms would finally begin to ease.
And yes; if we cannot change the system, at least let us learn to change how we view it. If that means laughing at the absurdity of it all, then let’s raise a toast — preferably to Rajesh Kumar sans honorifics, who just wants to live a life free from bureaucratic nonsense.
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