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What does "By Any Other Name" by Santha Rama Rau reveal about identity?

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"By Any Other Name" by Santha Rama Rau reveals that identity is resilient despite external attempts to alter it. The story illustrates how Santha and her sister are given English names at an Anglo-Indian school, symbolizing the disregard for their Indian identity. However, while Santha navigates her dual personas, she and her sister ultimately reject the discriminatory environment, demonstrating the strength and persistence of their true identities.

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Rau's "By Any Other Name", published in 1951, is about racial identity in British colonized India. The essay is told from the perspective of five-year-old Santha, who, with her sister Premila, is sent to an English school in India. As soon as the girls arrive at the school, the headmistress gives them "English names" for school—Priscilla and Cynthia. This act of renaming foreshadows that the British school system will not respect the children’s Indian racial identity. Although Santha feels neutral about this new name, hesitantly accepting it and the new school, she does feel as if Cynthia is a different person. One theme the author explores, then, is the effect of naming on persona and psychology. Santha does not feel the weight or history of her past when she is at school. As "Cynthia," she focuses on wanting to have a cotton dress like another girl and eat British style...

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sandwiches to fit in.

However, when Premila is made to sit in the back of the classroom with the other Indian students while taking a test—because "Indians cheat," according to her teacher—the girls leave school, never to return. Although she is a child, Premila knows that she is no different intellectually from the other students and that being separated based on race is wrong. The justice and strength that Premila shows by leaving school proves that identity, while changeable, maintains distinct stability when it comes to issues of equality. Discrimination based on racial identity is unequivocally unjust and immoral. To organize students based on racial identity is wrong, and Premila and Santha were right to leave the English school. While they were open to expanding their identity by trying new food or clothing, they were absolutely not open to reducing themselves because of their identity.

The story teaches readers to be fair and not judge or discriminate based on racial identity.

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In her essay "By Any Other Name," Santha Rama Rau references Shakespeare’s famous lines "What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet." In other words, no matter what you call a rose, no matter its label, its identity or nature remains the same. This is the same for her own identity. Rau recalls being sent to an Anglo-Indian school at a young age. On her first day there, she and her sister, Premila, are given new English names because their teacher claims she cannot pronounce their Indian ones. She becomes Cynthia and her sister Pamela. Rau takes an interesting perspective on her new name:

At that age, if one’s name is changed, one develops a curious form of dual personality. I remember having a certain detached and disbelieving concern in the actions of "Cynthia," but certainly no responsibility.

Rau is able to compartmentalize her identity into two distinct personas as a means of maintaining her sense of self. She resists changing her Indian identity, remaining true to who she is, in this way. When Premila is outraged by her teacher's belief that all Indians cheat, the sisters leave the school and never return. Santha understands this, but she does not allow it to affect her. This event happened to "Cynthia," and so she is able to keep it from changing or shaping her identity. Identity is in this way resilient.

While it may seem that Rau was required to lose her cultural identity to remain in school, her story shows that this is not necessarily true. Even if she acquired a new name in school, her identity remained static. A new label does not change one's nature. Rama also demonstrates that one can take on identities to adapt to circumstances without losing one's sense of self. She played the "Cynthia" role while remaining "Santha." Rama did not let the cultural expectations of her school change who she is.

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This short story is an inspiring testament concerning the ways in which people can resist having their identity shaped by forces that seem to be bigger than they are. At the core of this story are two Indian girls who move to a new Anglo-Indian school where they are given English names by the headmistress and expected to adopt Anglo-Indian culture, leaving behind their Hindu upbringing. Santha, the narrator, is therefore given the name of Cynthia. It is the refusal of the two characters to do reject their Hindu culture that leads to the protagonist's sister's expulsion from this school and the resumption of their original way of life. The impact this expulsion has on the narrator is negligible, as the final paragraph explains:

I understood it perfectly, and I remember it all very clearly. But I put it happily away, because it had all happened to a girl called Cynthia, and I never was really particularly interested in her.

It is inspiring to note how the author was able to reject the new name of Cynthia she was given, and the way of life that was imposed upon her. Unfortunately, of course, history shows that in many other cases others were not so able to shrug off the identity that was forced upon them by those more powerful than they were. 

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