Naming, nation, and negotiations: Kodavas and their ‘illegible’ identities

Abstract

This paper draws from the idea that acts of naming have constantly changed and that practices of naming need to be located in a larger network of practices and histories that to various extent determine a community's changing notions of identity. I explore these changing notions of identity as performed through acts of naming among the Kodavas, an ethno-linguistic minority group from the Kodagu district, Karnataka State, India. My objective in this paper is to look at naming from three perspectives, constantly interacting with each other. I study naming from three different temporal locations, as informed by various factors. Firstly, what one might tenuously call as conventional naming practices among the Kodavas. Secondly, how these practices were affected by acts of legibility brought in through colonial intervention and thirdly, the gradual but perceptible shifts in contemporary naming practices that negotiate between legibility of a modern nation, legibility of a majoritarian Hindu practice and of a desired Kodava identity. My analysis points to fluidity of practices that can be termed ‘illegible’ to dominant practices thereby asserting identity in creative ways. Illegibility, I argue, makes identities unstable, less knowable and thereby not easy to contain.