Journalism of Courage
A wedding invitation announcing the nuptials of a young couple has generated widespread buzz in Tamil Nadu. The names of the bride and groom — P Mamata Banerjee and AM Socialism — have left people wondering whether the card is legitimate or edited. What’s more, the card also mentions the names of the groom’s elder brothers — AM Communism and AM Leninism.
Family members of the couple have since confirmed that the card is, in fact, real. The groom is the son of Lenin Mohan, popularly known as A Mohan, the district secretary of CPI in Salem, Tamil Nadu. Mohan is also the councillor of Panamarathupatti town in Salem.
Speaking to Indianexpress.com, Mohan explained the reasons behind naming his son and how their family is carrying on the tradition. “After the Soviet Union was dissolved, people were saying that communism has fallen and the ideology won’t prosper anywhere in the world. There was a news clip on Doordarshan with regards to this and at that time, my wife gave birth to my elder son. I decided immediately to name him communism as I believed that till the human race exists, communism won’t fall,” he said.
Mohan added that in Kattur village, where majority of the people follow the path of communism, it is not uncommon to find people named Russia, Moscow, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Vietnam, Venmani, etc.
“Leaders, countries, ideologies — people name their children after this. I wanted to name my children after ideology. All three sons are uniformly named. The bride is also our relative. Her grandfather is a Congressman who was very inspired by the actions of Mamata Banerjee and hence he wanted to name his granddaughter after her. We all want our future generations to carry forward our ideology. I have named my grandson Marxism. In the future, if a girl child is born in our family, I will name her Cubaism,” Mohan added.
Since the family was unable to invite people for the wedding due to the Covid-19 pandemic, they chose not to print a physical invite. Instead, they published the card in ‘Jana Sakthi’, the Tamil mouth piece of the CPI. They had done this once before when Mohan’s second son got married in 2016.
“The invitation was published in the paper on Monday. In the past three days, I have got more than 300 calls. Everyone is so curious about the names of the bride and the groom. Cadres, friends and many from media called me to verify whether the invitation is genuine, I was so irritated with so many people asking the same question but later got used to it,” he chuckled.
When asked how the family reacted to the sudden buzz around the wedding, he said everyone is happy that their names are causing so much excitement.
“My sons are happy because everyone is appreciating them for having such names, unlike when they were younger. All of them studied in government schools. They faced humiliation, people tend to misspell their names. This continued till they completed their schooling, but in college, the situation got better. My elder son did law in Chennai college and the other two did B.Com. People used to listen to the backstory and be fascinated as we have been following this Ideology for generations.”
The marriage is slated to take place on June 13 at the bride’s house in Amanikondalampatti village. CPI state seceratary R Mutharasan, MP K Subburayan have also been invited for the event.
