The other day, at a university in India where I teach, senior citizens were being felicitated at a function. On the dais sat the Vice-Chancellor along with a few invited speakers. In the front row below were seated some elderly persons who were to be honored. The Vice-Chancellor first presented the background of the meeting. He said that none of us remembers our ancestors. Perhaps no one remembers even the names of three generations before them. On hearing this, our minds began searching for answers. Suddenly, he announced that anyone who could name their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents—three generations—would be rewarded.
Some time passed, but no one came forward. Then he invited a few students and some teachers present in the hall to come up to the stage. Everyone came—and failed. Someone could name the grandfather but not the grandmother; others could not go beyond that. No one could name ancestors up to the third generation. The Vice-Chancellor, however, told us the names of three or four generations of his own ancestors. This inability to name our forebears made a deep impression on our minds. Yet, once the meeting ended, we forgot everything.
When offerings (piṇḍadāna) are made in the name of our ancestors as a ritual during the Ancestral Fortnight known as Pitṛpakṣa (the fortnight dedicated to ancestor rites), or on Sarva Pitṛ Amāvāsyā (Mahālaya Amāvāsyā), and we fail to remember their actual names, we conveniently invoke generic sacred names—calling the grandfather Jagannath and the grandmother Ganga or Lakshmi—and thereby absolve ourselves. Here, Jagannath signifies an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, while Ganga or Lakshmi represents revered goddesses. This practice functions as a ritual escape or symbolic excuse for the failure to remember one’s ancestors by name. Some say they do it in order to elevate their status to that of the divine.
There is a specific reason for writing and recalling this here. That reason is this: since I had come to Kathmandu for an academic year to teach and do research, I needed to open a bank account. The bank was Nepal SBI. The bank manager asked me to fill out a ten-page form. Though I had managed to avoid the Vice-Chancellor’s question that day, the same question confronted me in that bank form. It asked me to write the names of my father, paternal grandfather, mother, paternal grandmother, as well as the names of my wife’s father, paternal grandfather, mother, and paternal grandmother.
I was greatly worried. Then I remembered that my father had written down the names of three or four generations—his father, grandfather, grandmother, and so on—in his diary. After his death, these were published in a souvenir. So, by asking my son who lives in Odisha (in India), I managed to collect those names. My wife also gathered the corresponding details. That day, opening the account took me a lot of time because this information was not readily available.
These names may be required to secure an individual’s bank account, but from another perspective, there is a subtle social lesson in this. That lesson is that we should remember our ancestors. Not only that—we should also know the names of our father-in-law and mother-in-law, as well as their parents. Nowadays, people are distancing themselves from their parents. They are forgetting their duties toward their father and mother. Why, then, would they remember their grandparents or great-grandparents?
After coming to Nepal, I once again learned the importance of remembering one’s ancestors. We forget our root and origin. We forget to show our gratitude to them at least through remembering their names. Though I had criticized the Vice-Chancellor that day, today—after opening a bank account in Nepal—I recalled his words and understood the significance of what he had said then.
(Professsor Dr Anil K Mohapatra is the ICCR Chair at CNAS, Tribhuvan University.)
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