Droupadi Murmu, who took oath as the President today, recently told a magazine that her name was not always ‘Droupadi’ and that it was changed by her school teacher.
Dressed in a white saree with green-and-red border, Droupadi Murmu took oath as the 15th President of India on Monday. The first tribal leader to become the head of state, Murmu revealed that her first name ‘Droupadi’ – based on a character from the epic ‘Mahabharata’ – is not her original name. The name ‘Droupadi’, in fact, was given by her school teacher.
In an interview with an Odia video magazine, Murmu said her Santhali name is ‘Puti’ and that it had been changed to ‘Droupadi’ by a teacher ‘for good’.
“Droupadi was not my original name. It was given by my teacher who hailed from another district, not from my native Mayurbhanj,” Murmu said, as quoted by news agency PTI.
Teachers in the tribal-dominated Mayurbanjh district used to travel from either Balasore or Cuttack in the 1960s, she told the magazine.
“The teacher did not like my previous name and changed it for good,” Murmu said, adding her name had been changed several times – from ‘Durpadi’ to ‘Dorpdi’ and other variations.
Names do not die in Santhali culture, Murmu said in the interview. “If a girl is born, she takes the name of her grandmother, while a son carries his grandfather’s nomenclature.”
Droupadi Murmu also said her surname had been ‘Tudu’ in schools and colleges, and that she started using the title ‘Murmu’ after her marriage to Shyam Charan Tudu, a bank officer.
Murmu on Monday took oath in Hindi to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the law’. The swearing-in ceremony was marked by pomp and grandeur.
It began with the arrival of two presidents – the outgoing Ram Nath Kovind and the incoming Droupadi Murmu – in a procession from Rashtrapati Bhavan to the Parliament building. After the short ceremony, Murmu and Kovind were escorted out of the Central Hall amid the roll of drums and blowing of trumpets.
She was given a 21-gun salute after which she signed the oath register amid a thunderous applause and thumping of desks. At the forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the new President then inspected the tri-services guard of honour.
This story has not been edited by News Mania staff and is published from a syndicated feed
Photo: Internet
