William Shakespeare famously said,”What’s in a name?”. But sometimes, it becomes embarrassing for us if the name associated with our lives is a bit weird. Harpreet Kaur, a teenager from Haryana got the name of her village changed because it was ‘ganda’ (dirty). She wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention in the matter.
Yes. Ganda is the name of a village in Ratia block of Haryana’s Fatehabad. In Hindi, the name means filthy. Kaur, a 14-year-old Dalit girl from the village was fed up of being teased by her cousins due to her village’s name.
Kaur, an eighth-grade student, told Navbharat Times,” My cousins and friends often teased me, saying I came from a dirty village. I did not like it.” She wrote a letter to PM Modi about this. When her father came to know about it, he was miffed. His parents are labourers working in farms and earn Rs 6,000 a month. They scolded her as the letter could create problems for the family.
Kaur wrote the letter to the PM in December 2015. Soon, there was a reply from the PMO which asked the state government to intervene into the matter. The Manohar Lal Khattar government approved the village’s name to be changed to Ajit Nagar and the file has been forwarded to the union home ministry for approval.
Now, Kaur has become a celebrity in the village consisting 2,500 people. The village panchayat announced that it will felicitate Harpreet Kaur on Republic Day this year. But the young girl wants to build a girl’s school in her village. Well, when there is a will, there is a way.
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