Here's why 'bhais and bens' are lining up outside Gujarat's passport office

Making changes to names in official documents have always been a tedious task, be it for Aadhaar, PAN or passports. The long queues for submitting documents, verification and then finally getting one's hands on the changed documents can often take weeks or even months. Now, The Times of India has reported how a huge number of people from Gujarat are thronging the state's passport offices to submit applications for making changes ro their names, essentially to remove the suffix 'ben' from women's names and 'bhai' from the men's. 

As a cultural norm, 'bhai' and 'ben' are common suffixes added to the names of Gujarati people. But problems arise when the original names do not match the official name in documents such as Aadhaar. As such, the report noted that the Regional Passport Office in Gujarat receives at least 4,000 applications on a daily basis, out of which at least 800 applications request removing the suffixes 'bhai', 'ben and 'kumar'. 

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The report quoted a woman, identified as Deepaben Shah, a healthcare professional who recently filed an application in the Gujarat Regional Passport Office (RPO) and also sent out a declaration in local newspapers to put in the name change. Deepa said that while she was applying for a visa to travel abroad, her name did not match the one in the official document.

“My parents added ‘ben’ in my name — my mother’s name also has it, and my father’s name has ‘bhai’. So, all my earlier documents had my name as ‘Deepaben’ whereas the college-onward documents, including my Aadhaar, have ‘Deepa’ as my name. When the documents reached the visa stage, I realised that it would cause problems,” TOI quoted her as saying. 

Due to the large number of applications, the Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Rajkot passport seva kendras are now empowered to issue the changed documents if all required papers are in place apart from the RPO office, Wren Mishra of the RPO in Gujarat said. 

Apart from the usual suffix removal, the report said officials also spoke of a woman wanting to change her name 'behen' to 'ben', saying it was easier to spell.