In Search of Baru

“Welcome to Prime Minister – Baru Panchayat.” Screamed a banner not far from Kargil, then in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, now in the union territory of Ladakh.  That was not the first time I discovered the ubiquitous nature of ‘Baru’. On an earlier visit with the PM to Jammu I was welcomed at the Raj Bhavan by a young army officer. “Good morning, Sir!” Said Major Baru of the Dogra Regiment as I stepped out of a vehicle in the Prime Minister’s motorcade.  “I am also a Baru, sir!” He added enthusiastically. He was delighted to see a fellow Dogra in the Prime Minister’s office.

I had to disappoint the young major. I am no Dogra. I am a Telugu from Hyderabad. My name is not pronounced in the Dogra way – Baroo – but with an emphasis on the first vowel  - Baaru. A couple of years before that my family and I were driving up from Kalka to Simla for a weekend holiday when we found a board that pointed towards Gurudwara Baru Sahib. How on Earth did a Baru end up in a Gurudwara?

My father did the research for me. It was serendipitous. He was in California with my brother. They drove in to a ‘Baru Gas’ station. The Sikh owner handed over a pamphlet explaining the name. His family were devotees of Gurudwara Baru Sahib. A letter was sent off to the manager of the Gurudwara, Dr Davinder Singh asking ‘why Baru’?  Promptly arrived a reply on a letterhead of Gurudwara Baru Sahib, P.O Baru Sahib, Via Rajgarh District, Sirmore, Himachal Pradesh - 173101.

It was sometime in the early 1920s, explained the letter, that a Sikh guru, Sant Attar Singh Ji Hari Sadhu Maharaj made a ‘divine prediction’ that a place existed in the Himalayas from where young children would spread the message of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji Maharaj to bring ‘permanent peace in this world.’  His disciple, Sant Teja Singh Ji, identified the place near a village named ‘Baru’. The word Baru, the Sikh gentleman explained in his letter, means ‘elder or supreme’ - so named due to the many Rishis and Munis who meditated at this place over the centuries. People who came to learn of this place named it ‘Baru Sahib’, and so the name of the Gurdwara.

            Since the word ‘baru’ has no meaning in Telugu and since there is no village named Baru anywhere in Andhra Pradesh we were always curious about the origins of our family name. My grandmother’s theory that she spun for us in our childhood, and that which we lapped up enthusiastically, feeling self-important, was that ‘baru varu’ (of baru) became the shorter version of ‘darbaru varu’ – of the darbar. That a Baru ancestor was a member of the darbar of the king of Rajah Mahendravaram, the original and now new name of Rajahmundry, the ancestral home of the Baru family.

“Your ancestors were members of the Rajah’s darbar,” my grandmother would tell me and I spread the word around every time I was asked about the meaning of my surname. This went on till I drove past Gurdwara Baru Sahib.

            Putting together the three encounters with a Baru in the Himalayas I decided we were like the Nehrus. Our school textbooks told us that the ancestors of Jawaharlal Nehru came down from Kashmir to settle in Allahabad. That he was a Kashmiri Brahmin and his ancestors must have lived along a river or a stream, a ‘nehar’, and hence Nehru.  

If this family of Kashmiri Brahmins settled in Allahabad, I decided, my ancestors chose to settle in Rajahmundry! For Rajahmundry is where the Baru family had a street named after it. The Nehrus wet their feet in the Ganga, the Barus wet theirs’ in the Godavari, with my great grandfather building his home right on the banks of the Godavari.

            This seemed a satisfactory story till I landed in Singapore. There was Jalan Baru and Tiong Baru and many more ‘barus’ all around, from Malaysia to Indonesia, with Baru sometimes spelt as Bahru. In Malay and Bahasa Indonesia ‘baru’ or ‘bahru’ means ‘new’ or ‘fresh’.  Ah well, I decided, maybe my ancestors did not come down from the Himalayas. They must have sailed across the waters from Malaysia to the coast of Cholamandalam - Coromandel. After all, Rajahmundry was not far away from the Andhra coast. It seemed a good story to tell, especially with so many from Andhra flying off to Singapore and Malaysia.

But then, one soon discovered, Andhra’s neighbouring state of Odisha is full of baru. A Baru Bai temple, Baru Bakul and Baru Bedha villages, and so on. So was the journey of my ancestors less adventurous and enterprising? Did they not descend from the Himalayas nor cross the Bay of Bengal but just moved south from Odisha?

The Wiktionary claims that in Sanskrit baru means young, noble, brave and even wealthy. In Brazil, baru is an edible nut! Colombia has a Baru island, off the coast of Cartagena. On the island of Sumatra there was a trading post named Barus, without an apostrophe! A friend on a holiday in Greece sent me a photo of himself standing outside a Baru Bar on a Greek island. It goes on. Finding out the origins of the family name has been as difficult an enterprise as drawing up the family tree.

That was a task my father chose to take up in his retirement. He was able to trace the Baru family’s history back to the early 19^th Century. So we now know that there was once a Baru Ramanatham who had a son named Baru Venkata Ramanarsu who had a son named Baru Radhakrishna who had a son named Baru Venkata Ramanarsu. That last one was my grandfather, a professor of economics at Nizam College, Hyderabad. A migrant from Rajahmundry who retired as Principal of the Warangal Arts College.

We do not know much about the first Ramanatham but his son was a Tahsildar of the Golconda District near Vishakapatnam. Not Hyderabad’s Golconda but one in Andhra. He had a good command over the English language and often functioned as an interpreter for visiting officials of the Crown. He was rewarded with the title of Rao Bahadur. There was one other famous Baru in Rajahmundry, Baru Raja Rao, personal assistant and steno typist assigned to work with Jawaharlal Nehru at Anand Bhavan in Allahabad. When Nehru visited Rajahmundry he stayed at Raja Rao’s home. But I am not sure how he is related!

What then explains my family name? A question I am often asked. I think the ‘Nehru-nehar’ explanation sounds good. But I would like to imagine that my ancestors were among the Rishis and Munis of Baru Sahib, whose meditation made that place in the Himalayas sacred. That we are the descendants of those children sent to spread the message seeking “permanent peace in this world.”