India Or Bharat? Why Not Both?
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2023-09-06 06:20:00
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
With President Murmu sending out G20 dinner invites in the name of 'President of Bharat', there is a strong buzz that the Centre is thinking of changing the official name of country to Bharat. Currently, both India & Bharat are used interchangeably, as used in Article 1 of the Constitution which says "India, that is Bharat". The BJP has a long history of changing names. It is particularly averse to having names of Muslim rulers or any name having colonial connotations. So it will not be surprising if it officially changes India's name to Bharat. An indication of this was available recently when the government introduced Bills to replace the Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act. They were all named with Bharat instead of India.
There is no doubt that the name India was given the official seal by the British (although it is said that it comes from river Indus and the Greeks used it first). Before that, it was known by various names as it was never a country as a whole as we understand it now but an amalgamation of different and independent princely states (although it is also said that when Ram-rajya was established, the country was known as Bharatvarsh). The Muslim invaders chose to call it Hindustan as it was inhabited by Hindus. Currently, India is used in English and Bharat is used in Hindi and most regional languages. But the fact remains that when there is a need to address an all-India audience that is comprised mainly of non-English speaking people, everyone, and particularly politicians, use the name Bharat.
Hence, when Rahul Gandhi embarked on his yatra last year, he chose to name it Bharat Jodo Yatra and not India Jodo Yatra. Hence, too, when K Chandrasekhar Rao's political ambitions soared, he renamed his party as Bharat Rashtra Samiti and not India Rashtra Samiti. Also, although the opposition alliance has named itself I.N.D.I.A, the slogan it uses is Judega Bharat, Jeetega India, signifying that although it calls itself INDIA, it wants to unite Bharat. The alliance has charged that the change in name of the country is being done as the BJP is rattled by the acronym I.N.D.I.A.
There is no harm in changing the name to Bharat. But, equally, is there any harm in continuing with the current practice of using both names? Indian postal stamps, for instance, continue to have both the names. That should remain the system.
