The current government is considering a yet another silly thing – to change the name of the country from India to Bharat! The invitations to a state dinner to mark India’s hosting of this year’s G20 came not, as you’d expect, from the office of the president of India, but from the “president of Bharat”. There’s a growing push among BJP MPs to adopt the name change, since “India” – the conventional English rendering of the country’s name – to some at least, symbolises “colonial slavery”. The nation of more than 1.4 billion people is officially known by two names, India and Bharat, but the former is most commonly used, both domestically and internationally.
Bharat is an ancient Sanskrit word which many historians believe dates back to early Hindu texts. The word also means India in Hindi. Given the Hindu-nationalist ideology of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and its push for increased use of Hindi, critics responded to the use of Bharat in the invites by suggesting the government was pushing for the name to be officially changed. Changing India’s name to only Bharat would require an amendment to the constitution which would need to be passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament.
The BJP has already renamed cities and places that were linked to the Mughal and colonial periods. Last year, for instance, the Mughal Garden at the presidential palace in New Delhi was renamed Amrit Udyan. Critics said the new names are an attempt to erase the Mughals, who were Muslims and ruled the subcontinent for almost 300 years, from Indian history.