Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the G20 in New Delhi on Saturday behind a plaque declaring his country identified as “Bharat”, the strongest signal to date of a potential change to the official name “India”, inherited from its colonial past.
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A few days ago, a summit dinner invitation was extended to the G20 leaders in the name of “President Bharat”, fueling many rumors that the official use of the country’s English name would be abandoned.
Mr. Modi generally uses, when talking about India, the word “Bharat” which comes from ancient Hindu texts written in Sanskrit.
In the “Mahabharata”, a Sanskrit epic of Hindu mythology, the son of King Dushyant and Shakuntala is called “Bharat” and the kingdom he inherited is called “Bharatvarsha”.
Hindus make up the majority of India’s 1.4 billion people, but many religious minorities, particularly the more than 200 million Muslims, fear Modi wants to turn the country back into a Hindu state.
According to Zakia Soman, co-founder of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, an advocacy organization, the possible name change is another attempt to “polarize” the Hindu government.
“This takes us away from the real questions and the real problems facing society in this country,” he told AFP. “We have always been India and Bharat. By simply imposing +Bharat+, they are belittling our legacy and heritage.”
India and Bharat are the two official names of the country according to its Constitution, Article 1 of which begins: “India is Bharat”.
But members of the BJP, the ruling Hindu nationalist party, have previously campaigned against the use of the name “India”, which dates back to Western times and was adopted by the British.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has sought to remove lingering symbols of British colonialism from the cityscape, political institutions and history books of the country that is now the most populous in the world.
In the country’s north, the city of Allahabad, named by the Mughal ruler Akbar in the 16th century, was renamed in 2018 to Prayagraj, a Sanskrit name.
This week, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar appeared to support the idea of dropping the name “India”.
“Bharat” has “a meaning, understanding and connotation attached to it which is also reflected in our Constitution,” he said, quoted by the Hindustan Times newspaper, Wednesday.
The prospect of such change alone is enough to elicit a mix of offended reactions among Narendra Modi’s opponents and enthusiastic support from others.
“I hope the government is not so stupid without ‘India’ all the way,” commented Shashi Tharoor, an official from the (opposition) Congress party, on X (formerly Twitter).
“We must continue to use both words” and not let go of “a name that is rich in history, a name that is recognized throughout the world,” he added.
On the other hand, former cricketer Virender Sehwag welcomed the prospect of the name change and urged the Indian Cricket Board to start using ‘Bharat’ on the team jersey.
“India is the name given by the British (and) it is high time to get back our original name + Bharat +,” he argued.
