India, that is, Bharat

During the recently concluded G20 summit in New Delhi, India was represented as Bharat. An invitation by the President with her title as ‘President of Bharat’ spiked speculation that the present government may change the country's name from ‘India’ to ‘Bharat’. At the very outset, calling this a change or renaming of India is blatantly wrong. Instead, it must be seen as going back to our ancient, original and unique name—Bharat.Reverting India’s name to Bharat is a move that attempts to shed the colonial past and reassert the civilisational origin. Bharat is a name that has existed since time immemorial. From the Rig Veda to the Puranas, the Mahabharata to the Constitution the name Bharat is a constant. Article 1 of the Constitution of India mentions ‘India, that is Bharat’. By the time the colonisers left the country India was already being used as their official name for the country. On 17 September 1949, the members of the Constituent Assembly sat down to debate the name of the country. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the Chairperson of the Drafting Committee, presented Article 1 which says, ‘India, that is Bharat’. Many were displeased by this and expressed their concern over the use of ‘India’. Seth Govind Das argued that Bharat must be placed before India and must be made clear that India is merely a substitute for Bharat. Shri Algu Rai Shastri expressed in detail his deep regret for having failed to give a proper name to this country, being unable to rise above the slave mentality and submitting ourselves to our colonial past. .The name Bharat is said to have taken its origin to refer to the land inhabited by the descendants of King Bharata, son of King Dushyant. Geographically it refers to the land between the sea and the mountains—the Indian Ocean and the Himalayas. The nomenclature Bharata has different meanings. In Sanskrit, ‘bha’ means light and ‘Ra–ta’ means 'revelling in’. Bharata refers to a civilization that revels in light, which can mean Knowledge or Truth. Thus, Bharat refers to a civilisation of seekers. The name ‘India’ originated from the word Sind and was further translated by the Greek and Chinese travellers as ‘Hindu/Indu’, and eventually it ended at ‘India’ as mispronounced by the British. In its entire history the name ‘India’ was an external reference to the sub-continent and was never an identity assumed by the people themselves.Changing the official name of a country is not unprecedented. Many countries have changed their names before for valid reasons. The legal implications and validity of the name change will depend entirely upon the reasons for the change, something we are not at dearth of. India becoming Bharat does not require a rewriting of the constitution. It merely requires a constitutional amendment of Article 1 and a sweeping provision that declares that the use of the word ‘India’ shall hereinafter be a reference to Bharat. The important aspect here is that ‘Bharat’ be the primary name and ‘India’ be a substitute or reference to ‘Bharat’.What is in a name? The name of the country determines the country’s identity. One must understand that the name India was given by the colonial rulers. Renaming a country is a sign of dominance and of reasserting the control that the masters have. When slaves were brought in through the ships from the African continent the first act was to rename them, when war prisoners were brought into prisons the first procedure was to rename them often with numbers. The changing reference of a country by a name other than its own is to cut off the thread that links that country to that of its origin or roots. In fact, upon independence the very first move should have been to revert to the original name, Bharat, thus declaring its roots and its independence to the world. It is time that we grow out of this colonial mindset and having shed our slave mentality, assert, appreciate and once again embrace our identity as—Bharat!