The Indians were lost in speculation this Tuesday, September 5 following rumors that the authorities plan to abandon the official use of the English name of their country, “India”, called “Bharat” in an official invitation addressed to the leaders of the G20. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has indeed worked to remove the lingering symbols of British colonization from the cityscape, political institutions and history books of the world’s now most populous country.
Narendra Modi himself generally resorts when he speaks of India to the word “Bharat”, which dates back to ancient Hindu texts written in Sanskrit and which is one of its two official names under its Constitution. Members of the BJP, the ruling Hindu nationalist party, have previously campaigned against the use of the name “India”, which has its roots in Western antiquity and was imposed by the UK. Next weekend, New Delhi will host a G20 summit to be crowned by a state dinner offered, according to the invitation cards, by the “president of Bharat”.
More than a semantic dispute
The government has convened an extraordinary session of parliament for later in the month, while remaining tight-lipped on its legislative agenda. But the News18 TV channel said it was told by unnamed government sources that BJP parliamentarians would introduce a special resolution on that occasion to give prominence to the official use of the term “Bharat”.
Rumors about the project were enough to elicit a mix of offended reactions from Narendra Modi’s opponents and enthusiastic support in other quarters. “I hope the government will not be stupid enough to completely do without ‘India'”, thus commented Shashi Tharoor, an official of the Congress party (opposition), on X, formerly Twitter. “We should continue to use both words” and not give up on “a name steeped in history, a name recognized around the world,” he added.
Former cricketer Virender Sehwag on the contrary welcomed the prospect of such a name change and urged the Indian Cricket Board to start putting “Bharat” on team uniforms. “India is a name given by the British (and) it is high time to get our original name ‘Bharat’ back,” he argued.
For decades, Indian governments of various persuasions have sought to erase the traces of the British colonial era by renaming roads and even entire towns. The process has intensified since Mr. Modi became Prime Minister (2014) and he stressed in public speeches the need for India to abandon the smacks of the “colonial mentality”. His government also had the Islamic names of places imposed under the Mughal empire which preceded British colonization removed, a measure emblematic, denounce his detractors, of a desire to establish the supremacy of the majority Hindu religion in India.