India or Bharat?

Not the first to change its name

Speculation sparked among the world when India prompted a change in name when the invitations for guests sent out for the G20 summit referred to Droupadi Murmu as “President of Bharat” instead of “President of India”.

Sambit Patra, national spokesperson for the ruling Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) posted an image on X (formerly Twitter) of an official invitation card referring Narendra Modi as the “Prime Minister of Bharat” to Indonesia for the ASEAN Indo-Pacific forum in Jakarta.

While India is the most commonly used term worldwide, it is often called as ‘Bharat’ or ‘Hindustan’ by Indian residents and the public. ‘India’ means ‘Bharat’ in the most widely used regional language – Hindi. Bharat is a Sanskrit term which originated from the scriptures 2,000 years ago.

Since coming into power in 2014, Modi’s strategy for creating India a Hindu nationalist country has been spinning the political world.

Critics have seen this as an attempt to erase the Muslim Mughals who ruled the country for 300 years along with the British colonisation from where the term ‘India’ was originated.

With frictions coming from the oppositions party regarding the change in name which has been the country’s long-established term, the BJP government will need two-thirds of support to rename ‘India’.

Lawmaker Shashi Tharoor contrarily posted on X (formerly Twitter), “While there is no constitutional objection to calling India ‘Bharat’, which is one of the country’s two official names, I hope the government will not be so foolish as to completely dispense with ‘India’, which has incalculable brand value built up over the centuries.”

“We should continue to use both words rather than relinquish our claim to a name redolent of history, a name that is recognised around the world.”

Over the decades, several names of cities in India have been changed by the Indian State government including Bombay which changed to Mumbai, Calcutta became Kolkata, Madras changed to Chennai, Bangalore became Bangaluru – to name a few.

Countries that changed their names

Countries are often known to change their name for political, cultural, geographic or religious reasons. Several nations that we know of have since changed their name and are now known by a different name.

In 2022, Turkish President informed the United Nations that the country should now be termed as ‘Türkiye’ in all languages.

He said, “the word ‘Türkiye’ represents and expresses the culture, civilisation, and values of the Turkish nation in the best way.”

Czech Republic was recognised as Czechia by the government. Although, it is still referred to as Czech Republic by the Central European nations.

In 2019, President Miloš Zeman said, “I use the word Czechia because it sounds nicer and its shorter than the cold Czech Republic.”

The Netherlands relinquished the name Holland as part of a rebranding campaign in January 2020. The government believes that “the Netherlands’ better represents the country as open, modern and inclusive.”

Relatively, the term ‘Bharat’ may look as a “well-reasoned” and “uncontroversial” replacement for ‘India’, but the change in name has evoked an outcry from the political opposition parties in India as well as the Muslim communities and Hindu nationalists in the south, reflecting upon the ongoing distress between region, language, and politics.

To officially change the name of ‘India’ to ‘Bharat’ is likely seen by many people as a rallying commotion for the right-wing nationalists rather than embracing the Hindu culture and history of India.

The Politics Behind A Name Change

When Türkiye changed its name from Turkey last year, much of the reasoning behind the change pointed to reasons ranging from cultural authenticity to disassociation from the bird of the same name.

The move to spell and pronounce the name as it is in Turkish was seen as a better representation Turkish culture and values, with Foreign Minister of the time Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu tweeting that the change would “increase our country’s brand value”.

This may indeed be true and valid, however some analysis also pointed to political context behind the change.

Philip M. Carter, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Florida International University and co-author of Languages in the World: How History, Culture, and Politics Shape Language, writes that the reason countries change their name “almost always has to do with their politics and power”.

Carter references some observers who have speculated about the change being used as a diversionary tactic to drive nationalist votes and draw attention away from other economic and political problems.

What parallels can we draw with the speculation that India could change its name to Bharat?

For starters, the situation is not exactly the same - in switching to Türkiye, Westerners were switching to the in-language spelling and pronunciation of the same name already used in Türkiye. In the case of India and Bharat, both names are different but both are also officially recognised in India’s constitution.

So what political and historical context is the Bharat controversy emerging from?

While Türkiye gave reasons such as brand value, the ruling BJP in India has made the case for Bharat based on other reasons, saying that ‘India’ is a symbol of colonial slavery.  

However, in his most recent analysis, Carter details the history behind the name Bharat, a Hindi word, and states that this ‘will likely continue to serve as a rallying cry for right-wing nationalists’ and ‘reopen old wounds for Muslims’ in India.

To get an Australian perspective on this, we spoke to one academic working on Indian politics at a G8 university who is reluctant to reveal their name given the politically charged nature of the issue. They spoke with us under condition of anonymity.

Asked about initial reaction to the news, they said: “Given that Modi is known for a kind of very charismatic form of populism I suspect that this would be marketed as an authentic return to mythologise Indian Hindu past that I can imagine gaining quite some purchase”.

They pointed out that India has a population of over 200 million Muslims.

“I would suspect that the overwhelming majority of those would have quite significant problems with a word that in contemporary India is explicitly Hindu coded becoming the official name of India”.

They did point out that the name Bharat pre-dates Hindu nationalism by a very long time, historically speaking.

“But I think it’s critical to realise just because something has a pre-history before the Hindu nationalist movement doesn’t mean that the meaning hasn’t fundamentally shifted when we pay attention to the fact that it’s Hindu nationalists that are articulating this argument”, they went on to say.

“The implication that anybody who is not Hindu is not as Indian or not Indian enough compared to a Hindu majority. This becomes deeply concerning when we look at the state of Indian religious and cast majorities.”

We tried to contact the Hindu Council of Australia for their perspective on the speculation about the name change, however we had not heard back at time of publication.

In order to gain an on-ground perspective on the name change speculation.we reached out to Arjun who currently lives in Southern India. You can hear some of his perspective on the name change speculation below.