Skip to main content

Bharat or India

From India Today


Name-changing is one of the hobbies of India’s present Prime Minister. I wrote about it a few days back too though rather facetiously: see India, Bharat, Hindustan. The latest issue of India Today has devoted page after page to the PM’s present rechristening. I wish to bring here a few interesting observations from some of those eminent writers in the weekly.

1. Shashi Tharoor

Tharoor argues that “In English, and therefore internationally, our country was referred to as ‘India’; in Hindi and other Indian languages, ‘Bharat’ was our country’s name.” For example: We, the people of India / Bharat ke log. Or The President of India / Bharat ke Rashtrapati.

Tharoor gives us an interesting parallel from Germany. “’Germany’ is Deutschland at home and to all who speak Deutsch (the language we refer to as ‘German’).” Tharoor dismantles the argument that India is a name given by the British colonialists. The “name India has nothing to do with British colonialism: it predates the British presence in India by nearly two millennia. The ancient Greeks and Persians used the term ‘India’ for the land beyond the river Sindhu…”

Towards the end of his essay, Tharoor thrusts “the final clincher: Since our neighbours, the Arabs and the Persians, pronounced ‘s’ as ‘h’, it is also they who called the people across the Sindhu the ‘Hindus’. So if the BJP rejects the name India, they will have to reject the name ‘Hindu’ by the same logic, since that is equally of foreign origin.”

2. Arvind P Datar

Like Tharoor’s example of Germany, Datar (senior advocate in the Supreme Court) gives the example of Japan. Japan is the English name for ‘Nihon’ or ‘Nippon’. “It will be strange and improper if an invitation in English is issued by the Emperor of Nippon or the Chancellor of Deutschland. Indeed, India is the name that has to be used when the communication is in English and in in international meetings.”

Datar’s final paragraph is: “India rightly aspires to be a great economic power and changing our identity to Bharat will not in the least help us become a five trillion-dollar economy or resolve major problems facing the nation. The cost of replacing India with Bharat will be huge with no corresponding benefit. Sadly, replacing India with Bharat only symbolises a special type of nationalism that may pay political dividends but will cost the country dear.”

3. Pavan K Varma

The futility and fatuity of this name-changing is summed up thus by Pavan K Varma, author and former diplomat. “Interestingly, in 2004, when the Mulayam Singh Yadav government in the Uttar Pradesh assembly passed a resolution to rename India as Bharat, the BJP walked out in protest. Is it now reversing its stand because the opposition alliance is called INDIA [The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance]? Or is it a symbol of cultural reclamation, at the cost of eliminating another equally valid and indigenous narrative of history? Either way, Ananthamurthy’s logic was right: ordinary Indians have long happily accepted both Bharat and India, and also, incidentally, Hindustan. Why reopen this matter?”

4. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

“The name Bharat stemmed from the Sanatan heritage in post-Vedic times and has caste / racial connotations,” says Shepherd. “The name of the subcontinent, India, is more acceptable as it mirrors our most ancient advancement. It unites all under a common identity – Dravidian, Aryan and Mongoloid races and the teeming agrarian productive masses. Most such productive masses exist now in social categories like Shudra (OBC), Dalit and Adivasis. The name of this country must reflect their contribution too. ‘Bharat’ has no such civilisational significance; it does not encompass the long-existing productive civilisation of this subcontinent.”

As Tharoor pointed out, Shepherd too argues that “The use of ‘Hinduism’ should … be relinquished by the RSS/BJP forces to oppose both Muslims and British rule. An ideal nationalist name for their religion could be ‘Sanatan’. Then the Shudras / Dalits / Adivasis can draw a clear line between them and Sanatans. The concept of Sanatan stands for varna dharma.” 

From India Today


Concluding remark

India Today has many more essays on this topic, written by supporters of Modi’s christening exercise. I chose to highlight a few points that struck me as interesting.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanSeptember 20, 2023 at 3:38 AM

    Hari Om
    Indeed, it is as I mentioned the other day...re the language aspect. Other points also well made... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 20, 2023 at 6:01 AM

      Modi should expend his energy and the country's resources on worthwhile causes.

      Delete
  2. magiceyeSeptember 20, 2023 at 6:52 AM

    All sane voices will be drowned in the raucous cries of (faux?) nationalism.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Immuno DiagnosticsSeptember 22, 2023 at 4:41 PM

    Creative and informative blogs have been posted. Thanks for sharing.
    pathology labs in malviya nagar delhi

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
16 comments
Read more

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...
14 comments
Read more

Duryodhana Returns

Duryodhana was bored of his centuries-long exile in Mythland and decided to return to his former kingdom. Arnab Gau-Swami had declared Bihar the new Kurukshetra and so Duryodhana chose Bihar for his adventure. And Bihar did entertain him with its modern enactment of the Mahabharata. Alliances broke, cousins pulled down each other, kings switched sides without shame, and advisers looked like modern-day Shakunis with laptops. Duryodhana’s curiosity was more than piqued. There’s more masala here than in the old Hastinapura. He decided to make a deep study of this politics so that he could conclusively prove that he was not a villain but a misunderstood statesman ahead of his time. The first lesson he learns is that everyone should claim that they are the Pandavas, and portray everyone else as the Kauravas. Every party claims they stand for dharma, the people, and justice. And then plot to topple someone, eliminate someone else, distort history, fabricate expedient truths, manipulate...
14 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more