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

Whose Rama?

Book Review Title: Whose Rama? [Malayalam] Author: T S Syamkumar Publisher: D C Books, Kerala Pages: 352 Rama may be an incarnation of God Vishnu, but is he as noble a man [ Maryada Purushottam ] as he is projected to be by certain sections of Hindus? This is the theme of Dr Syamkumar’s book, written in Malayalam. There is no English translation available yet. Rama is a creation of the Brahmins, asserts the author of this book. The Ramayana upholds the unjust caste system created by Brahmins for their own wellbeing. Everyone else exists for the sake of the Brahmin wellbeing. If the Kshatriyas are given the role of rulers, it is only because the Brahmins need such men to fight and die for them. Valmiki’s Rama too upheld that unjust system merely because that was his Kshatriya-dharma, allotted by the Brahmins. One of the many evils that Valmiki’s Rama perpetrates heartlessly is the killing of Shambuka, a boy who belonged to a low caste but chose to become an ascetic. The...
8 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

In this Wonderland

I didn’t write anything in the last few days. Nor did I feel any urge to write. I don’t know if this lack of interest to write is what’s called writer’s block. Or is it simple disenchantment with whatever is happening around me? We’re living in a time that offers much, too much, to writers. The whole world looks like a complex plot for a gigantic epic. The line between truth and fiction has disappeared. Mass murders have become no-news. Animals get more compassion than fellow human beings. Even their excreta are venerated! Folk tales are presented as scientific truths while scientific truths are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. When the young generation in Nepal set fire to their Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, they were making an unmistakable statement: that they are sick of their political leaders and their systems. Is there any country whose leaders don’t sicken their citizens? I’m just wondering. Maybe, there are good leaders still left in a few coun...
11 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more