Editorial: What’s in a name? Everything …

CHENNAI: Earlier this month, invitations sent by President Droupadi Murmu to the heads of states and governments and the Chief Ministers of Indian States for an official banquet in connection with the G-20 Summit in New Delhi caused a controversy on account of the word ‘India’ being replaced with ‘Bharat’ on the invitation cards. The move seemed indicative of the government’s keenness to expand the use of the word Bharat in official communication in the months to come. Opposition leaders shot back at this nomenclature shift, alleging that this change was a way to prevent the INDIA bloc from being identified with the country’s name.

This was not the first time that the Centre has favoured the use of Bharat in official communications. The MEA had used the phrase Prime Minister of Bharat in protocol documents to identify Modi during his visit to South Africa and Greece, but this development went unnoticed. The preference for the Sanskrit word Bharat over India, which happens to be a Western coinage that got grafted onto us during the British Raj, is symbolic of the country’s decolonisation project, one of the five vows (Panch Pran) pitched by the PM in his Independence Day address last year.

It’s worth remembering that the name Bharat did not figure in the first draft of our Constitution introduced by BR Ambedkar in November 1948 in the Constituent Assembly. It was a year later in September 1949 that Ambedkar moved the amendment to draft Article 1, which mentions the country’s name: ‘India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.’ Article 1 in the Hindi translation of the Constitution says that, “Bharat means India”, which implies that Bharat is treated as the translation of India. What it also conveys is that Bharat does not stick out as an independent word in the original Constitution. It is to be used only in the Hindi translation of the Constitution.

This is a practice that has prevailed in internal and international documents, which are usually in English. For instance, the Gazette published in English is referred to as the Gazette of India, while in Hindi, it’s called Bharat ka Rajpatra. If the Modi government intends to use Bharat in the English language in the administration’s internal documents, it is fully at liberty to do so. However, they cannot do this with international documents unless they officially change the country’s name to Bharat and drop India, so to speak.

Using Bharat interchangeably with India in official communication could lead to utter confusion. Agreements and treaties signed with foreign countries are in the name of the Republic of India, and not Bharat. Moreover, if there was to be a change, it should have been started with records and communications within the country first, and following the approval of the Parliament, and then gradually changed in regard to communications with the outside world.

India as a name evokes a lot of respect and an indelible brand value in the comity of nations. Bharat is representative of our shared heritage and traditions, whereas India is representative of a modern democracy with a vibrant economy. Both these are essential to the fabric of our national identity. The bottom line: A country’s name cannot and should not be altered on account of political agenda.