India vs Bharat: How India's name changed with time and time?

There is speculation that the country's name will be changed from India to Bharat, despite the fact that Article 1 of the Constitution uses both names interchangeably: "India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States." In addition, numerous titles, such as the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Railways, already have Hindi forms with "Bharatiya" in them.

The Supreme Court dismissed a petition in June 2020 asking to remove the word "India" from the Constitution and replace it with the word "Bharat" in order to "ensure the citizens of this country get over the colonial past," stating that "India is already called Bharat in the Constitution itself." Here is a short history of the nation's names, from the Rig Veda to the Constitution of India, read to know how India's name changed with time to time.

So, where does the name 'Bharat' originate?

The term "Bharat", "Bharata", or "Bharatvarsha" has its origins in Puranic literature and the epic Mahabharata. According to the Puranas, Bharata is the area between the "sea in the south and the abode of snow in the north."

Catherine Clémentin-Ojha, a social scientist, defined Bharata as a religious and socio-cultural entity, rather than a governmental or geographical entity. In her 2014 paper, 'India, that is Bharat...': One Country, Two Names (South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal), Clémentin-Ojha defined 'Bharata' as "supraregional and subcontinental territory where the Brahmanical system of society prevails."

Bharata is also the name of an ancient ruler of legend who was the ancestor of the Rig Vedic tribe of the Bharatas, and thus the progenitor of all subcontinental peoples.

Jawaharlal Nehru alluded to the "fundamental unity of India" that has lasted from "the remote past" in a letter written in January 1927: "a unity of a common faith and culture." India was Bharata, the Hindu holy land, and it is not without significance that the great Hindu pilgrimage sites are located in India's four corners - the extreme south overlooking Ceylon, the extreme west washed by the Arabian Sea, the east facing the Bay of Bengal, and the north in the Himalayas."

What about the terms 'India' and 'Hindustan'?

The name Hindustan is thought to have derived from 'Hindu,' the Persian cognate form of the Sanskrit 'Sindhu' (Indus), which gained currency with the Achaemenid Persian conquest of the Indus valley (northwestern parts of the subcontinent) beginning in the 6th century BC (during The Buddha's time in the Gangetic basin).

The Achaemenids used the term to identify the lower Indus basin, and the suffix "stan" was added to the name about the first century of the Christian era to become "Hindustan." The Greeks, who had learned the word 'Hind' from the Achaemenids, transliterated it as 'Indus'.

By the time the Macedonian king Alexander conquered India in the third century BC, 'India' had become synonymous with the territory beyond the Indus.

The name 'Hindustan' was used to denote the entire Indo-Gangetic plain by the time of the early Mughals (16th century). In his work 'From Hindustan to India: Naming Change in Changing Names' (Journal of South Asian Studies, 2003), historian Ian J Barrow stated that "in the mid-to-late eighteenth century, Hindustan frequently referred to the territories of the Mughal emperor, which comprised much of South Asia."

Beginning in the late 18th century, British maps began to use the designation 'India,' and the term 'Hindustan' began to lose its link with all of South Asia.

"Part of the appeal of the term India may have been its Graeco-Roman associations, long history of use in Europe, and adoption by scientific and bureaucratic organisations such as the Survey of India," Barrow said.

"The adoption of India demonstrates how colonial nomenclature signalled changes in perspectives and aided in the understanding of the subcontinent as a single, bounded, and British political territory," he continued.

How did the words 'Bharat' and 'India' end up in the Constitution?

Nehru used the terms "India," "Bharata," and "Hindustan" in his masterpiece, "Discovery of India": "Often, as I wandered from meeting to meeting, I spoke to my audiences of this India of ours, of Hindustan and of Bharata, the old Sanskrit name derived from the mythical founders of the race."

When it came to designating India in the Constitution, 'Hindustan' was eliminated, and both 'Bharat' and 'India' were kept.

On September 17, 1949, during the Constituent Assembly deliberations, the "Name and territory of the Union" was brought up for discussion. From the moment the first article was read aloud, "India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States," a schism developed among the participants. Many members were opposed to the usage of the term "India," which they considered as a reminder of the colonial past. Hari Vishnu Kamath suggested that the first article read, "Bharat, or in English, India, shall be and such." Seth Govind Das, representing the Central Provinces and Berar, proposed that "Bharat be known as India also in foreign countries."