Screenshot / G20
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the G20 summit this Saturday, September 9th.
INDIA – The Indian Prime Minister chooses his vocabulary. During his opening speech at the G20 summit this Saturday, September 9th in New Delhi, Narendra Modi presented himself as the head of government of “Bharat” and not of India.
As you can see in the tweet belowHis country’s plaque, placed before him during his speech, reads ‘Bharat’. It’s not the first time the government has used the term, but it is the strongest signal yet of a possible change to the country’s official name.
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Rumors of this arose when invitations to the summit dinner were sent to G20 leaders in the name of the “President of Bharat”, which was the first signal to abandon the English name “India” to describe the country.
Earlier, Narendra Modi had used the term ‘Bharat’ several times to talk about India. This dates back to ancient Hindu texts written in Sanskrit and is one of the two official names under the constitution. Members of the BJP, the ruling Hindu nationalist party, have also opposed the use of the name “India,” which has roots in Western antiquity and was introduced by the United Kingdom.
Remove a symbol of colonization
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has actually worked to remove the remaining symbols of British colonization from the cityscape, political institutions and history books of what is now the world’s most populous country.
Earlier this year, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar appeared to support the idea of dropping the name “India.” “Bharat,” he said, has “an accompanying meaning, understanding and connotation which is also reflected in our Constitution,” the Hindustan Times newspaper quoted as saying on Wednesday.
The prospect of such a change was enough to provoke a mix of offended reactions from Modi’s opponents and enthusiastic support from other quarters.
“I hope the government won’t be stupid enough to give up on ‘India’ altogether,” Shashi Tharoor, an official from the opposition Congress Party, commented on X (formerly Twitter). “We should continue to use both words” and not abandon “a historic name, a globally recognized name,” he added.
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Former cricketer Virender Sehwag instead welcomed the prospect of such a name change and called on the Indian cricket federation to start featuring “Bharat” on team uniforms. “India is a name given by the British (and) it is high time we got back our original name ‘Bharat’,” he argued.
When Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, the last decade since then has been marked by the deterioration of human rights and democracy in the country.
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