India or Bharat?

Two names in one line

The name India goes back to the Indus River, Sindhu in Sanskrit, which ancient hymns of the Rigveda already mention.^[3] Bharat is an ancient Sanskrit word that many historians trace to early Hindu texts, and it is also the Hindi word for India.^[2]

When India’s Constituent Assembly debated the first article of the constitution in 1948–49, one member wanted the country renamed Bharat because of its older history, and another proposed using both names. The chairman of the drafting committee suggested the words “India, that is Bharat”. Only one member objected that the phrasing was inelegant, and the Assembly adopted it on 18 September 1949.^[1]

“India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.”^[1]

Which name first?

In practice India is by far the more common name at home and abroad.^[2] In 2020 a petition asked the Supreme Court to make Bharat the only name, arguing that “India” came from Greek and to drop it would help the country leave its colonial past behind. Chief Justice S. A. Bobde’s bench declined: “India is already called Bharat in the Constitution.”^[4]

On 5 September 2023, invitations to a G20 summit dinner named Droupadi Murmu as “President of Bharat” instead of “President of India”. Leaders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party welcomed it, calling “India” a colonial “symbol of slavery”, and Indian media reported that the government might bring a resolution to change the name to parliament.^[2]

The opposition, which had formed an alliance called INDIA two months earlier, objected. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said there was no constitutional objection to calling the country Bharat, but hoped the government would not throw away “India”, a name with “incalculable brand value built up over centuries”.^[2]