India or Bharat? G20 dinner invitation triggers name change row

NEW DELHI — A Group of 20 dinner invitation referring to India as “Bharat” has sparked a row in New Delhi, with opposition parties accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of attempting to unilaterally rename the nation.

The invitation for the dinner this Saturday, sent to dignitaries attending the weekend’s G20 summit, was in the name of the “President of Bharat” rather than the customary “President of India.” Without divulging the reason for the change, an Indian government source told Nikkei Asia that this was “the first time” the country’s Hindi name had been used in such a context.

Now speculation is swirling that a bill to formally rename the country could be submitted at a special parliamentary session the government has scheduled for Sept. 18 to 22. So far, the government has not clarified the session’s agenda.

The name “Bharat” comes from Sanskrit and is not itself unusual. Article 1 of the Constitution of India says, “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States,” mentioning both the English and Hindi names of the country, which gained independence in 1947 after almost 200 years of British rule.

India would be far from the first country to seek a name change, as well. Turkey, for example, has recently pushed to be internationally recognized as “Turkiye.”

But in India, critics see the abrupt break with convention as part of a pattern of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party government advancing its Hindu nationalist agenda while attempting to rid the country of the last traces of colonial rule, such as by renaming roads and remodeling old buildings. The move also comes as a coalition of over two dozen opposition parties prepares for the 2024 elections under the banner INDIA — an acronym for Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance.

“While there is no constitutional objection to calling India ‘Bharat’, which is one of the country’s two official names, I hope the government will not be so foolish as to completely dispense with ‘India’, which has incalculable brand value built up over centuries,” Shashi Tharoor, a senior leader of main opposition Indian National Congress party, posted Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter, sharing a copy of the dinner invitation.

“We should continue to use both words rather than relinquish our claim to a name redolent of history, a name that is recognized around the world,” wrote Tharoor, whose party belongs to the INDIA coalition.

Mehbooba Mufti, an opposition alliance partner from the northern Jammu and Kashmir region, said the BJP’s “aversion to India’s foundational principle of unity in diversity has touched a new low.”

“By reducing India’s many names from Hindustan & India to now only Bharat shows its pettiness & intolerance,” she wrote on X.

“Hindustan,” another popular name for the country, is Persian for “the land of Indus” and was widely used during the Mughal era. The British referred to the subcontinent as “India,” derived from the Indus River. In ancient Hindu scriptures and texts, the area was called “Bharat.”

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, whose Aam Aadmi Party also belongs to the new opposition bloc, told reporters that the BJP was rattled by the INDIA alliance. He suggested that concerns about votes were prompting the ruling party to resort to such tactics.

“I do not have any official information [about renaming the country], but I have heard rumors. It is being said that this is being done because several parties have formed an alliance named INDIA,” Kejriwal said, adding that the country belongs to 1.4 billion people and not one party. “If INDIA alliance renames itself as ‘BHARAT,’ will they change ‘Bharat’ too?”

A sign with a picture of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes G20 delegates at Indira Gandhi International Airport on Sept. 5, ahead of this weekend’s summit.   © Reuters

On the other hand, vocal supporters of using “Bharat” include Himanta Biswa Sarma, a senior BJP leader and chief minister of the northeastern state of Assam, who told reporters that the name has been in use for thousands of years: “Our country was ‘Bharat,’ is ‘Bharat’ and will remain ‘Bharat.'”

He noted that the Congress party also uses “Bharat,” pointing to senior leader Rahul Gandhi’s “Bharat Jodo Yatra” (“Unite India March”), a 3,500 kilometer trek he took to reconnect with voters across the country. “When it suits you, you use ‘Bharat’ and when it doesn’t suit you, you become India,” Sarma said. “This whole Congress party is against Hindus and ‘Bharat.'”

The controversy over the G20 invitation follows remarks last Friday by Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the BJP’s ideological backbone organization, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, who called on citizens to stop using the name “India” and start using “Bharat.”

“Sometimes we have to say ‘India’ when communicating with English-speaking people, [but] that is not needed,” he said at an event in Guwahati. “We [should use] ‘Bharat’ when we are writing, speaking and everywhere else.”

Former Indian cricketer Virender Sehwag, who has 23.4 million followers on X, posted that “India” “is a name given by the British & it has been long overdue to get our original name ‘Bharat’ back officially.”

The government’s actual intentions remain unclear. After the debate erupted, Modi’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur dismissed talk of an official name change at the upcoming parliament session, telling The Indian Express newspaper that it was based on “rumors.”

But another government document that surfaced this week, on Modi’s visit to Indonesia for the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits, refers to him as the “Prime Minister of Bharat.”