Disputes over “India” versus “Bharat” have gained ground since opposition parties in July announced a new alliance — called INDIA — to unseat Modi and defeat his party ahead of national elections in 2024. The acronym stands for Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance. Since then, some officials in Modi’s party have demanded that the country be called Bharat instead of India.
Ahh. Ok.
The reason they did this is because they are rattled by the fact that the opposition political parties have united and decided to name their alliance as I.N.D.I.A. (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance).
BJP is rattled by the fact that the opposition is using patriotic rhethoric which they are unable to criticise.
Officially both names Bharat and India are valid anyway.
I think a political alliance calling itself an acronym that is literally the country’s official name, in order to mislead, is a bigger problem.
Sure, I don’t mind calling Germany Deutschland when I’m over there to be respectful, and if a German gave me an invitation written ‘Deutschland’ I wouldn’t think much of it, except as a bit of native speak.
Sanskrit is not quite the national language though, like Latin to Europe.
This is a good opportunity to mention a pet-peeve of mine:
- The various term variations “Germany” derive from the name Germanic tribes.
- The various term variations “Alemania” derive from the name Alemanic tribes.
- The various term variations “Deutsch” or “Teutsch” do not derrive from the name Teutonic tribes.
This last one is an etymological false friend. “Deutsch” derives from thiutisk (þeudisk) and in the Western Franconian and Germanic tongues it meant “our people”. It’s derived from the Indo-European term thiuda (Þiuda).
This is the Hindu nationalists being Hindu nationalists, they wanted to change it back for a while now.
I don’t think this has got anything to do with Hindu nationalism.
Indian constitution already mentions “India, that is Bharat”.
India was already known by its two other names, Bharat and Hindustan.
It literally is…
The BJP is all about far right Hindu nationalism, and the minor parties have unified under the acronym I.N.D.I.A.
So now the BJP is trying to change India’s name.
Because they do t care about fixing any of the actual problems, they just want to maintain control.
No, it’s Hindu nationalism, congress didn’t care about it, and like you said it has 2 other names.
But the BJP specifically (their name literally starts with Bharat) wants to push towards the ancient traditional sanskrit version of Hindu culture.
As a secular Hindu, this is moronic nationalism.
I’ll just drop this here. The whole thing is pretty dumb. They probably did this cause the opposition parties fromed an alliance called the INDIA Alliance.