India or Bharat?

September 7, 2023 5:32 AM

The streets of India’s capital were rife with speculation Wednesday that the government might be about to scrap the use of the country’s English name — a dramatic new step in an effort to break with its colonial heritage and appeal to its hard-line Hindu nationalist base.
posted by Etrigan (32 comments total)

man, it would be so much cooler if the campaign to use the name “Bharat” weren’t directly tied to right-wing nationalism
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:58 AM on September 7, 2023 [92 favorites]

/sad trombone

My awesome Bharat Army t-shirt will have to get scrapped.
posted by NoMich at 6:03 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Funniest part is Pakistan in the back pulling a Jay Leno and saying they will use the name if India doesn't want it, since the Indus Valley is in their territory to begin with.
posted by Space Coyote at 6:21 AM on September 7, 2023 [34 favorites]

2023 being as it is, I didn't have to know the naming history of the country to guess that this tied to right wing nationalism.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:43 AM on September 7, 2023 [13 favorites]

what do people from this part of the continent of Asia think about it?
posted by elkevelvet at 7:05 AM on September 7, 2023

The folks in Bandra/Santa Cruz aren’t fond of it, but that’s probably not surprising since many of them still make a point of saying they live in Bombay.
posted by aramaic at 7:09 AM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm all for dismantling colonialism, but this doesn't strike me as a good thing.
posted by slogger at 7:17 AM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

This seems designed to cater to the Hindu nationalist base and stir up communal tensions, using decolonization as a fig leaf, similar to when Ceylon was renamed Sri Lanka (but substitute Buddhism for Hinduism for SL).
posted by sid at 7:19 AM on September 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

My Dad is a strong supporter of Modi and Hindu Nationalist politics and we basically don't talk about politics, EVER. I've told him that if we want to have any kind of relationship, I cannot be hearing that kind of shit, so this was news I didn't expect to hear but the more I think about it, the less surprised I am about it all. It's very much in line with what Modi and his psycho right-wing conservatives want to do to India. They want to create their own Hindu version of Israel. And it fills me with so much shame about my heritage sometimes when I see and read the news of whats happening over there.

India has felt so much like 2 steps forward 1 step back for the longest time and I just fear for where its headed.

*sighs*
posted by Fizz at 7:26 AM on September 7, 2023 [51 favorites]

Same here, Fizz. Saaaaaame the fuck here.

My only hope is that Pakistan will threaten very seriously to make good on their trolling (which is just wonderful marvellous perfection *chefkiss*) and that might cause India to hesitate...
posted by MiraK at 7:53 AM on September 7, 2023 [12 favorites]

God I hate the BJP
posted by bookbook at 8:02 AM on September 7, 2023 [6 favorites]

...and I just fear for where its headed.

Sadly, at this point in time, it seems headed where much of the rest of the world seems headed.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:07 AM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

It's noteworthy that until recently the most common Hindi name for the country was not Bharat but Hindustan.

Hindustan evokes a multicultural society living in harmony.

Bharat evokes a glorious, ancient, hyper-pure time when Muslims did not exist, and since one can say anything one wants about ancient times one can build onto this narrative it all the ethnonationalist desires of Hindutva/RSSdom, including the erasure/appropriation of Dalits and the glory of a world where patriarchal Hindu supremacy is unchallenged and revered over all.

It is no accident that the latter is the name preferred by the current fascist state and its supporters.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:11 AM on September 7, 2023 [24 favorites]

I think that my fellow westerners should probably let this one play out among the people of the country we currently call India. I don’t think our voices are helpful on these kinds of matters because our own history has so much to answer for and historically when we stick our noses into these we make the situation worse.

Of more critical importance for Americans should he the 400,000 Indians living and working in the US, waiting for their green cards that will probably die before they get off the waiting list as the wait time is now 134 years.
posted by interogative mood at 8:20 AM on September 7, 2023 [6 favorites]

For clarity, I'm not your fellow Westerner, I'm Indian.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:37 AM on September 7, 2023 [26 favorites]

I suppose Native Americans will be glad to finally have "Indian" off the table.
posted by SPrintF at 8:38 AM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

If the Centre [Government of India] goes ahead and introduces a resolution to rename the country as Bharat, it will also be seen as a political dig at the Opposition parties that have joined hands under the name INDIA. The Opposition alliance Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A) consists of 26 participating parties who will contest the 2024 General Elections as an alliance.
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:45 AM on September 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

I think that my fellow westerners should probably let this one play out among the people of the country we currently call India. I don’t think our voices are helpful on these kinds of matters because our own history has so much to answer for and historically when we stick our noses into these we make the situation worse.

Heartily disagree. I'm a Westerner and a South Asian. The world needs to continue to complain loudly as populist govts continue to strip away minority rights.
posted by sid at 8:51 AM on September 7, 2023 [33 favorites]

Hindustan evokes a multicultural society living in harmony.

I do not understand how "Land of the Hindus" evokes that? Like, I thought Indus - India - Hindu were all etymologically closely linked? And "Hinduism" was a construct of old school Western anthropologists?

But I guess this is a descriptivist - prescriptivist type deal, where the meaning is what people who use the words say they mean. Shame, because being a multicultural place is what gives India moral standing above the partitioned Muslim lands.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:28 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Seconding sid here, not least because hindutva is already here in western countries, and is already allied with fascist, racist, conservative movements right here in the west.

Professor Audrey Truschke at Rutgers is at the forefront of those who are clocking and chronicling the rise of hindutva in the US, especially online, since she has been a target of hindutva gangs online ever since she published a book about Mughals in 2016. From this article: In September 2021, organizers of an online academic conference on Hindutva were also bombarded with thousands of threats of rape, violence and death. Several participants withdrew from the conference out of fear. Dozens of organizers and speakers said violent threats were made against their families. More than 30,000 threats were sent to one university, causing the server to crash. Data collected by Columbia University’s Ahmed and other researchers indicate that the majority of tweets deployed against the conference organizers and participants were generated by individuals, not bots. Dr. Truschke's own research is both interesting and accessible. You can find, for example, some truly gobsmacking infographics on her website here.

We all have a real and personal interest in the rise of hindutva because this isn't something which is only happening back home or out there somewhere else. It's here! Bobby Jindal is an example: dude is so closely allied with white supremacy he literally had portraits of himself painted with white skin. Nicki Haley is a hindutva nut who is a real contender in the conservative presidential roster. Trump's HOWDY MODI event in Houston in 2019 drew 50,000 people - almost all desis obviously - eager to bite their thumbs at muslims back home and muslims in the US.

Hindutva is real and powerful in American politics today. I'm sure it is also making strides in other western countries that I know less about - IIRC Anders Breivik, Norwegian mass shooter, singled out hindutva groups and praised them by name in his anti-muslim manifesto, for instance. This is all happening to westerners at home.
posted by MiraK at 9:38 AM on September 7, 2023 [38 favorites]

Sorry for the derail from the core of this discussion but I want to make sure I've got the pronunciation correct.

(I've googled this but couldn't tell if I should trust the results.)

How does one pronounce "Bharat"? Are there variations on the pronunciation and do those variations indicate anything about one's politics/ethnicity/region? If so, is there a recommended pronunciation for non-desis?
posted by mcduff at 10:07 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am not at all surprised at this crass, ham-fisted attempt by the current government to refuel the age-old name debate... Bharat vs. India (vs. Hindustan) has always been a multilayered argument with people accruing all sorts of ridiculous emotional appeals. Tbh this ranks among the least harmful actions the Modi government has taken in the last 10 years.

What I end up being more dismayed at is the actions on the ground that they take to present a sanitized view of India. The last Trump visit had the govt. erecting walls and stuff so that people wouldn't have to see the slums etc.. this time it's shit like this.

And not just with historical monuments, but also with modern era buildings. I fear this is just another brick in the wall rising up to erase the multiculturalism that India has to offer.
posted by ssri at 10:09 AM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

Fascists and theocrats hold hands across national boundaries. It's a problem for everyone.

I also think Westerners are well-advised to pay attention if only so we don't get a repeat of the mistakes of the Türkiye thread, where it doesn't seem to have initially occurred to a lot of people that onomastics are fraught and politically manipulable.
posted by praemunire at 10:09 AM on September 7, 2023 [8 favorites]

Seconding sid here, not least because hindutva is already here in western countries, and is already allied with fascist, racist, conservative movements right here in the west.

Related - Google cancels speech by anti caste discrimination activist due to internal pressure from Indian employees.
posted by sid at 10:30 AM on September 7, 2023 [12 favorites]

I do not understand how "Land of the Hindus" evokes that? Like, I thought Indus - India - Hindu were all etymologically closely linked? And "Hinduism" was a construct of old school Western anthropologists?

I'll start with a caveat that this comment is not to be taken as The Truth since I am neither a historian nor do I even live in India anymore, but as I understand it, "Hindustan" was the name given to (some parts of) India by Mongols/Mughals and/or Persians and/or other Muslim invaders** (see note below) .

You'll notice how country names ending in -stan and variants are common among muslim countries in Asia. Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Palestine, etc. So "Hindustan" is a Muslim name given to India. Bharat is (so goes the claim) the name the original super special ~Aryan~ hindus gave to the land back before we were corrupted by Muslim presence.

Bharat is pronounced bhaa (like ska, or ooh la la) ruh-th (like the end of Bismuth). Pronunciation doesn't vary afaik. It's also quite normal for people to call India Bharat in many contexts, regardless of political affiliation, especially when speaking native languages. For example, news casters have referred to the Indian government as "Bharat sarkar" in Hindi language news for at least the last 40 years, possibly ever since India has existed. I don't think it has a political connotation in those contexts.

There's some tie in to a hindu mythological story about Bharat (pronounced: bhuh-ruh-th, not the same as the country name) being the name of the prince who was the "first" ruler of the country, whatever the hell that means. I'm afraid this is where my aversion to recollecting hindu-supremacist origin stories kicks in. Maybe someone else can fill in.


**(In typing that out I am conscious that 'Muslim invaders' is terminology preferred by hindutva folks, and is meant to be pejorative, stigmatizing, and Islamophobic towards all Muslims in India, and in particular it is a term often used to ascribe a certain brutishness and violence to Muslims. However I am going to use it here because:

(a) it is literally true,

(b) I am hopeful that the term does not carry here on metafilter the extra connotations that it would in India

(c) particularly on forums like this one, I feel it necessary, as a brown person of Indian origin, to be a voice against the tendency among western liberals to say/believe virtuous-sounding but racist things like "only white people can be colonizers and invaders" and "the magical east used to be lands of peace and harmony before evil white people showed up" - brown people invaded each other all the time long before any white people showed us how.)
posted by MiraK at 10:33 AM on September 7, 2023 [41 favorites]

How does one pronounce "Bharat"? Are there variations on the pronunciation and do those variations indicate anything about one's politics/ethnicity/region? If so, is there a recommended pronunciation for non-desis?

mcduff, you can start with the wiki here. As it notes, the Hindi pronunciation removes that last schwa from the Sanskrit word. Here is a good guide with the IPA.

AFAIK there is not really a colloquial differentiation for the name from different regions, however, different Indian languages (eg: S. Indian, especially Tamil) may adopt either Bharat or India as the official name to refer to the country. And this also encapsulates the political/ethnic inclinations usually.
posted by ssri at 10:37 AM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thank you, MiraK and ssri, for the pronunciation help and additional context.
posted by mcduff at 10:47 AM on September 7, 2023

To add.. Here is a list of how India is written and pronounced in the official languages.

You can see that where the parent language was Sanskrit, Bharat seems to be the form. save for three or so languages Manipuri, Tamil, Kashmiri, and Urdu.
posted by ssri at 10:51 AM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

I believe Hindustan is a Persian word for India that was used by Persianate societies within subcontinent, such as Delhi Sultanate, Ghaznavids, etc, and means 'Land of rivers' or 'land of Indus river' and ultimately derives from the Sanskrit word 'sindh'.
posted by sid at 5:01 PM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

“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 of the opposition Congress party posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

LOL
posted by Flunkie at 9:17 PM on September 7, 2023 [9 favorites]

You'll notice how country names ending in -stan and variants are common among muslim countries in Asia. Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Palestine, etc. So "Hindustan" is a Muslim name given to India.

Small point - Palestine doesn't belong on this list. The "-stan" ending comes from Persian, apparently from the same root as both state and stand in English (English and Persian are both in the Indo-European language family, as are Sanskrit and Hindi and many other languages in Central and Southern Asia, so there are a lot of common roots); it just means "place", apparently as in "place where something stands". Meanwhile the word Palestine comes from a Greek form of a Hebrew name ("Plishtim") for an ethnic group in the area (the Philistines, in English); the "n" was an addition by the Greeks, iirc as part of a grammatical suffix. The origin of the name in Hebrew, and whether it's an endonym or exonym, isn't completely clear. There's one argument that it's from a root meaning "invaders", and apparently the Philistines were indeed not originally local to the area and may even have spoken a language related to Greek; they may or may not have been the "Sea Peoples". Another argument is that it's based on the name of the area they came from, and the similarity to the Hebrew root for invasion was coincidental. Regardless, Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic, not Indo-European, and don't have the Persian -stan suffix (neither does Greek, which is Indo-European but from a different branch than Persian). Even though today both Palestine and the -stan countries are Muslim, all these languages and some of the place names predate Islam by a lot, and reflect a history of different cultural groupings and affiliations than what we have today.

Which relates to the current issue; the desire to build up a "Hindu" nationalism versus a "Muslim" nationalism is a huge binary oversimplification and overwriting of a much, much more complex history of cultural affiliations and interactions and religions and sects and languages and dialects and political entities and endless borrowing and influences. I think nationalism in general tends to do that, because history is inconveniently messy.
posted by trig at 7:21 AM on September 10, 2023 [8 favorites]

(speaking of oversimplification and overwriting... that should be "Palestine and the -stan countries are majority Muslim")
posted by trig at 6:18 AM on September 11, 2023