• UGI USER
  • Sep 07, 2023
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A journey of Bharat or India.

Relevance

  • GS Paper 2: Indian Constitution—Historical Underpinnings, Evolution, Features, Amendments, Significant Provisions, and Basic Structure.
  • Tags: #upsc #Indianconstitution #Article1 #bharatorIndia. 

Why in the news?

G20 dinner hosted by “The President of Bharat” instead of the usual “President of India”. There is speculation of an official change in the country’s name from India to Bharat, even though Article 1 of the Constitution uses the two terms interchangeably: “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.”

From Rigveda to the Constitution of India

 

Where does the name ‘Bharat’ come from?

  • The Puranas describe Bharata as the land between the “sea in the south and the abode of snow in the north”.
  • The roots of “Bharat”, “Bharata”, or “Bharatvarsha” are traced back to Puranic literature, and to the epic Mahabharata. 

what about ‘India’ and ‘Hindustan’?

  • The name Hindustan is thought to have derived from ‘Hindu’, the Persian cognate form of the Sanskrit ‘Sindhu’ (Indus), which came to India with the Achaemenid Persian conquest of the Indus valley (northwestern parts of the subcontinent) that begin in the 6th century BC (which was the time of The Buddha in the Gangetic basin).
  • The Greeks, who had acquired knowledge of ‘Hind’ from the Achaemenids, transliterated the name as ‘Indus’.
  • By the time the Macedonian king Alexander invaded India in the 3rd century BC, ‘India’ had come to be identified with the region beyond the Indus.
  • By the time of the early Mughals (16th century), the name ‘Hindustan’ was used to describe the entire Indo-Gangetic plain.
  • From the late 18th century onwards, British maps increasingly began to use the name ‘India’, and ‘Hindustan’ started to lose its association with all of South Asia.

 How did ‘Bharat’ and ‘India’ come into the Constitution?

  • In his monumental ‘Discovery of India’, Nehru referred to “India”, “Bharata” and “Hindustan”.
  • During the Constituent Assembly debates the “Name and Territory of the Union” was taken up for discussion on September 17, 1949.
  • Right from the time the first article was read out as “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States”, a division arose among the members.

 

Views of Veterans

· Hari Vishnu Kamath suggested that the first article should read, “Bharat, or in the English language, India, shall be and such”.

· Seth Govind Das, representing the Central Provinces and Berar, proposed: “Bharat known as India also in foreign countries”.

· Hargovind Pant, who represented the hill districts of the United Provinces, made it clear that the people of Northern India “wanted Bharatvarsha and nothing else”.

 Source: Indian Express