It all started with an innocuous invitation to the leaders of G20 to have dinner with “the President of Bharat”, but it has ended up as a major talking-point within the country and across the globe. “Was India changing its name to ‘Bharat’”? While some may echo Juliet’s sentiments on names when she asked, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, in politics it is understood that place names – toponyms – are not simple matters, and are frequently indicators of underlying power relations.
This proposition was stated rater pithily by Lewis Carrol in ‘Through a Looking Glass’: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”
Of recent, we have seen Burma changed to Myanmar, Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Turkey to Türkiye; and it is understood that those changing the names of their countries are rejecting names imposed on them and renaming themselves from their own perspectives. But that raises the question of “whose perspective”?? In Guyana, “Murray St” was changed to “Quamina St” by the PNC Government to signal that a hero of the 1823 Rebellion was preferred by the newly-independent people to a derided White British Governor. Especially when the street in question bordered the Parade Grounds where the heads of some of the rebels were displayed on spikes. The change of name of the Upper Demerara town to Linden – Burnham’s first name – and his later naming of several wards and villages after his daughters, is widely seen as giving rein to his megalomania. On the other hand, there was quite some feathers ruffled when the just-departed High Commissioner suggested that Middle Street be named after Gandhi, whose statue stands in the adjoining Promenade Gardens.
And in India, the signal of the invitation – and a document referring to Modi as “PM of Bharat” – is that the possibility of the name change is another in a long string of innovations that, notwithstanding the Modi government’s claim that it is decolonizing its history, the Opposition and a large section of the Muslim minority are convinced it is all part of the BJP’s plan to create a “Hindu India”. In most ancient texts, the people referred to their country as Bharat, Bharata, or Bharatvarsha (Bharat’s land) in honour of an ancient king by that name who – according to their ancient text, the Mahabharata – was an early powerful ruler who united the country bounded on the West by the River Sindhu. The neighbouring Persians pronounced the name of the river and the land to its east as “Hindu”, and the Greeks who followed them pronounced it as “Indu”. The British, as per their affectation, followed the Greeks and went with “India”.
The irony is that when, in 1947, they facilitated the “two nations” theory of the country floated by Muslims, and divided it into Pakistan (East and West) and India, they were ignoring that if Pakistan were to be the home of the Muslim minority, then logically, India was to be the home of Hindus: Hindustan. However, when India drafted their Constitution, their first Prime Minister – the English-raised and educated Nehru – equivocated and went for “India that is Bharat” as the name of the rump state. Since then, when officially referring to their country in Hindi, it is called “Bharat” and as “India” when in English. Over in Suriname, the Indentureds from British India have been called “Hindustanis” up to the present. If the change of name goes through – it will take a two-thirds majority to achieve that – then henceforth, the citizens of Bharat will be called “Bharateeyas”.
While it may be all a storm in a teacup, the descendants of the Indian Immigrants shipped to over a dozen countries have already begun naming themselves “Girmitiyas”. Toponomy is power.
