People are speculating that Bharat may be the new name of India after receiving official invites to the G20 summit dinner.
Bharat is a Sanskrit word that may be found in texts from almost 2,000 years ago, and the G20 meeting in India is the ideal venue for announcing it to the world.
The invitations refer to Droupadi Murmu as “President of Bharat” rather than the more common “President of India.”
In a recent tweet, a prominent member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party in power, also referred to Narendra Modi as the “prime minister of Bharat.”
India is the term given to the nation most frequently, however both Indian government and the general public also refer to it as Bharat and occasionally Hindustan.
The Sanskrit word “Bharat” can be discovered in texts from about 2,000 years ago.
Numerous cities associated with the Mughal and colonial eras have already undergone renaming under Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP administration.
According to critics, it represents an effort to eradicate the 300-year dominance of the Muslim Mughals.
Additionally, the opposing party has cautioned against changing the nation’s well-known name.
“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,” lawmaker Shashi Tharoor posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
“We should continue to use both words rather than relinquish our claim to a name redolent of history, a name that is recognised around the world,” he added.
Changing a country’s name is common for political, geographical, and religious reasons. Here are a few more countries whose names have changed throughout time.