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India naming dispute

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Viceroy of India: Lord and Lady Mountbatten meets Mr Mohammed Ali Jinnah, one of the founding fathers of Pakistan.

The India naming dispute in 1947 refers to the argument over the use of the name "India" during and after the partition of British Raj, between the countries of Pakistan and the Republic of India.[1] This dispute involved key figures such as Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of British Raj, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League and the founder of Pakistan. By 1947, the British Raj was going to be divided into two new nation states — Hindustan and Pakistan.[a] Jinnah was initially convinced that Hindustan would not use the term India, since it wasn't originally from there[b] and opposed the use of the name "India" as it would cause confusion regarding history.[2] The disagreement had significant implications for national identity and international recognition.[3][4]

Origin of the name

The name "India" comes from the Greek word Ἰνδική (Indikē)[c] or Ἰνδία (Indía), via Latin transliteration India.[5] The name historically means the land of the Indus river, which today is the national river of Pakistan.[6][7][8]

The name India ultimately comes from Sanskrit "Sindhu," which is another name for the Indus River and the lower Indus basin (Sindh, Pakistan).[6][9] The Old Persian word for "Síndhu" was "Hindu."[10] Darius I conquered Sindh around 516 BCE, after which the Persian word "Hinduš" was used for the area at the lower Indus basin in Ancient Pakistan.[11] Scylax of Caryanda, who explored the Indus for the Persian emperor, probably took the Persian name "Hinduš" and passed it into Greek.[12] The terms "Indos" (Ἰνδός) for the Indus River and "Indian" are found in Herodotus's Geography.[13] The loss of the /h/ sound was probably due to the Greek dialects spoken in Asia Minor.[14][15] Hecataeus used the term "India" and "Indians" in a strict sense for the groups dwelling in Sindh (Ancient Pakistan) only.[16] Herodotus later used the term "Indian" for the people of the lower Indus basin (modern-Pakistan) and all the people living east of Persia, even though he didn't know the geography of the land.[13]

By the time of Alexander, "Indía" in Koine Greek meant the region beyond the Indus. Alexander's companions called India the Indus river basin, which is mainly in Pakistan. Later, Megasthenes included in India the areas beyond the Indus basin, including the southern peninsula.[17]

History

By 1947, the British Raj was going to be divided into two new countries — Hindustan and Pakistan. However, just months before independence in August 1947, both Jinnah and the Muslim League were against the use of “India” by Nehru’s Hindustan. Jinnah was initially sure that Hindustan would not use the name India since it lacked any local background. However, as independence approached, it was clear that Hindustan was going to be named India.[18][19] Jinnah specifically wrote to Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of British Raj, stating:[20]

“It is a pity that for some mysterious reason Hindustan has adopted the word ‘India’ which is certainly misleading and is intended to create confusion.”

By the 20th century, it was well known that the word India came from the Indus River. Yet even if Mountbatten knew Jinnah’s argument made sense, he would never admit it. In a 1973 interview, Mountbatten admitted he never got along well with Jinnah, to the point where he called Jinnah a “bastard” during the interview.[21]

Many maps printed in the Republic of India after 1947 referred to the newly formed country as Bharat — the Constitution of the Republic of India officially names the country as Bharat. Even today, many Hindu nationalists and Hindi speakers of the Republic of India argue for the word Bharat to become the only official name of the country.[6] The word Bharat comes from ‘Bharatavarsha’ (the land of the Bharatas), with these Bharatas being one of the early Vedic clans who moved from the Indus Valley to the Ganges plain sometime between 1200 BCE to 800 BCE.[22] To many, Bharat would seem better since the term India was a colonial term. It also lacked a indigenous or local background, as the term India referred historically to the Indus Valley in Pakistan.[23] Jinnah thought that neither country would use the name "India." He preferred the acronym "Pakistan" for his country and "Hindustan" (Land of the Hindus) for the Hindu-majority India. Jinnah only found out months before independence that Mountbatten and Nehru were going to name Hindustan the “Republic of India.” Jinnah, according to Mountbatten, “was absolutely furious when he found out that they (Nehru and the Congress Party) were going to call themselves India.”[24] The use of the word also implied a sub-continental importance that Pakistan would never accept. It also went against history since India originally referred only to territory near the Indus River (with which the word is related) and its tributaries. Hence Historic India was mostly outside the modern Republic of India and mostly within Pakistan.[25][26]

Current situation

Bharat - India controversy

Recently in 2023, the current party in power in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), backed by the current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have been rumored to be attempting to change India's name to Bharat. The BJP says the word ‘India’ is a symbol of colonial slavery and a non-native name given to the country.[27]

Bharat alongside India is one of the two official names of the country. The BJP has argued that the name “India” is a leftover from the country’s colonial past. Naresh Bansal, a BJP member of parliament, said the name “India” is a symbol of “colonial slavery” and “should be removed from the constitution.” Bansal said in a parliamentary session:[28]

“The British changed Bharat’s name to India. Our country has been known by the name ‘Bharat’ for thousands of years. … The name ‘India’ was given by the colonial Raj and is thus a symbol of slavery.”

Some cities and places in India linked to Mughals and the colonial period have been renamed by the BJP. Critics said the new names are an attempt to erase the Mughals, who were Muslims and ruled the subcontinent for almost 300 years, from Indian history.[29]

Pakistan's reaction

Indian media has reported that Pakistani local media claims that Pakistan might consider laying claim to the name 'India' amid the recent Bharat-India controversy.[6][30] A post shared by the South Asia Index's X handle stated: "Pakistan may lay claim to the name 'India' if India derecognizes it officially at the United Nation (UN) level".[31] Nationalists in Pakistan have long argued that Pakistan has rights to the name as it refers to the Indus region in Pakistan.[32] Meanwhile, former Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan claimed that the original name of the country was "unquestionably" Bharat and it was the British who started calling it India.[33] Some Indian media outlets have said that India calling itself Bharat fulfills Pakistan's age-old wish as Pakistan has claimed this name since 1947.[34]

Notes

  1. ↑ Bharat is one of the two official names of the modern Republic of India. Hindustan is also an unofficial term.
  2. ↑ It lacked indigenous pedigree, etymologically and historically "India" meant the Indus Valley (modern-Pakistan).
  3. ↑ cf. Megasthenes' work Indica

References

  1. ↑ "Why Pakistan's founder Jinnah was opposed to the name India for the independent Indian nation". The Indian Express. 2023-09-06. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  2. ↑ "It was Jinnah who objected to the name 'India': Shashi Tharoor amid G20 invite row". India Today. 2023-09-06. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  3. ↑ Daniyal, Shoaib (2018-06-19). "Why Jinnah objected to the name 'India'". Scroll.in. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  4. ↑ Singh, Jaswant (2010-03-04). Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence. OUP India. ISBN 978-0-19-547927-0.
  5. ↑ Harris, J. (2012-05-07). Indography: Writing the "Indian" in Early Modern England. Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-09076-8.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Sanujit. "Etymology of the Name India". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2024-06-19. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name ":0" defined multiple times with different content
  7. ↑ Geoffray, Ally (2019-05-23). "Indus River". editions.covecollective.org. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  8. ↑ Eggermont, Pierre Herman Leonard (1975). Alexander's Campaigns in Sind and Baluchistan and the Siege of the Brahmin Town of Harmatelia. Peeters Publishers. ISBN 978-90-6186-037-2. Sindhu means a stream, a river, and in particular the Indus river, but likewise it denotes the territory of the lower Indus valley, or modern Sind. Therefore, the appellation Saindhavah, means "inhabitants of the lower Indus valley".... In this respect Sindhu is no tribal name at all. It denotes a geographical unit to which different tribes may belong.
  9. ↑ Mukherjee, Bratindra Nath (2001). Nationhood and Statehood in India: A Historical Survey. Regency Publications. ISBN 978-81-87498-26-1. In early Indian sources Sindhu denoted the mighty Indus river and also a territory on the lower Indus.
  10. ↑ Henning, Walter Bruno (1970). W. B. Henning Memorial Volume. Lund Humphries. ISBN 978-0-85331-255-0.
  11. ↑ Dandamaev, M. A. (1989). A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-09172-6. The new satrapy, which received the name of Hindush, extended from the centre to the lower part of the Indus Valley, in present-day Pakistan.
  12. ↑ Mouton, Alice; Rutherford, Ian; Yakubovich, Ilya (2013-06-03). Luwian Identities: Culture, Language and Religion Between Anatolia and the Aegean. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-25341-4.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Herodotus; Godley, A. D. (Alfred Denis) (1921–25). Herodotus. With an English translation by A.D. Godley. Robarts - University of Toronto. London Heinemann.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
  14. ↑ Mukherjee, Bratindra Nath (2001). Nationhood and Statehood in India: A Historical Survey. Regency Publications. ISBN 978-81-87498-26-1. Apparently the same territory was referred to as Hi(n)du(sh) in the Naqsh‐i‐Rustam inscription of Darius I as one of the countries in his empire. The terms Hindu and India ('Indoi) indicate an original indigenous expression like Sindhu. The name Sindhu could have been pronounced by the Persians as Hindu (replacing s by h and dh by d) and the Greeks would have transformed the latter as Indo‐ (Indoi, Latin Indica, India) with h dropped...
  15. ↑ Christidēs, Anastasios-Phoivos; Arapopoulou, Maria; Chritē, Maria (2007-01-11). A History of Ancient Greek: From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83307-3. The early loss of aspiration is mainly a characteristic of Asia Minor (and also of the Aeolic and Doric of Asia Minor)...In Attica, however (and in some cases in Euboea, its colonies, and in the Ionic-speaking islands of the Aegean), the aspiration survived until later... During the second half of the fifth century BC, however, orthographic variation perhaps indicates that 'a change in the phonetic quality of [h] was taking place' too.
  16. ↑ Habib, Irfan (2005). India-studies in the History of an Idea. Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers. ISBN 978-81-215-1152-0. The term 'Indians' was used by Herodotus as a collective name for all the peoples living east of Persia. This was also a significant development over Hekataios, who had used this term in a strict sense for the groups dwelling in Sindh only
  17. ↑ Mukherjee, Bratindra Nath (2001). Nationhood and Statehood in India: A Historical Survey. Regency Publications. ISBN 978-81-87498-26-1.
  18. ↑ Singh, Jaswant (2010-03-04). Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence. OUP India. ISBN 978-0-19-547927-0.
  19. ↑ White-Spunner, Barney (2018). Partition: The Story of Indian Independence and the Creation of Pakistan in 1947. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4711-4803-3.
  20. ↑ "Why was Muhammed Ali Jinnah opposed to the name India?". Firstpost. 2023-09-06. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  21. ↑ "The late Lord Louis Mountbatten said he would not... - UPI Archives". UPI. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  22. ↑ Dutt, Romesh Chunder (2015-08-08). Maha-Bharata, Epic of the Bharatas. [Translated by Romesh Dutt. ]. Creative Media Partners, LLC. ISBN 978-1-298-56204-3.
  23. ↑ "India, that is Bharat: A short history of the nation's names, from the Rig Veda to the Constitution of India". The Indian Express. 2023-09-05. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  24. ↑ "Why Pakistan's founder Jinnah was opposed to the name India for the independent Indian nation". The Indian Express. 2023-09-06. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  25. ↑ Jinnah, Mahomed Ali (1988). Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah: Some Rare Speeches and Statements, 1944-1947. Research Society of Pakistan, University of the Punjab. ISBN 978-969-425-072-4.
  26. ↑ Ahmed, Mukhtar (2014-10-15). Ancient Pakistan - An Archaeological History: Volume II: A Prelude to Civilization. Amazon. ISBN 978-1-4959-4130-6.
  27. ↑ Tripathy, Diksha (2023-12-31). "India vs Bharat: A look at 2023's political controversy that stirred the dynamics of a nation's name". The Economic Times. ISSN 0013-0389. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  28. ↑ "India or Bharat: What's behind the dispute over the country's name?". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  29. ↑ "India or Bharat: What's behind the dispute over the country's name?". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  30. ↑ "Pakistan may take name 'India' if India officially changes name to 'Bharat' at UN: International media". Times of Islamabad. 2023-09-05. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  31. ↑ Bharat, E. T. V. (2023-09-06). "'Pakistan may lay claim on name India': Social media post goes viral on India vs Bharat row". ETV Bharat News. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  32. ↑ ""Pakistan Will Claim India": Social Media Post Goes Viral Amid Name-Change Buzz". NDTV.com. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  33. ↑ "'Pakistan may lay claim on name 'India' if Modi govt derecognises it officially at UN'". The Week. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  34. ↑ "Pakistan May Exploit The Situation If India's Name Is Changed. Here's How". IndiaTimes. 2023-09-06. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
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