Zainab Ashraf Siyasat.net
The land which is to the north of the sea and to the south of the Himalaya mountain is known as Bharat/ India today. But when the Aryans made it their homeland than the area was much farther than it is currently. The Aryans used to speak Sanskrit and they named this newly settled area Sapta Sindhu because of the seven rivers flowing through it. Over a period of time, the letter ‘s’ in Sanskrit changed into ‘h’ in some languages, both Indian and non-Indian. For example, the word Sapta became Hapta not only in Indo-Aryan but also in the European languages. Therefore, this land came to known as Hapta Hindu within and across the nations present at that time. But the question is why did the Aryans name it Sapta Sindhu on the first place?
Well, the Aryans were settlers in this land, hence, were new to its local language so, they used to call a few things in the language in which they are comfortable with. For example, the great Indus was known as Hindu to the original inhabitants and owing to vocal peculiarity of the Aryans, it got changed into Sindhu when they adopted it by the operation of the same rule that ‘S’ is the Sanskritised equivalent of ‘H’. Hence, the original name of this land is technically Hapta Hindu.
Now, if this is the case then how does Bharat came in between these two ancient names? Well, there are several theories on this regard. The most prominent of all is of the King Bharat Chakravarthi. He was the son of King Dushyanta of Hastinapura and Queen Sakuntala and thus a descendant of the Lunar Dynasty of the Kshatriya Varna. Bharata conquered all of Greater India, uniting it into a single political entity. Hence, this land was named after him as “Bharatavarsha”.
These are the stories of thousands of years back, so the point is, where several nations have changed their names, like Constantinople is Turkey today, Persia is Iran and the list can go on. How India is able to keep its original name even in the 21st century? To know the answer of this, we have to go back to the time of independence. When India got independence then of course, a new name should be decided for a new nation. At that time, the villain of rival country, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, suggested to upcoming Prime Minister of India, Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru to keep its name Bharat because it represents India in true sense unlike Hindustan which only represents the religious majority of the population of this country. That was the right decision to give a sovereign name to the sovereign country.
Interestingly, this Bharat has also one foreign name which is- India. This name was given by the Britishers and it has its origin in Greek language. The East people had some problem in pronouncing the west names, hence, they used to change the name of a few places which they couldn’t pronounce properly for their own ease. That’s how Bharat came to be known as India after the invasion of the Britishers across the globe. At the time of independence, India had a choice to either abandon this name or keep it. But the name and fame that Bharat received by this name was also important. Several organisations had already registered Bharat as India like the United Nations. So, that’s how this land has got two names even after independence- Bharat and India.
But a few weeks back some miscreants filed a plea to drop the foreign gifted name which the apex court rejected. Hopefully, in the future as well, the sovereignty in the name as well as in the nature of this country will be maintained. (www.siyasat.net is Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India based website)
(The author is a freelance journalist and studying at Jamia Millia Islamia. Views are personal)
