‘India, that is Bharat': How the country got its many names

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India or Bharat? What should the country be officially known as? This debate is not new. In fact, makers of the Constitution also struggled with the question. As we celebrate the 79th Independence Day, a look at the many terms associated with the nation
'India, that is Bharat, shall be a union of states,' reads Article 1 of the Constitution. India is perhaps one of the few countries that are identified with more than two names.
Besides India and Bharat, Hindustan is also used to refer to the nation. There are other ancient monikers by which the country that we know as India today was known.
As the country rings its 79th Independence Day on August 15, let's turn the pages of history to see how India got its many names.
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India's ancient names
Scholars say Meluha was once associated with the Indian subcontinent. It was mentioned in the texts of ancient Mesopotamia in the third millennium BCE to allude to the Indus Valley Civilisation.
India was also known as Jambudvipa or the 'land of the Jamun trees'. This name can be found in many Vedic texts and is used even today in some Southeast Asian countries to describe the Indian subcontinent.
Diana L Eck, an eminent Indologist, wrote in her book, India: A Sacred Geography: 'The Chinese traveller Fa-Hien describes a country (India) triangular in shape, broad in the north and narrow in the south, and he goes on to observe that 'people's faces are of the same shape as the country'.'
Aryavarta is used in the Manusmriti to refer to the land occupied by the Indo-Aryans. This covers the area between the Himalayas in the north and the Vindhya mountain ranges in the south.
Jains believe the country was called earlier Nabhivarsa. 'King Nabhi was the father of Rishabhanatha (the first tirthankara) and grandfather of Bharata,' geographer Anu Kapur wrote in her book, Mapping Place Names of India.
Bharat, Hindustan and India: A country with many names
Bharat, Bharata, or Bharatvarsha is said to be the earliest names recorded for India.
It can be traced back to the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, which has King Bharata, a legendary emperor and the son of Dushyant and Shakuntala.
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Bharat was popularised in modern history due to its use in the freedom struggle in slogans like Bharat mata ki jai.
According to the Puranas, Bharata lies between the 'sea in the south and the abode of snow in the north'.
Bharata is also thought be the mythical founder of the race. Social scientist Catherine Clémentin-Ojha, wrote in her article, 'India, that is Bharat…': One Country, Two Names, that Bharata refers to the'supraregional and subcontinental territory where the Brahmanical system of society prevails'.
The name Hindustan is believed to have originated when Persians occupied the Indus valley in the seventh century BCE. Hindu was the Persianised version of the Sanskrit term Sindhu, or the Indus river, which traversed the land. The Persian suffix, 'stan', was added in the first century AD and it became 'Hindustan', as per an Indian Express report.
The Greeks knew about Hind from the Persians, but they transliterated it as Indus. When Macedonian ruler Alexander invaded India in the third century BCE, 'India' was used to describe the region beyond the Indus.
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Historian Ian J Barrow, in his article From Hindustan to India: Naming change in changing names, wrote that 'in the mid-to-late eighteenth century, Hindustan often referred to the territories of the Mughal emperor, which comprised much of South Asia.'
However, the British maps started mentioning India more by the late 18th century, and Hindustan stopped being used to identify the entire South Asia.
How independent India was named
The debate that comes up now and then about the country's name also arose after India gained freedom from the British in August 1947.
The drafting committee set up under the chairmanship of Dr BR Ambedkar to formulate India's Constitution discussed the section 'name and territory of the Union' on September 17, 1949.
Hari Vishnu Kamath, a member of the Forward Bloc, argued that the first article should be 'Bharat, or in the English language, India, shall be and such,' replacing the phrase 'India, that is Bharat'.
Seth Govind Das, who represented the Central Provinces and Berar, was in favour of: 'Bharat known as India also in foreign countries'.
Hargovind Pant, representing the hill districts of the United Provinces, asserted that the people of Northern India 'wanted Bharatvarsha and nothing else'.
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In view of India's linguistic and cultural diversity, the Constituent Assembly decided to use both 'Bharat' and 'India', recognising the significance of the names.
'Often, as I wandered from meeting to meeting, I spoke to my audience of this India of ours, of Hindustan and of Bharata, the old Sanskrit name derived from the mythical founder of the race,' India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote in his 1946 book The Discovery of India.
The debate about the country's name still grabs headlines, with some wanting to do away with the term India, seeing it as a reminder of the colonial past. But historians dismiss it.
'The British have got nothing to do with the name India… It is part of our history from the fifth Century BC. The Greeks used it, the Persians used it. India was identified as a country besides the Indus river. It came from there,' historian S Irfan Habib told PTI.
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'Many historical sources, Megasthenes (Greek historian) and so many travellers referred to it. So, like Bharat, India is also part of our history,' he added.
With inputs from agencies