The choice between "India," "Hindustan," and "Bharat" reflects the country's rich historical and cultural diversity. "India" is internationally recognized and inclusive. "Hindustan" carries historical connotations of a specific region. "Bharat" emphasizes cultural roots and tradition. Preferences vary based on cultural identity and ideology. Ultimately, coexistence and unity should be prioritized, celebrating diversity while fostering understanding among the people of this diverse nation.

Hindustan is not any of the official name of India/Bharat, however people inside or outside the country are still using it. India name is also very old which has roots in the Indus Civilization. People living beside the river are Indians and the place is India. It represents rich and important history of the country.

I am an Indian/ भारतीय and love the country. As a human being, I love all the nation's and wish the war between Russia and Ukraine should be ended.

I am not an Indian. However, for some reason unknown to me, India is in my heart. ''The word Bharat means engaged with light or radiance—the light of love, compassion, creativity, intelligence, unity, diversity, and human values.''

--Amit Ray

Dear Doctor

Go To

‘India, that is Bharat…’: One Country, Two Names

Catherine Clémentin-Ojha

https://doi.org/10.4000/samaj.3717

"Bhārata is indeed an old name. In the Purāṇas and other Sanskrit texts of the first centuries of the Christian era, it refers to the supraregional and subcontinental territory where the Brahmanical system of society prevails. It seems to have absorbed the older and spatially narrower toponym Ᾱryāvarta (the land of the Ᾱryas) described in the Laws of Manu.

The main feature of Puranic Bhārata is its insularity.In this Purāṇa, Bhārata is said to be surrounded by the ocean on the east, west and south and by the Himalaya (himavant) in the north, a description evoking a familiar shape.

In Brahmanical literature Bhārata is moreover associated with an internal principle of unity. Its naturally bounded territory is unified by a network of pilgrimage sites (tīrtha). It is organized around some key natural sites found within it. Its mountains and rivers in particular are made objects of worship. Therefore one also finds the idea that the land of Bhārata itself is sacred.

Bhārata was now fully prepared to embark on a career on the political stage, as politics had become ‘the unavoidable terrain on which Indians would have to learn to act.’29 In The Soul of India published in 1911, Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932) proclaimed it to be the only real indigenous name for India. The Bengali nationalist and social reformer, well-known for the part he had taken in the organization of the swadeshi movement after the Partition of Bengal, wrote (2010 [1911]: 65):

We never called her either India or Hindoostan. We knew her of old by quite a different name (p. 57). […] The fact of the matter really is, that as long as you look upon our country as ‘India or the Land of the Indus’—you will get no closer and truer view than the foreign officials and students have been able to do (p. 62). […] Our own name was, and is still today, among the Aryan population of the country, Bharatvarsha.

It was during Moghul rule rather than during British rule, at a time when India was called Hindustan, that political unity had been achieved and added to the already existing cultural unity of Bhārata, allowing Indians to develop a complete sense of belonging together, irrespective of their religions.

The attempt by Savarkar to hinduize the name Hindustan was another crucial moment in the naming of the budding nation.33 Whereas Iqbal called the inhabitants of Hindustān by the old appellation Hindī, which signifies ‘Indian’ in the ethno-geographical sense,34 Savarkar called them Hindus, and reserved the term only for those Indians who considered Bharat both as their Holy land (puṇyabhūmi) and as their fatherland (patṛbhūmi), by which he meant the Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs but not the Muslims and Christians.35 It is not, therefore, that Savarkar did not think of Bhārata as a suited designation for the country of his dreams. But he found the name Sindhusthāna (or Hindusthāna, given the phonetic evolution) more ‘authentic’, and he also preferred it to Ᾱryāvarta, a notion that he found too ‘parochial and narrow-minded’.36 It was more authentic, he argued, because Hindusthan was not, as was commonly held, a foreign term, but a purely Sanskrit term, just like Hindu and Sindhu.37 Hindu was the name by which the Hindus had always referred to themselves, Sindhu the name they had given to the Indus River and Hindusthan, the name they had given to their nation. Thus Savarkar constructed the genealogy of Hindus, demonstrating the autochthony of the three terms with due etymological and phonetic explanations.38 In his conception, the key element was Sindhu: the Indus River was made ‘the vital spinal cord that connects the remotest past to the remotest future’.39 To territorialize Hindu identity, Savarkar needed to associate the territory with the word Sindhu even when he called that territory Bharat. Under his pen Bharat becomes the land delimitated by the Indus River (sindhu) and by the sea (also sindhu in Sanskrit), an unheard of definition in Brahmanical literature.

CONCLUSIONS:

That Bhārata—a cultural space whose unity was to be found in the social order of dharma—was a pre-national construction and not a national project. Then I argued that at the time of independence, India and Bhārata were equally worthy candidates to baptize the newly-born nation, along with ‘Hindustan’. But the opening article of the Constitution discarded Hindustan and registered the nation under a dual and bilingual identity: ‘India, that is Bharat’. One name was to be used as the equivalent or the translation of the other as exemplified on the cover of the national passport, where the English ‘Republic of India’ corresponds to the Hindi ‘Bhārata gaṇarājya’, or, perhaps even more telling, on India postage stamps, where the two words Bhārata and India are collocated. Pursuing the history of the reception of the Constitutional equation of Bharat and India in all its social and political complexities was beyond the scope of my enquiry. I have merely pointed to two contemporary phenomena: the name Hindustan has continued to be widely used in spite of, or may be thanks to, its plurality of meanings and the implication of the equivalence of Bharat with India has remained a subject of debate. It is likely that all these names will continue to be interpreted to fit new circumstances, to give new meanings to India’s national identity, an ongoing, open-ended process."

''There is a real Bharatvarsha—a complete India. Unless we establish ourselves there, we can’t absorb its true living essence into our minds and hearts. Therefore I say, forgetting all else, discarding book-learning, the lure of prestige, and the temptation of odd profits, we must set sail for that very port, whether we drown or perish. No wonder I can never forget the true, complete image of Bharatvarsha.''

--Rabindranath Tagore

''It is my Bharatvarsha in all its glory, replete with wealth, knowledge, spiritual faith.''

--Rabindranath Tagore

I came along a relevant source to the topic discussed and I quote: After the emergence of a powerful tribe, the Bharatas, in the Punjab toward the end of the second millennium b.c., the name Bhārata Varsha (the continent belonging to the Bharatas), or simply Bhārata, appears first in the great epic Mahābhārata, where it denotes more or less the Indian subcontinent, that is, the world region south of the mythical Mount Meru, which was ideally (but never in reality) ruled by an Indian "world ruler" (cakravartin). Later the name appears also as a compound, Bhārata-varsha.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/bharat

Dear Doctor

["Bhārat", the name for India in several Indian languages, is mainly derived from the name of the Vedic community of Bharatas who are mentioned in the Rigveda as one of the principal kingdoms of the Aryavarta. It is also variously said to be derived from the name of either Dushyanta's son Bharata of Mahabharata. At first the name Bhārat referred only to the western part of the Gangetic Valley, but was later more broadly applied to the Indian subcontinent and the region of Greater India, as was the name "India". Today it refers to the contemporary Republic of India located therein. The name "India" is originally derived from the name of the river Sindhu (Indus River) and has been in use in Greek since Herodotus (5th century BCE). The term appeared in Old English as early the 9th century and reemerged in Modern English in the 17th century.

"Hindūstān" is a third name for the Republic of India. It was popular during Mughal's rule. The term 'Hindu' was the Old Persian adaption of "Sindhu" (Indus River). "Hindustan" is still common amongst Urdu scholars.]

''The idea of Akhand Bharat is not just a dream, it is a vision for the future.''

--Narendra Modi

''The essence of Hinduism and the brilliance of India are not contradictory, but complementary, like two faces of a coin that compose our beloved Bharat. Hinduism is the soul of India, and India is the body of Hinduism. They are inseparable, like the sun and its rays. Together, they form a glorious nation that celebrates its rich heritage and embraces its bright future. They are the threads that bind our diverse religions, cultures, and states into a beautiful tapestry.''

--Srinivas Mishra

''Ayodhya is the heart of Hindus, while Bharat is the body.''

--Vinita Kinra

Aristidis Matsoukis : I think that great men are for all humanity (not restricted to a community) since they think for all the people. Ayodhya is the birthplace of Lord Rama who is worshiped by Hindus. But you may seem that Rama and Krishna are a matter of the books of some Muslim poets also. Raskhan was a Sufi Muslim poet who wrote on Krishna.

When the teachings of the great men are spread, at the place of mere worship, it would be better to all. One more thing about Rama and Krishna is that they were not founders of any religion. The people started to worship them.

In Ramayan by Balmiki, Rama is a man who is ideal in his character. But in Ramcharitmanas by Tulsidas, he is the Lord who takes births to protect the people following the path of truth. Rama fought with Ravana which was the last war between Dev and Asura and established peace between the two communities. Since he is not bound by a community. He eats half-eaten plums, given by Shabari who was a forest dweller old woman.

As I think.

Yes, dear Prabhat Ranjan. You hit the nail on the head. Great men belong to humanity and in the end their influence becomes world-wide. Many thanks for sharing your insights.

Regards

The world needs to be united at the place of divided on the grounds of nationality, religion and ethnicity. Rama has united the communities in ancient India. Let differences between people be minimized created by differences in nationality and religion.

''The fundamental strength of Bharat is that we are a land of seekers – seekers of truth and liberation. This spiritual thread is what keeps us together as a Nation.''

--Sadhguru

''Bharat as a civilisation was a reality, and reducing that reality and near-unbroken lived experience to a mere talking point to score brownie points over one another was more a proof of expediency than real conviction in the values the Indic civilisation stood for.''

--J. Sai Deepak

Dear commenters, recommenders and readers,

This New Year, I hope that you are staying safe, healthy, and happy, and that 2024 brings a promising fresh start.

All the best, AM

''The idea of Akhand Bharat has been the driving force for many Indian leaders throughout history.''

--A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

''Only through the vision of Akhand Bharat can we truly see the greatness of India.''

--Atal Bihari Vajpayee

INDIA. INDIA. INDIA.