At the recent BRICS Summit in New Delhi on 12 and 13 September 2026, the placard placed before Prime Minister Narendra Modi read BHARAT rather than INDIA. The departure from long-standing practice on international platforms has sparked a lively ideological debate. The dispute is not merely about economic policy or geopolitical strategy; it reaches the core of collective identity—what we ought to call ourselves.
In recent years a growing impulse for historical purism has sought to pit “Bharat” against “India,” presenting one as the sole authentic expression of selfhood and the other as a foreign colonial relic. Yet reducing the multi-millennial biography of this subcontinent to an either-or choice reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how civilisations evolve. From ancient river valleys to constitutional chambers, the story behind our country’s names remains a living archive of history, geography and enduring pluralism.
From River to Empire: The Genesis of “India”
Before political borders defined the land, geography shaped its identity. The earliest known foreign reference to the subcontinent appears in Sumerian records around 2350 BC, which spoke of a prosperous trading partner named “Meluha”—a term now linked to the Harappan civilisation. Centuries later, as Vedic societies flourished along the banks of the Indus, local inhabitants called their homeland “Sapta-Sindhu,” the land of seven rivers.
As external powers encountered the region, linguistic shifts transformed geography into nomenclature. The transition was gradual yet profound: the Sanskrit “Sindhu” became “Hindu” in Old Persian because the language lacked the initial “S” sound. Greek chroniclers following Alexander the Great subsequently dropped the aspirate, producing “Indos” (Ἰνδός) in Greek and “Indus” in Latin, which later appeared as “India” in Roman accounts. By the fourth century BC the Greek traveller Megasthenes popularised the designation across the Mediterranean world in his treatise Indica. Arabic and Persian scholars later adapted the root into “Hind.”
Long before European imperialists sailed for Malabar, foreign travellers such as Ibn Battuta and scholars such as Al-Biruni wrote extensively of “Hind” and “India.” When European cartographers mapped the “East Indies,” they employed a geographic descriptor refined across two millennia of maritime trade and intellectual exchange. When the British East India Company incorporated the word into its royal charter, it did not invent “India”; it merely adopted a globally recognised geographical name that had circulated across continents for ages.
Myth, Literature and the Ideal of “Bharat”
Where, then, does “Bharat” find its footing in this historical narrative?
The term draws its power from deep literary, spiritual and epic traditions. It traces its lineage to King Bharata, the legendary monarch of the Chandravamsha dynasty whose story is immortalised in the Mahabharata and in Kalidasa’s celebrated play Abhijñānashākuntala. Historically, “Bharatvarsha” served less as a strictly defined administrative territory and more as a shared moral, cultural and literary landscape.
In strict epigraphic terms, references to “Bharat” as a unified geographical domain appear relatively late and predominantly in literary texts. Aside from rare milestones—such as the second-century BC Hathigumpha inscription of the Kalinga ruler Kharavela—the term is conspicuously absent from early statecraft records. The ancient grammarian Panini used “Bharatas” to denote a specific clan inhabiting a region east of the Indus. Given the logistical constraints of antiquity, the physical reach of the historical “Bharata” kingdom could hardly have encompassed the vast, diverse expanse of the modern subcontinent. Nevertheless, as an idea, “Bharat” captured the cultural imagination of generations and gradually evolved into a powerful symbol of civilisational unity.
“Hindustan”: The Medieval Synthesis
During the medieval era the subcontinent came to be widely known as “Hindustan.” Emerging under the Delhi Sultanate and expanding under the Mughal Empire, the word merged the Persian “Hind” with the suffix -stan, meaning land or place.
Contrary to modern political reinterpretations, “Hindustan” functioned primarily as a geographical designation—denoting the vast territory north of the Deccan Plateau and east of the Indus—rather than an exclusive religious descriptor. In that era the subcontinent remained a dynamic matrix of coexisting powers: the Cholas, Cheras, Pandyas and Vijayanagara in the south; the Satavahanas, Chalukyas and Bahmanis in the Deccan; and the Palas, Senas and Ahoms in the east. No single imperial power exercised monolithic authority over the entire land. “Hindustan” acted as an overarching geographic umbrella over a vibrant, polycentric cultural world.
The Constitutional Compromise
When the architects of independent India convened in the Constituent Assembly, the debate over the young republic’s official title was intense. Should the liberated nation cast off its globally familiar moniker in favour of Bharat or Hindustan?
The drafting committee, spearheaded by Dr B.R. Ambedkar, delivered a masterclass in constitutional synthesis. Article 1(1) of the Indian Constitution famously proclaimed:
“India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.”
This formulation was neither a compromise born of hesitation nor an ideological oversight; it was a deliberate, visionary embrace of pluralism. Each title preserved a distinct, vital layer of our civilisational journey. Where Meluha had marked our ancient Bronze Age trade identity and “Hindustan” represented our medieval Indo-Persian synthesis, the Constitution united our dual modern legacies.
In “Bharat” the founding document honoured our indigenous Vedic and Puranic literary heritage. In “India,” anchored in the ancient Sanskrit Sindhu via its Greco-Roman journey, it preserved our globally recognised geographical and international legal standing. This framework allowed the modern democratic state to enter the international arena with established continuity while remaining deeply rooted in its native cultural consciousness.
A Living Archive, Not a Monolith
To dismiss “India” as merely a colonial imposition is to turn a blind eye to two thousand years of pre-colonial global engagement. Conversely, to insist on “Bharat” as the exclusive designation risks narrowing a broad, polyphonic republic into a single cultural narrative—potentially alienating communities whose roots are anchored in distinct regional and linguistic traditions.
The true genius of this land has never resided in forced uniformity; it has always flourished through inclusion. India, that is Bharat, once known as Hindustan, is not a singular, static identity but a continuous civilisational conversation.
Eighty years after the country gained independence we must remind ourselves that our national strength lies in our capacity to hold these layered legacies in harmony. Rather than tearing pages out of our past in pursuit of an artificial purity, we ought to celebrate the expansive, living archive that all these names seamlessly compose.
~Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai….
The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author.
