As RSS sparks fresh Bharat vs India row, why it has always been Bharat for Sangh Parivar

“We call it Bharat. We call it India. We call it Hindustan. We have three names. Whichever name resonates with you, you can call it that,” Abdullah told reporters outside J&K Assembly in Jammu.

“It is the ‘Constitution of India’ and the ‘Reserve Bank of India’. Why is that? That question should be asked. If the country’s name is Bharat, shouldn’t it have been called only that?” Abdullah asked. He pointed out that both ‘Bharat’ and ‘India’ are written on the Prime Minister’s plane, adding that “It is called the Indian Air Force and the Indian Army. But we also speak from the perspective of Bharat.”

In September 2023, when RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat urged people to refer to the country as “Bharat” and not “India”, he was drawing on a longstanding tradition of the Sangh Parivar that has used Bharat since before Independence. For the Sangh and the BJP, only Bharat has a linguistic and cultural context for Indians, not India.

As a political row had then erupted over a G20 dinner invitation from the government sent out in the name of the “President of Bharat”, BJP National Executive Committee member Anirban Ganguly termed it a “needless controversy” raked up the Congress. “Bharat is the natural name of India. It is not a question of the BJP’s ideology. All Indian languages call the country Bharat. Read Bangla literature and find out what it calls India. Both India and Bharat are part of the Constitution. We are giving primacy to Bharat because most people call it Bharat,” said Ganguly, the chairperson of the Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation.

Ganguly said those protesting had been at the forefront of “distorting history and our civilisational identity”. He added, “The British gave many names. But subsequently, Ceylon became Sri Lanka and Burma became Myanmar. Has it caused any problems? The argument of our founding fathers is good, but should it then also not apply to the words secular and socialist as they were not sanctioned by them?”

An RSS leader, who is now with a government institution, also argued there should be no Bharat versus India debate. “There is an issue between Hindustan and Bharat. But there is no issue between India and Bharat. Everyone calls India Bharat in Hindi. In Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati and several other Indian languages it is called Bharat. Culturally, India has always been Bharat. India was a geographical term given by outsiders. Bharat also has such a beautiful meaning. Even in the Constitution, it should actually have been ‘Bharat that is India’,” he said.

The Sangh, one of whose larger political projects is ensuring an Indian culture shorn of British and Islamic influence, has used the term Bharat since its inception in 1925. Professor Rakesh Sinha writes in his book Builders of Modern India: KB Hedgewar (published by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) that Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, said in Maharashtra’s Wardha in 1929, “The British government has promised to give independence to India on many occasions, but these have turned out to be false promises. It has now become amply clear that Bharat shall attain independence on her own strength.”

In his last speech before his death, Hedgewar said in Nagpur in 1940, “The golden day when all of Bharat will be Sanghified will certainly dawn. There will then be no power on earth that can dare cast malicious eyes on the Hindus.”

A senior RSS leader underlined that since all Sangh leaders speak in Hindi, they refer to India as Bharat. “The PM also speaks largely in Hindi, unless addressing an international audience. So, it is not surprising that they speak of Bharat and not India. Also, India is an odd term culturally. Have you heard anyone say India Mata ki Jai?”

The RSS has consistently used Bharat to denote India even in its English texts. The first-ever RSS resolution is instructive in this context. The 1950 resolution on the plight of Hindus who suffered during Partition referred to the “State of Bharat”, “Govt of Bharat”, and “citizens of Bharat”.

Two resolutions in 1953 — one of the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha and the other of the Karyakarai Mandal — were titled “Movement for Complete Integration of Kashmir with Bharat” and “Bharat’s Pak policy vis-a-vis Kashmir”, respectively.

The RSS, in fact, has never used the word India in the heading of its resolutions. The first time India appears even in the text of these resolutions is in 1962 when the government is referred to as the Government of India. Subsequently, in the Sangh’s English texts India and Bharat were used interchangeably. But, there has never been any RSS resolution calling for India to be replaced with Bharat.

In that context, Bhagwat’s speech in Guwahati on September 1, 2023 has significance, especially since it was followed by the controversy over the invitations mentioning the “President of Bharat”.

A deep cultural meaning

Bharat has a deep cultural meaning for the RSS. In his book Bunch of Thoughts, the second sarsanghchalak of the RSS, M S Golwalkar, underlined this point while expounding the concept of the motherland.

“In fact, the very name ‘Bharat’ denotes that this is our mother. In our cultural tradition, the respectful way of calling a woman is by her child’s name. To call a lady as the wife of Mr. so-and-so or as Mrs. so-and-so is the Western way. We say, ‘She is Ramu’s mother.’ So also is the case with the name ‘Bharat’ for our motherland. Bharata is an elder brother of ours, born long long before us. He was a noble, virtuous and victorious king and a shining model of Hindu manhood. When a woman has more than one child, we call her by the name of her eldest or the most well-known among her children. Bharata was well known and this land was called as his mother, Bharat, the mother of all Hindus,” Golwalkar wrote.

In another context, he emphasised how Bharat appears even in the Vedas and the Puranas. He also spoke of Bharat being the land of Hindus. It is a running theme in his writings.

Talking about the “appeasement of Muslims” by independent India’s leadership, Golwalkar said in the book, “The first thing they preached was that our nationality could not be called Hindu, that even our land could not be called by its traditional name Hindusthan, as that would offend the Muslim. The name ‘India’ given by the British was accepted. Taking that name, the ‘new nation’ was called the ‘Indian Nation’.”

Notably, most associate organisations of the RSS have the word Bharatiya in their name, including the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, and Bharatiya Kisan Sangh. In its press releases and statements, the RSS uses Bharat to denote India and translates terms such as “Akhil Bharatiya” to ‘All Bharat” and not “All India”.

Bhagwat emphasised in his Guwahati speech that Bharat had been an integral part of the nation’s identity since ancient times and should be embraced and popularised. “The name of our country has been Bharat for ages. Whatever may be the language, the name remains the same …Our country is Bharat, and we will have to stop using the word India and start using Bharat in all practical fields. Only then will change happen. We will have to call our country Bharat and explain it to others as well.”

– With PTI inputs