A nation by any other name

Curtis Chin’s meditation on the issue of Burma/Myanmar nomenclature is a reminder that there have been other changes in South Asian place names in recent years. As part of the decolonisation process, many Indian cities have reverted from their anglicised names to the original, vernacular names. 

Thus, Bombay is now Mumbai, Madras is Chennai, Calcutta is Kolkata and Bangalore is Bengaluru. Delhi is still Delhi, but the Hindi spelling has always been “Dilli”.

The renaming process even extended to entire nations: East Pakistan is now Bangladesh, and Ceylon is Sri Lanka.

It may be time for the “big chapatti” to get on the bandwagon. I refer, of course, to India. Indians call their nation Bharat. There’s no reason why the rest of the world shouldn’t do the same. The Indian people would then be called Bharatis, Air India would be called Air Bharat and Indian Airlines would become Bharatiya Airlines. 

The name “India” seems to have been invented by the Persians, and was subsequently adopted by the Greeks, the Romans, and the West. “India” is derived from “Sindhu,” the name of the Indus River, which marked the eastern border of the Persian Empire. I should think that present-day Indians might be a bit perturbed to have their nation named after a river that flows mainly through Pakistan.

I, therefore, suggest that the government of India consider changing the name of their country to Bharat – or, if it prefers Sanskrit, Bharata.

An Indophile 

(correction: Bharatophile)