BJP lauds 'President of Bharat' reference, says it underscores country's civilisational march

The BJP dug its heels over the country's renaming episode with the party’s prominent leaders rallying behind the purported decision. Union Ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and Meenakshi Lekhi, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma, and senior leader Tarun Chugh were those who came out in support of the decision.

The BJP’s ideological parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has long mooted the use of the name 'Bharat'. In fact, last week, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat made a pitch for using the name 'Bharat' in a meeting in Assam. “We all should stop using India and use Bharat instead. Sometimes, we have to use India when communicating with English-speaking people. It is not needed anymore. Proper names are never translated and this is the practice worldwide,” Bhagwat had said in a rally at Guwahati on Friday.

In 2017, at a three-day event in Vrindavan, the RSS had deliberated over ways to revert India to what it termed as pre-colonial ways of the country, whether it was in academics or intellectual heft.

Education Minister Pradhan, who was one of the first to react, told reporters that renaming India to 'Bharat' should have happened earlier. “This gives great satisfaction to the mind. ‘Bharat’ is our introduction; we are proud of it. The President has given priority to ‘Bharat’. This is the biggest statement to come out of the colonial mindset,” Pradhan said.

Lekhi said that 'Bharat' is a name that the Constitution guarantees and there should be no problem with that. “The name of our motherland, Bharatvarsh, has been passed on to us by our ancestors over thousands of years,” she said.

Assam CM Sarma took to X to welcome the move. “... happy and proud that our civilisation is marching ahead boldly towards AMRIT KAAL,” he tweeted.

BJP General Secretary Tarun Chugh took aim at Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh and asked him why was he affected by the change. “Why are you feeling ashamed? When 'Bharat' is written in our Constitution itself, why are they raising questions on it? This is the anti-constitutional thinking of the Congress; it never considered itself a part of India,” Chugh said.

BJP’s Anand MP Mitesh Patel had in December raised a question in the Lok Sabha about renaming India as ‘Bharat’ or ‘Bharatvarsh’. He contested that the names were deliberated by the Constituent Assembly in September 1949. He further added that the name ‘India’ is a reminder of the slavery that the people of the nation were subjected to, and that the name originated from the British East India Company’s nomenclature.