Language Matters | India vs Bharat: what’s in a name? Both have roots in Sanskrit, but only one has colonial baggage – blame Ancient Greece for that
- ‘India’ and ‘Bharat’ both appear in the country’s constitution and on its passports, so why did India, as host of the 2023 G20 summit, call itself Bharat?
- The root of ‘India’ is in the Sanskrit for river, which, via Old Persian and Greek, became the name for a region going from modern-day Pakistan to Bangladesh
The 2023 G20 New Delhi summit was recently convened in India – or, rather, in Bharat.
The country’s 1950 constitution recognises both: “India, that is Bharat”. Official practice uses both names jointly or interchangeably, with “Bharat” used in the local languages. Both feature on Indian passports.
The G20 logo had “Bharat” written in Hindi and “India” in English.
The name “India” has roots in the Sanskrit sindhu, meaning “river”, specifically the Indus River and the lower Indus basin (modern-day Sindh, in Pakistan).
This became Old Persian Hindu, after Persian conquest of the region, which passed into Greek as Indos for “Indus River” and Indía for the region of the Indus River to the Ganges delta. The name “India” was, via Latin, adopted into English.
