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A Moon landing, by any other word, would be as beautiful, wouldn't it?
The invitations to the recent G20 summit refered to Droupadi Murmu as "The President of Bharat". While the prime minister of the host country was delivering the inaugural address, the placard in front of him said "Bharat".
No, a new country didn't emerge and somehow got the right to host something as prestigous as a G20 summit, "Bharat" is actually an endonym, explicitly established, in Indian constitution:
This move to use Bharat in internationally visible context can be seen as normalizing and laying the ground work to a full-on name change. The motivation behind is by some commentators impugned to be Hindutva, the ideology of, in the opinion of these commentators, of "othering" non-Hindu groups. The logic being that India being an English word privileges English speaking-Indian, but since they lack an Asabiyyah, this isn't as dangerous affirming the Hindu name, empowring Hindus who do not lack it.
A more concrete explanation also proposed, has been to make the name of an opposition coalition (I.N.D.I.A., yes their name is the just name of the country) seem more foreign and less Bharatian.¹
One is drawn to make comparisons with recent country renaming, the country of Cahit Arf. Both Bharat and Türkiye are at least regional powers, so their renaming is expected to be reported more widely and considered of greater importance than Swaziland or Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia "getting the works". And as in both cases the name change would be the result of the countries free will², the comparison seems even more salient.
Homeland of baklava is a bit further along, already notifying international organizations "Turkey" is a deadname. It seems media organizations haven't followed suit; out of the following only the last two affirm the new name: CNN, WaPo, NYT, NPR, CBC, NHK English, Al Jazeera, BBC, Reuters, USA Today, AP, The Guardian, Fox News, Euronews (the tag for stories pertaining to this country is called "Turkiye (Turkey)"), CGTN³, ABC Australia. But FYROM was abandoned by news media in favour of NM, that the former official name was so long probably played a part. Yet Czechia is still mostly commonly called Czech Republic, despite the latter being longer.
1: Particular political parties appropriating symbols of the whole country, has also happened in Italy. The "Brothers of Italy" a far-righty political party you may have heard about if you follow European politics, is in Italian called "Fratelli d'Italia" after the incipit of the Italian anthem.
2: Unlike with Macedonia, North. In order for Greece to allow the former Vardar Banovina to join EU and NATO, an agreement had to signed by NM to distance itself from promoting their is continuity between Macedonians of antiquity and Macedonians of today and to insistently preprend "North" to every reference to the country.
3: The style guide of China Global Television Network prescribes calling the country the capital of which is Pyongyang, DPRK, but the one with the capital Seoul, South Korea. Strangely inconsistent.
Instead of framing this as a Hindus vs Everyone Else kind of deal, in my eyes it's more emblematic of another major cultural divide in India, namely the North vs the South.
North India is majority Hindi speaking, whereas the southern states speak Tamil, Telegu and the like instead.
The latter have long been peeved about the BJP government's* tendency to name new projects/initiatives with Hindi terms, or outright rename the old commonly established English ones. This is seen as a form of cultural imperialism or at least chauvinism, since it alienates people from the south who might not be fluent or even conversant in Hindi.
*To be fair, the INC did plenty of Hindi-washing too, the BJP just leans into it more and unapologetically so.
English, while a foreign language, is still the lingua franca for educated Indians, and while Hindi has become far more common in the youth born of non-Hindi speaking parents, many prefer to use a "neutral" language instead of one that implicitly preferences one regional language, which despite what some might claim, is far from universal.
Of course there's a bit of the 'ol alienation of Muslims afoot, but this is a topic that pisses off even the orthodox Hindu majority down south.
As far as I'm concerned, Bharat just sounds way worse than India, and there's no real reason for a switch beyond inflating Modi's ego.
Isn't the name for India in most southern languages also Bharat or something close to it?
It is, but they usually don't refer to it as anything but India. Bharat is more common up north.
I am South Indian (from Karnataka to be specific).
India and Bharat are both equally palatable to me or anyone else I know, though Bharat (or in Kannada Bharata) is rarely used out of formal contexts.
I suspect that in the South Indian context the name will only cause indigestion for Periyarists from Tamil Nadu. Others won't really care.
Edit: In Karnataka, the few people who do care, namely Kannada activists in the Old Mysore region only have the issue that Bharata as it is written in Sanskrit is a more accurate name with Bharat being a bastardization of the name by Hindi.
I see, thanks for clearing that up!
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