India vs. Bharat

There is conversation about reverting the name of world’s most ancient and only standing contiguos civilization to it’s original name Bharat.

It is a powerful idea whose time has come. “India”is an imposed name by British… Bharat and it’s people need to break those mental shackles and come into their own. This is a step in the right direction. 

This is not a rebranding exercise.. it is a step into our own future, taking ownership of our own history which surprise surprise extends to thousands of years before the colonial period or Islamic invaders.

Bharat may be doing better than before as a nation but still not living up to a 1/100th of our potential.

People still feel ashamed of not being able to speak in English while knowing their mother tongue very well. Kids are still made fun of, for mis-pronouncing a dumb English word, which has no co-relation between how it is spoken and spelt. 

People in north Bharat after 76 years of independence still(me included) call my mother Mummy. (Thankfully not so in the Southern states, Maharashtra and Bengal) I have made amends by the way) 

These and a million other remnants of our slavery days, including calling people Sir need to progressively be thrown in the dustbin of aberrations in the proud history of the subcontinent. Bharat can and should fully flex itself.. come into its own. Respecting every ones’s way of life and ways of worship but not be bludgeoned into a certain shape by any minority however shrill. 

Moving from “India” to Bharat has huge symbolism of this confidence in the public square…

Of course it will be termed as anti-minority, genocidal, anti-democratic, anti-religion, anti-progress, anti-secular… anti-humanity. 

Anti anti anti anti … by the same people who have named every public arena, building, stadium, airport, on one family or has ruled for 3 generations. Or by those who want to “erase, eradicate, extinguish” Bharat’s cultural history and replace it with something that eulogizes and worships the most horrific gangsters, invaders and abusers of humanity this sub-continent or even the world has ever seen.

To fully make my case, I present exhibit A, Bharat’s neighbor. These people in their feverish haze of becoming more Islamic than muslims in Arab world, were never allowed to own their history, (inspite of Harappa and Mohenjodaro having been partitioned off to them). Their history was usurped by a crafted narrative and artificial history, relating them to Arabs and not to the subcontinent. 

Now their children’s children’s children wonder where they belong.

Disclaimer: I believe that people are intrinsically neither good nor bad. But systems and doctrines under which they are forced to or choose to operate can be good or bad, sometimes producing ghastly outcomes that the subcontinent and world at large has seen over and over again. So we all have a moral obligation to call out and push back against bad /evil doctrines. Eg. “Women are not equal to men and need to be subjugated, controlled and relegated to producing children at the mercy of their man” is a bad doctrine. It will only produce evil, no matter who adheres to it. Many such examples can be given including those under which Germany operated in second world war of racial superiority or that one faith and its adherents were bad people. See the evil it produced.

Disowning your heritage is a bad doctrine!