The BJP on Wednesday dismissed speculation that the issue of whether to call the country as Bharat, has nothing to do with elections. The party Rajya Sabha member Prakash Javadekar said there was nothing unconstitutional in using Bharat as the country’s name as the word exists in the Constitution in which it says “Bharat, that was India…”
He further said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been speaking about ‘Panch Pran’ or five resolves that the country needs to make and follow which includes ‘removing of any trace of the colonial mindset’.
Javadekar said among the first acts of an occupier is to change names, as the British had done with Mumbai calling in Bombay, Chennai as Madras, Kolkata as Calcutta, and Thiruvananthapuram as Trivandrum. “We have to come out of the colonial mindset. Bharat is ours, people say ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’. Therefore no one should have any doubts that Bharat is the original name of the country and is written in the Constitution. And there is nothing wrong in saying President of Bharat, or Prime Minister of Bharat.”
