An RSS chief who’s now with a authorities establishment additionally argued there must be no Bharat versus India debate. “There is an issue between Hindustan and Bharat. But there is no issue between India and Bharat. Everyone calls India Bharat in Hindi. In Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati and several other Indian languages it is called Bharat. Culturally, India has always been Bharat. India was a geographical term given by outsiders. Bharat also has such a beautiful meaning. Even in the Constitution, it should actually have been ‘Bharat that is India’,” he stated.

The Sangh, considered one of whose bigger political tasks is guaranteeing an Indian tradition shorn of British and Islamic affect, has used the time period Bharat since its inception in 1925. Professor Rakesh Sinha writes in his ebook Builders of Modern India: KB Hedgewar (printed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) that Hedgewar, the founding father of the RSS, stated in Maharashtra’s Wardha in 1929, “The British government has promised to give independence to India on many occasions, but these have turned out to be false promises. It has now become amply clear that Bharat shall attain independence on her own strength.”

In his final speech earlier than his demise, Hedgewar stated in Nagpur in 1940, “The golden day when all of Bharat will be Sanghified will certainly dawn. There will then be no power on earth that can dare cast malicious eyes on the Hindus.”

A senior RSS chief underlined that since all Sangh leaders converse in Hindi, they seek advice from India as Bharat. “The PM also speaks largely in Hindi, unless addressing an international audience. So, it is not surprising that they speak of Bharat and not India. Also, India is an odd term culturally. Have you heard anyone say India Mata ki Jai?”

The RSS has persistently used Bharat to indicate India even in its English texts. The first-ever RSS decision is instructive on this context. The 1950 decision on the plight of Hindus who suffered throughout Partition referred to the “State of Bharat”, “Govt of Bharat”, and “citizens of Bharat”.

Two resolutions in 1953 — one of many Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha and the opposite of the Karyakarai Mandal — have been titled “Movement for Complete Integration of Kashmir with Bharat” and “Bharat’s Pak policy vis-a-vis Kashmir”, respectively. The RSS, in actual fact, has by no means used the phrase India within the heading of its resolutions. The first time India seems even within the textual content of those resolutions is in 1962 when the federal government is known as the Government of India. Subsequently, within the Sangh’s English texts India and Bharat have been used interchangeably. But, there has by no means been any RSS decision calling for India to get replaced with Bharat.

In that context, Bhagwat’s speech in Guwahati on September 1 has significance, particularly because it was adopted by the controversy over the invites mentioning the “President of Bharat”.

A deep cultural that means

Bharat has a deep cultural that means for the RSS. In his ebook Bunch of Thoughts, the second sarsanghchalak of the RSS, M S Golwalkar, underlined this level whereas expounding the idea of the motherland.

“In fact, the very name ‘Bharat’ denotes that this is our mother. In our cultural tradition, the respectful way of calling a woman is by her child’s name. To call a lady as the wife of Mr. so-and-so or as Mrs. so-and-so is the Western way. We say, ‘She is Ramu’s mother.’ So also is the case with the name ‘Bharat’ for our motherland. Bharata is an elder brother of ours, born long long before us. He was a noble, virtuous and victorious king and a shining model of Hindu manhood. When a woman has more than one child, we call her by the name of her eldest or the most well-known among her children. Bharata was well known and this land was called as his mother, Bharat, the mother of all Hindus,” Golwalkar wrote.

In one other context, he emphasised how Bharat seems even within the Vedas and the Puranas. He additionally spoke of Bharat being the land of Hindus. It is a operating theme in his writings. Talking in regards to the “appeasement of Muslims” by impartial India’s management, Golwalkar stated within the ebook, “The first thing they preached was that our nationality could not be called Hindu, that even our land could not be called by its traditional name Hindusthan, as that would offend the Muslim. The name ‘India’ given by the British was accepted. Taking that name, the ‘new nation’ was called the ‘Indian Nation’.”

Notably, most affiliate organisations of the RSS have the phrase Bharatiya of their identify, together with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, and Bharatiya Kisan Sangh. In its press releases and statements, the RSS makes use of Bharat to indicate India and interprets phrases corresponding to “Akhil Bharatiya” to ‘All Bharat” and never “All India”.

Bhagwat emphasised in his Guwahati speech that Bharat had been an integral a part of the nation’s id since historic instances and must be embraced and popularised. “The name of our country has been Bharat for ages. Whatever may be the language, the name remains the same …Our country is Bharat, and we will have to stop using the word India and start using Bharat in all practical fields. Only then will change happen. We will have to call our country Bharat and explain it to others as well.”