When India invited delegates attending the G20 summit in September 2023 to dinner with “the President of Bharat,” fairly than “the President of India,” it might have appeared to the world like a easy case of postcolonial course correction.

The phrase “India” is, in any case, an exonym – a placename given by outsiders. In this case, the identify got here from the British, who dominated the subcontinent from 1858 to 1947, a violent period of colonialism that later got here to be known as “the British Raj.”

“Bharat,” however, is the phrase for “India” in Hindi, by far the most spoken language in the nation. Alongside English, Hindi is certainly one of two languages utilized in the Indian Constitution, with variations written in every language.

“Bharat” might, due to this fact, appear to be a well-reasoned and uncontroversial alternative for a time period anointed way back by outsiders – one thing akin to how Eswatini, Zimbabwe and Burkina Faso up to date their international locations’ names from the colonial designations “Swaziland,” “Rhodesia” and “Upper Volta,” respectively.

But using “Bharat” has elicited outcry from the political opposition, some Muslims, and Hindu conservatives within the south, reflecting ongoing tensions in India between language, faith and politics.

Two totally different language households

My e-book with fellow linguist Julie Tetel Andresen, “Languages in the World: How History, Culture, and Politics Shape Language,” covers the language historical past and politics of India.

Hindi is the most-spoken language in India, however its use is essentially relegated to part of the nation that linguists seek advice from as “the Hindi belt,” a large area in northern, central and jap India the place Hindi is the official or main language.

Around 1500 B.C.E., a bunch of outsiders from Central Asia – recognized now because the Indo-Aryans – started migrating and settling in what’s now northern India. They spoke a language that might ultimately turn out to be Sanskrit. As teams of those audio system separated from each other and unfold out over northern India, their spoken Sanskrit modified over time, changing into distinctive.

Most of the languages spoken in northern India immediately – Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and Gujarati, amongst many others – derive from this historical past.

But the Aryans weren’t the primary group to inhabit the Indian subcontinent. Another group, the Dravidians, was already dwelling within the area on the time of the Aryan migrations. They might have been the original inhabitants of the Indus-Valley Civilization in northern India. Over the millennia, the Dravidians migrated to the southern a part of the subcontinent, whereas the Aryans fanned out throughout the north.

Today, Dravidians quantity about 250 million people. Dravidian languages, comparable to Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, haven’t any historic relationship and just about no linguistic similarities to the Indo-Aryan languages of the north.

Dravidians spurn Hindi

By the time the Raj resulted in 1947, English had been established because the language of the elites and was utilized in schooling and authorities. As the brand new nation of India took form, Mahatma Gandhi advocated for a single Indian language to unite the various areas and for a few years championed Hindi, which was already widely spoken in the north.

But after independence, opposition to Hindi grew within the Dravidian-speaking south, the place English was the favored lingua franca. For Tamils and different Dravidian teams, Hindi was related to the Brahmin caste, whom many felt marginalized Dravidian languages and culture.

For many individuals within the south, Hindi got here to be seen as a language as overseas as English. To hold tensions from spilling over, the primary prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, supported verbiage within the structure adopted in 1950 allowing for the continued use of English in government for a restricted interval.

Violence nonetheless continued within the south for years round what was seen because the unfair promotion of Hindi. It abated solely when Indira Gandhi – Nehru’s daughter and the third prime minister of India – pushed to codify English, alongside Hindi, as an official language within the structure.

Today, the Indian Constitution recognizes 22 official languages.

Nationalists push for one official language

The Partition of India in 1947 – comparable to the dissolution of the Raj – led to the creation of Pakistan, which was set as much as mixture the bulk Muslim areas from the colonial state. An impartial India was set as much as embody the bulk non-Muslim areas.

Today, roughly 97% of Pakistan’s population is Muslim. In India, Hindus make up about 80% of the inhabitants, whereas Muslims make up about 14% – greater than 200 million individuals.

This is the place fashionable home politics come into play.

“Hindutva” is a model of far-right Hindu nationalism that emerged within the twentieth century in response to colonial rule however gained its greatest following beneath the management of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janta Party, or the BJP.

As a political ideology, Hindu nationalism ought to be distinguished from Hinduism, a faith. It advances insurance policies that search to advertise Hindu supremacy and are widely considered anti-Muslim.

One such policy is the promotion of Hindi as the only real official language of India. Speaking in 2022 at a Parliamentary Official Language Committee assembly, BJP Home Minister Amit Shah said, “When citizens of states speak other languages, communicate with each other, it should be in the language of India.”

To Shah, the “language of India” and Hindi had been one and the identical.

Suppressing Urdu

Muslims in India communicate the languages of their communities – Hindi amongst them – as do Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Christians.

However, making Hindi the nationwide language might be considered as one a part of a broader political venture that may be characterised as anti-Muslim. That’s why the political opposition is towards utilizing “Bharat,” though many Muslims are themselves Hindi audio system.

These politics turn out to be even clearer within the context of the BJP’s makes an attempt to limit the use of Urdu – a language with a excessive diploma of mutual intelligibility to Hindi – in Indian public life.

Although Urdu and Hindi are remarkably comparable, their variations tackle outsized spiritual and nationwide significance.

Whereas Hindi is written within the Devanagari script, which has robust cultural associations with Hinduism, Urdu is written within the Perso-Arabic script, which has robust associations with Islam. Whereas Hindi attracts on Sanskrit for brand new phrases, Urdu attracts on Persian and Arabic, once more emphasizing associations to Islam. And whereas Hindi predominates in India, Urdu is the official language of Pakistan, together with English.

Thus the looks of “Bharat” in official authorities correspondence might reopen previous wounds for Muslims – and even for conservative Hindus within the Dravidian-speaking south who would possibly in any other case help Modi and the BJP.

Although an official identify change is unlikely within the fast future, “Bharat” will doubtless proceed to function a rallying cry for right-wing nationalists.

To them, the conciliatory language politics of Nehru and Indira Gandhi are a thing of the past.