COMMENTARY dismissed the petition with the advice India That Is Bharat that it be treated as a representation by the appropriate Ministry. “(W)e can’t The Politics of a National Name do it,” the Court reportedly said (Indian Express 2020). Kanika Gauba Past Efforts This is not the fi rst attempt to use the A recent writ petition on arlier in June, the Supreme Court force of law to change the national name. renaming India as Bharat, which of India heard a writ petition that Past attempts at effecting an amendment got dismissed by the Supreme Esought to remove the name “India” to Article 1 include three private members’ from Article 1 of the Constitution. As it bills that were moved in Parliament in Court, is discussed. There are stands, Article 1 reads: “India, that is 2010, 2012, and 2014. The 2010 and 2012 political motives behind naming Bharat, shall be a Union of States.” The bills, both of which lapsed, were moved or renaming a place, but petitioner argued that the national name by Congress member of Parliament Hindustan, Bharat, and “India” was one given by the colonial Shantaram Naik. The Naik bills distin- Raj, and was thus a symbol of slavery. As guished between the territorial expres- Hind—are all part of the legal principle, the petitioner proffered sion contained in “India” from the emo- package that is India. Article 21, the fundamental right to life tive–patriotic power of “Bharat,” fi nding and personal liberty, to argue that the the latter preferable. The 2014 bill was continued use of such a colonial relic vio- moved by Uttar Pra desh Chief Minister lated the citizens’ right to call their nation Yogi Adityanath. It proposed the rep- by its rightful name, “Bharat.” “Bharat,” lacement of “India” with “Hindustan” so the petition added, is favourably associ- that Article 1 once reordered read “Bharat, ated with the legacy of the anti-colonial that is Hindustan ...” and echoed both the resistance, and was therefore preferable. “traditional names” of the country. Inter- Seeking the exercise of the Court’s estingly, Adityanath’s bill is appended in writ jurisdiction in public interest, the support of the recent writ petition. petitioner sought the direction to the un- The Supreme Court itself heard a sim- ion government, through the Ministry of ilar petition in 2015 by a bench headed Parliamentary Affairs, to remove the by then Chief Justice of India H L Dattu. allegedly offensive national name via an The bench had sought responses from the Kanika Gauba ([email protected]) amendment to Article 1 of the Constitu- government, but the matter was dismis- teaches at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. tion. On 3 June 2020, the Supreme Court sed some months later by the successor Economic & Political Weekly EPW july 11, 2020 vol lV nos 28 & 29 17 COMMENTARY chief justice of India T S Thakur in 2016. two had been placed on equal footing This legacy has, however, been impor- Justice Thakur had then strongly repri- and one dropped.” Although “Hindu- tant ever since in structuring poli tical manded the petitioner’s advocate for stan” was colloquially dominant, and legal discourse in the country, as the misusing a forum meant for the “poor” “Bharat” was eventually preferred (Clé- living contestations over nationa list icons (Sinha 2016). mentin-Ojha 2014). There are several and leaders attest. This brief history itself ought to have interconnected reasons why “Bharat” may On the other hand, the exclusionary been enough grounds for the Court to have been preferable. Clémentin-Ojha possibilities of “Hindustan” as the land not waste precious judicial time. The indicates the Puranic roots of Bharat, of the Hindus may have been a reason Court’s jurisdiction does not extend so used in the Vishnu Purana and Markan- why it was never discussed as a possible far as to direct other state institutions to deya Purana to refer to a spatial entity name for the nation. Interestingly, two amend the Constitution. This is a power nestled between the Himalayas in the unlikely fi gures, V D Savarkar and that, according to the constitutional struc- north and the seas in the west, south, and Moha mmad Ali Jinnah, were united in ture, vests in Parliament representing east. She further suggests that Bharat- their preference for “Hindustan,” which the will of the people. Considering this, varsha is a “socialised” invocation of ter- they felt more appropriately described it is strange that the matter was listed ritory, for it indicates karmabhumi, a land the nation (Savarkar 1922; Devji 2013). before, moreover briefl y heard by, the where one reaps the rewards of one’s chief justice’s bench. But other curiosities karma. In this literature, Bharat is not a What Is in a Name? skirt the petition. The identity of the peti- political entity as we understand it today. Names are powerful political expre- tioner “Namaha” and their motivation for However, acc ounts of the legendary King ssions. The renaming of public places, app roaching the Court in public interest Bharat who united all of South Asia are roads, and cities, which our petitioner are unclear and not specifi ed in the peti- popular in nationalist imagination, and cites approvingly, is an expression of tion. In the section on “relevant dates”— are found in Jawaharlal Nehru’s The Dis- the state’s authority to its citizens. Per- an important component of pleadings covery of India as well. haps for this reason, indigenous people submitted to the Court—there is no refer- But as Benedict Anderson (1983) says, in settler colonies have resisted the im- ence to past attempts at amending Arti- the work of nationalism lies in the imag- positions of colonial names, and have cle 1. Instead, the petition leaps from ination of the community. Manu Goswa- been fi ghting to retain native place 1948, when Article 1 was discussed in mi (2004) shows that the imagination of names (Berg and Kearns 1996). National the Constituent Assembly, to the present “Bharat” as historically determinate and names express sovereignty but also moment as if none of the events de- territorially congruent with colonial-era signal the essence of the nation. The scribed above had occured in the inter- India happened in the second half of the politics of naming is closely allied with vening period. 19th century in northern parts of India, the attempt to organise public memory and that this heralded the constitution around a state-preferred version of the Three Names of nativist identity projects. This is historical past. The Constituent Assembly did not spend around the time when Bankim Chandra What role does the law play in this much time on the issue of renaming Chattopadhyay’s “Vande Mataram” ingrai- politics of naming? One consequence of India. Much of the discussion focused on ned the feminised idea of the nation in juridical baptism is the structuring of the latter half of Article 1, and the feder- anti-colonial resistance against the par- public discourse—what can be said, al relationship it suggested. A closer tition of Bengal. Shortly thereafter, the what cannot be said, and how one reading of the assembly’s debates refl ect nationalist fi gure of Bharat Mata mani- should speak—with important legal that several other “traditional” names for fested in rallying cries and visual form, conseq ue nces on the freedom of speech India were in the running. These included often juxtaposed against territorial and expression. European laws against Aryavarta, Hind, and Bharatavarsha. borders, invoking the “geopiety” of her the denial in public of the Holocaust When the draft of Article 1 was intro- children (Ramaswamy 2010). “Bharat’” raise such concerns (Bealvusau and duced, many members seemed pleased remains, as our petitioner argues, the Grabias 2017). at the retention of the “ancient name” crucial link to the legacy of the anti- But there are other, more insidious Bharat (GOI 1948). A few sought to reorder colonial struggle, and through it, to concerns that arise from legally endorsed the article so that the ancient name pre- nationalist reveries of the precolonial names, which is the violence of unna- ceded the “alien” one (GOI 1949). continuity of the Indic civilisation. ming and the consequent impermissi- Catherine Clémentin-Ojha points out The ways in which Indian constitu- bilities of imagination. For instance, the a third name that was never actively tionalism, particularly at the founding day after the Court dismissed this peti- considered by the assembly but was moment, draws its legitimacy from anti- tion, the Karnataka state government coll oquially used by most members to colonial nationalist resistance remains directed its functionaries to avoid the refer to the nation in their speeches— woefully underexplored. It was, perhaps, word “Dalit” in offi cial communication. “Hindustan.” For reasons unspoken, it this legitimation that the framers sought This order is based on a 2018 advisory then appears that “three names had been to retain by adding “Bharat” alongside issued by the union government to the at the start of the race, but at the end the more pragmatic “India” in Article 1. same effect (GOI, Ministry of Social Justice 18 july 11, 2020 vol lV nos 28 & 29 EPW Economic & Political Weekly COMMENTARY and Empowerment). The ostensible ra- But there is a reason why the nation’s Devji, Faisal (2013): Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea, Cambridge, Massachusetts: tionale is to adhere to the constitutional multiple names—India–Hindustan–Bharat Harvard University Press, 93 and 98. nomenclature, that is “Scheduled Caste” –Hind—roll so equivocally off our GoI (1948): Constituent Assembly of India Debates (Proceedings), Vol VII, Delhi: Government of in English or in equivalent vernacular tongues.