‘India, that is Bharat’ — How Constituent Assembly debated nation’s name in Article 1 of Constitution

While G20 dinner invite in the name of ‘President of Bharat’ has triggered row, Centre had earlier asserted in court that ‘there is no change in circumstances to consider any change in Article 1’.

APOORVA MANDHANI, The Print, 06 September, 2023, New Delhi: India’s G20 Summit dinner invitations to foreign leaders sent in the name of “President of Bharat” instead of the traditional “President of India” have triggered a row.

Reports have also claimed that the Narendra Modi-led NDA government is likely to bring a resolution to change India’s official name to “Bharat” during the five-day special session of Parliament scheduled from 18 September.

Several BJP leaders have come out in support of using the word “Bharat” on the invites.

“This should have happened earlier. It gives great satisfaction to the mind. ‘Bharat’ is our introduction. We are proud of it. The President has given priority to ‘Bharat’. This is the biggest statement to come out of the colonial mindset,” Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Tuesday.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami termed it a “proud moment for all Indians”, and said that it was a move by PM Modi “to come out of the mindset of slavery”.

The opposition, on the other hand, criticised the usage of the word “Bharat”.

“So the news is indeed true. Rashtrapati Bhawan has sent out an invite for a G20 dinner on Sept 9th in the name of ‘President of Bharat’ instead of the usual ‘President of India’,” Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh posted on X Tuesday. “Now, Article 1 in the Constitution can read: ‘Bharat, that was India, shall be a Union of States’. But now even this ‘Union of States’ is under assault.”

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal asked whether the name of the nation would be changed if the opposition alliance INDIA rechristened itself as “Bharat”. “I have heard rumours. Why is this happening? It is being said that this is being done because we have formed an alliance named INDIA… The country belongs to 140 crore people and not to one party. If INDIA alliance rechristens itself Bharat, will they change the name of Bharat,” he told reporters.

Article 1 of the Constitution is titled ‘Name and territory of the Union’, and says that “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States”.

Notably, back in 2015, the NDA government had told the Supreme Court that the Constituent Assembly had “deliberated extensively” before adopting Article 1, and that “there is no change in the circumstances to consider any change in Article 1 of the Constitution of India”.

What did the Constituent Assembly say while debating Article 1, and how have courts and the government treated demands for a change in the country’s name? ThePrint explains.

‘Somewhat clumsy’

Article 1 of the draft Constitution in 1948 initially said: “India shall be a Union of States”.

However, when the discussion on Article 1 was first taken up in November 1948, a few members demanded substitution of names — Bharat, Bharat Varsha, Hindustan — for the word INDIA, in Article 1, clause 1.

A member of the assembly, Ananthasayanam Ayyangar, requested that the matter be passed over.

A year later, on 17 September, 1949, when the discussion on Article 1 was taken up again,  Bhimrao Ambedkar, who headed the panel drafting the Constitution, proposed that clause 1 of Article 1 should read: “India, that is, Bharat, shall be a Union of States.”

When the Article was taken up again the next day, another assembly member, H.V. Kamath, moved an amendment to change the first clause to “Bharat or, in the English language, India, shall be a Union of States.”

He said that it is customary among most peoples of the world to have what is called a namakaran or naming ceremony for the newborn. He, therefore, advocated for such a namkaran ceremony for the newly born republic as well.

Kamath called it the “new baby of the Indian Republic”, and spoke of how there have been several suggestions as to the proper name that it should be given. The prominent, among these suggestions, he said, have been “Bharat, Hindustan, Hind and Bharatbhumi or Bharatvarsh”.

He felt that the phrase “India, that is, Bharat” was “somewhat clumsy”, and wanted the construction of the phrase to be modified in a “more aesthetic form”.

‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’

Several members of the Constituent Assembly welcomed the inclusion of “Bharat” in Article 1. For instance, Seth Govind Das asserted that “it is a matter of great pleasure that we are today naming our country as Bharat… We fought the battle of freedom under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi by raising the slogan of ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’. It is a matter for pleasure that we are going to do a correct thing today.”

Another member Kamalapati Tripathi said he was “enamoured” by the historic name of Bharat, and “even the mere uttering of this word, conjures before us by a stroke of magic the picture of cultured life of the centuries that (we) have.”

The name, he said, “is full of sacred remembrances”.

However, some members didn’t like the overall phrase “India, that is, Bharat”. For instance, Seth Govind Das also felt that “‘India, that is, Bharat’ are not beautiful words for, the name of a country”.

He asserted: “We should have put the words ‘Bharat known as India also in foreign countries’. That would have been much more appropriate than the former expression.”

Kamalapati Tripathi extended support to Kamath’s proposed amendment. While  congratulating Ambedkar on his proposal, he added: “It would have been very proper if he had accepted the amendment moved by Shri Kamath, which states ‘Bharat as is known in English language ‘India’. That would have preserved the prestige of this country.”

He also felt that if the words “that is” were necessary, “it would have been more proper to use the words “Bharat, that is, India” in the resolution that has been presented to us”.

However, at the end of the debate, the assembly members accepted Ambedkar’s proposal, and the Constitution opens with the words “India, that is Bharat, is a Union of States”.

‘Clauses of Article 1 were adopted unanimously’

While there haven’t been too many judgments that deal with Article 1 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court dismissed a public interest litigation in 2016 that sought the renaming of India as Bharat.

The petition was filed by Niranjan Bhatwal, a Maharashtra-based social activist, through advocate Ajay Majithia. It had demanded that Article 1(1) must be interpreted keeping in view the Constituent Assembly’s intention, “which wanted to name the country Bharat”.

The petition was first filed in September 2014, to seek a declaration to name the country “Bharat”. In November 2014, the court allowed the petitioner to withdraw the petition with liberty to make representation to the appropriate authorities first.

The petitioner had then sent a notice along with the petition to the Prime Minister, endorsing a copy to BJP leaders Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, M. Venkaiah Naidu, Smriti Irani and Sadanand Gowda, according to a plea filed by him in court in December 2014.

However, after a month passed without a response to this communication, the petitioner approached the Supreme Court again in December 2014.

In its response to the representation, the home ministry, in February 2015, told Majithia that “the issues mentioned in your representation were deliberated extensively in the Constituent Assembly during the process of formation of Constitution of India and accordingly the clauses of Article 1 of the Constitution were adopted unanimously”.

Rejecting the representation through a letter, which ThePrint has seen, the ministry added: “Therefore there is no change in the circumstances to consider any change in Article 1 of the Constitution of India.”

In an affidavit filed in July 2015 before the Supreme Court, the ministry reiterated these assertions. The affidavit, seen by ThePrint, states: “The name ‘Bharat’ did not figure in the original draft Constitution. There were extensive debates in the Constituent Assembly on the issue of a name of our independent country.”

It noted that alternative names like Bharat Varsha and Hindustan were considered for Article 1. “After extensive discussions, the amendment was finally adopted by the Constituent Assembly, as a result of which both the words ‘Bharat’ and ‘India’ were included in Article 1 of the Constitution.”

Speaking to ThePrint, Majithia, however, stuck to his demand. He said there is “an inadvertence in the language employed in Article 1 of the Constitution of India”.

A careful reading of the Constituent Assembly debates, he said, shows clearly “that the intention was to name the country as Bharat”. “However, the excerpts of the same were not appended by the Drafting Committee and the motion was hurriedly passed which led to the enactment of Article 1,” he added.

In 2020, the Supreme Court ordered that a plea to change India’s name exclusively to “Bharat” be converted into a representation and forwarded to the central government.

Then Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde was quoted as saying, “Bharat and India are both names given in the Constitution. India is already called ‘Bharat’ in the Constitution.”

(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)