INDIA | NATIONALISM | LANGUAGE

Why is India letting go of its oldest geographical name?

(By sheer ignorance? Or faux nationalism?)

Sapta-Sindhu — image by Muhammad Asif Nawaz, 2015

India is preparing for a name change. This is problematic in more than one sense.

It isn’t merely that the name India sits firmly anchored in the Indian Constitution, a uniquely outstanding piece of constitutional literature, created to much international acclaim, by a legendary Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly of India, and made effective om January 26, 1950. More of an issue are the purported arguments put forward to justify a name change — and what is about to come in its place.

The Constitution of India

The proposal for change largely rests on India’s decade-old urge for decolonization, part of which is the (sadly mistaken) idea that India is a name given to the subcontinent by the British colonizer.

In reality, India is not a foreign name at all