The discovery of my dharmic roots begins with my birth country, India. India is also called Bharat or Bharath, as well as Hindustan. I always thought India was the name given to us by the British colonizers. However, the name goes beyond the Anglican colonizers. Recently I had the good fortune of learning India’s history from the husband-wife team of the Bharat Gyan Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Hari, from whom I learned the true source of this name.
The land between the Indian ocean and the Himalayas has always been called “Bharat” in ancient Indian texts. The Vedas describe this land as having clear boundaries on the east with Arunachal and on the west with Astachal. Achal is a Sanskrit word for “immovable”, i.e. mountains. Arun is a name given to the sun. So Arunachal is the area of mountains that receive the first rays of the sun in Bharat. Asta means “setting” (of the sun). Astachal hence means the mountains in Bharat on which the sun sets the last. This area is the same as the Parapamisus mountains of the ancient Greeks that separates India from Persia (Ref). The name Parapamisus itself is derived from the ancient Indian name for the Hindu Kush, Paariyatra Parvat, i.e. the mountains beyond which journey is difficult. So, the land between the Parapamisus/Paariyatra Parvat/Hindu Kush mountains on the west, the Arunachal mountains on the east, the Himalayas on the north, and the great oceans (Maha Saagar) on the south, has always been called Bharat since ancient times.
What does this word Bharath denote? It’s a combination of two words: Bha (pronounced as Bhaa) and Rath. Bha denotes light, knowledge, the Sun. Rath means connoisseur or one who enjoys. So Bharath was coined as the land of people who enjoy light or knowledge. Bharat came to denote the land where a knowledge-based civilization thrived and prospered. Even today, this ethos is present in the majority of Indians who take pride in education and knowledge and are known as the “knowledge workers” in the modern world.
So, how did we get the name India? More than a millennium ago, Persians had a parallel civilization and a culture that regarded Indians with high regard. Persian kings used to invite Indian scholars to Persia to teach Indian knowledge and wisdom. For them, the land around and beyond the Sindhu river was Sindh or Hind. In the Persian language, Sa is pronounced as Ha. Hence our lands started getting called Hind, and the people living in these lands as Hindus. Later on, the name became interchangeable with Hindustan, or the land of Hindus. “Stan” is derived from the Sanskrit word “Sthaan”, which means land or place belonging to someone.
Further west, ancient Greeks did not have the H syllable. The Greeks who knew about Bharat through the Persians, further modified Hind to Inde or India. An example of this can be found in one of the maps by the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy (Ref). India thus has always been a name given to our motherland by the west, for at least a millennium.
Our modern colonizers, the British, used the name India as it was easy for them to pronounce. Unfortunately, even after gaining independence, we have stuck to this name, which at present, represents the western idea of a poor third-world nation/country, that came into existence in 1947. The name neither represents our civilization or culture, nor our grand history before the colonial rule.
Technically, the constitution of India has two names for the country: India in English and Bharat in Hindi. Which makes absolutely no sense. It can just be easily called the “Republic of Bharat” in English. It just shows how deeply rooted we are in the colonial mindset that we take pride in the name used by these outside rulers of the country. If ever India gets completely renamed to Bharat, we would truly break through these shackles of western and colonial thoughts. That day would be the proudest day for our country, and may even be a turning point for our fast declining civilization.
For a detailed analysis of India and what it truly stands for, read the book from Bharat Gyan, Autobiography of India: Breaking the myths about identity.