NEW DELHI: Although the Constitution Drafting Committee under BR Ambedkar was set up on August 29, 1947, two weeks after India attained Independence, it was not until September 17, 1949, that the Constituent Assembly examined the section on naming the new nation.
Article 1 of the draft Constitution, as proposed by Ambedkar — “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States” — generated intense debate. Though Ambedkar wanted it to be adopted within half the hour left for the meeting that day, other members forced the discussions on to September 18, 1949.
A careful reading of the debate reveals most speakers backed “Bharat” over “India” as the name for new nation or at least an amendment to draft Article 1. HV Kamath of Congress’ Forward Bloc faction set up by Netaji Bose moved the amendment to draft Article 1 saying, “Bharat or, in the English language, India, shall be a Union of States.” He called the phrase “India, that is Bharat, clumsy”, citing Irish Constitution of 1937 to make the case for Bharat to precede India.
“The Irish Free State was one of the few nations in modern world, which changed its name on achieving freedom. The fourth article of its Constitution says—The name of the State is Eire, or, in the English language, Ireland,” he reasoned.
Congress leaders in assembly Seth Govind Das and Kamlapati Tripathi too favoured Bharat. Das said, “India, that is Bharat, are not beautiful words… We should say ‘Bharat known as India’. Word India began to be used when Greeks came to India. They named Sindhu as Indus and India was derived from Indus. On the contrary, if we look up the Vedas, Upanishads and our ancient book the Mahabharata, we find a mention of the name Bharat.”
Kallur Subba Rao (Madras) in his interjection “heartily supported Bharat, which is ancient and figures in the Rig Veda”. BM Gupte (Bombay) too supported Bharat while Ram Sahai (Madhya Bharat) pointed to all religious scriptures and Hindi literature describing the land as Bharat.
Congress’ Tripathi from United Provinces said if the words “that is” were necessary, these should be phrased as, “Bharat, that is, India”. He urged the assembly to accept Kamath’s amendment saying if accepted, “it would give appreciable consideration to our sentiments and the prestige of our country”. Drafting committee member Hargovind Pant, in an amendment, sought that the country be called “Bharat” or “Bharat Varsha” in place of ‘India’.
Kamath’s amendment was, however, defeated with 38 ayes against 51 noes. Eventually, the Constituent Assembly adopted for the country a dual and bilingual identity: “India, that is Bharat”, as enshrined in Article 1 of the Constitution.