- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/4495502
Britain renamed Bharat to India when it was colonized, and the name is a symbol of colonial slavery.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/4495502
Britain renamed Bharat to India when it was colonized, and the name is a symbol of colonial slavery.
wouldn’t Hindustan imply that the Muslims don’t belong in the country? But they are so racist they don’t want to sound Persian? interesting.
Hindustani is a language spoken by both Hindus and Muslims (in both India and Pakistan) as Hindi and Urdu are essentially variants of it. Thus technically Hindustan is a religiously neutral term. The problem is that it only represents north-west India where this language is predominantly spoken. The rest of India would therefore not identify with this name which is also the problem with Bharat. Unfortunately due to India’s extremely diverse multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious composition there is no optimal solution to this problem.
“India” also originally represented northwest part too.
And yet over time it became accepted by most of the subcontinent. Probably the same can happen with Bharat given enough time.
But ultimately this is not about what Indians call their own country, it’s about a naming convention in the anglophone world. It’s as if Germany tomorrow decided to demand that English speakers would be required to call their country Deutschland. It’s doable but it will take time for people to adapt and some will still never let go of the old name they have become accustomed to using.
And that would still just be for English, other languages would still have their own names for some countries, like the Polish Niemcy for Germany.
Personally i have no opinion on this either way except to say that out of habit i will probably still sometimes use the name i originally learned.
Turkey did exactly that.
Ukraine even tried to rename… Russia.