Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Republic of India has two principal official short names, each of which is historically significant: India and Bharat. A third name, Hindustan, is also used when North Indians speak among themselves. The usage of "India", "Bharat", or "Hindustan" depends on the context and language of conversation.
India, officially the Republic of India, [j] [21] is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area ; the most populous country from June 2023 onwards; [ 22 ] [ 23 ] and since its independence in 1947, the world's most populous democracy.
The country, which comfortably juggles multiple names of ancient and modern origin, could be renamed, say reports. But what are these names and where did they come from?
Many maps printed in the Republic of India after 1947 called the new country Bharat – the Constitution of the Republic of India officially names the country Bharat. [36] [37] Even today, many Hindu nationalists and Hindi speakers in India argue for the word Bharat to become the only official name of the country. [38]
In Hindi, the constitution replaces India with Bharat everywhere, except the part defining the country’s names, which says in Hindi, “Bharat, that is India, shall be a Union of States.”
After the Delhi Sultanate was established, north India, especially the Gangetic plains and the Punjab, came to be called "Hindustan". [ 32 ] [ 34 ] [ 35 ] [ 36 ] Scholar Bratindra Nath Mukherjee states that this narrow meaning of Hindustan existed side by side with the wider meaning, and some of the authors used both of them simultaneously.
India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar dismissed criticisms in an interview with the ANI news agency, saying, “India, that is Bharat, it is there in the constitution. Please, I would ...
Political subdivisions of the Indian Empire in 1909 with British India (pink) and the princely states (yellow) Before it gained independence in 1947, India (also called the Indian Empire) was divided into two sets of territories, one under direct British rule (British India), and the other consisting of princely states under the suzerainty of the British Crown, with control over their internal ...