Slave name: Kangana Ranaut wants to change 'India' to 'Bharat'

Kangana Ranaut has often made headlines for her opinions and bizarre statements online, which end up getting backlash or even getting her banned from social media platforms.

In a lengthy Facebook post, she called ‘India’ a slave name and wanted it to be changed to ‘Bharat’, further elaborating an explanation behind it. She took to her Koo account, Facebook page, and Instagram story and said that the country will never progress if it continues to be another replica of the western world.

She wrote, “India can only rise if it’s rooted in its ancient spirituality and wisdom, that is the soul of our great civilisation. World will look up to us and we will emerge as a world leader if we go higher in urban growth but not be cheap copy of western world and remain deeply rooted in Vedas, Geeta and Yoga, can we please change this slave name India back to Bharat?”

She said, “British gave us slave name India, which literally means east of Indus Valley, Really would u call a child small nose or second born or worse C section. What kind of name is this ? So rudimentary. Let me tell you meaning of Bharat. It’s made of three Sanskrit words: भा – (भाव), र – ( राग ), त – ( ताल).

She concluded, “Yes, that’s who we were before we were enslaved, most culturally and aesthetically evolved civilisation. Every name has vibration and British knew this they not only gave new names to places but even to people and important monuments. We must regain our lost glory. Let’s start with the name भारत 🇮🇳” she wrote on Facebook.”

Like Kangana noted, the word India is derived from the Indus river. The official name of the Republic of India was derived from the Sanskrit name ‘Sindhu’ that referred to the Indus River. As per the government site, Know India, “the valleys around Indus river were the home of the early settlers. The Aryan worshippers referred to the river Indus as the Sindhu. The Persian invaders converted it into Hindu. The name ‘Hindustan’ combines Sindhu and Hindu and thus refers to the land of the Hindus.” Hence making Kangana’s claim that India was a name given by Britishers is incorrect.

Kangana’s post received a number of comments and many pointed out, “A little bit of knowledge about Hindu mythology and/or the Sanskrit language will tell you that the name “भारत” comes from “भरत”, the son of Shakuntala and Dushyanta, who grew up to become up the legendary emperor who once ruled the entire land.”

“None of the words in Sanskrit are acronyms for anything else, rather follow simple rules of ‘sandhi’, ‘samas’ and/or ‘word roots and pratyay’. It is important to note that the word “भरत” comes from two separate words: “भर” indicating the gotra “Bharadwaj” for the king and “तन” indicating son. The pratyay here is अ। ”

The user further wrote, “If we go deeper, every gotra is named after some animal, and Bharadwaj is named after the sky lark (like Kashyap is named after the tortoise). There’s also a story how as a young prince, Bharat used to play with the sky lark. The name might have originated from there as well.”