Renaming India: BJP's new Bharat

BJP govt works to a plan. Even if its objectives sometimes fail, it does nothing without clear objectives. Opposition is not able to fathom that the Modi govt's actions have long-term goals as well

It would be a mistake to read the renaming of the nation during the G-20 summit and the Prime Minister's directive to ministers to attack critics of Sanatana Dharma as knee-jerk responses to the Opposition. They are organically linked to a raft of measures that further the strategic goals of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Both measures must be placed alongside the reading down of Article 370, removing Article 35A in the Constitution, and the proposed renaming of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) as Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Indian Evidence Act as Bharatiya Sakshya Bill (all yet to be passed by Parliament). In their wake has come the appointment of a commission on "one nation, one election". Now, there are media reports that a resolution to rename India as Bharat is likely to be introduced during the Special Session of Parliament.

The BJP government works to a plan. Even if its objectives sometimes fail, it does nothing without clear objectives, including the sudden and disastrous demonetisation of November 2016. Unable to understand this, the Opposition is not able to fathom that the Modi government's actions have long-term goals as well.

In the short term, both India vs Bharat and the Sanatana Dharma controversy will undoubtedly create a buzz in the upcoming crucial state elections, with many of the larger states falling in the Hindi belt of North India. However, renaming India as Bharat is about creating a new national identity in the long run. Hindutva frames the nation's history as one of victimhood of ‘1000 years of slavery' under foreign rule, with the name "India" itself seen as being given by foreigners. In the perceived presence of 'Amrit Kaal', India will reclaim itself as Bharat, as a resilient civilisational nation. Already before the G-20 Summit, the ideological fount of the party and the government, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had exhorted through its chief, Mohan Bahgwat, "The name of our country has been Bharat for ages. Whatever may be the language, the name remains the same."

The Sanatana Dharma controversy, describing it as a disease to be eradicated, has been handed to the BJP on a platter by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Congressmen, and not just those from the Dalit community like G Prameswara and Priyank Kharge in Karnataka, but even the likes of Karti Chidambaram have waded into it unnecessarily, especially as the Congress is itself playing the soft-Hindutva game in Madhya Pradesh. This will suit the BJP in preparing an election narrative that the Opposition wants to eradicate Hinduism itself.

But apart from electoral usefulness, the Sanatan Dharma issue is crucial to the long-term goal of the BJP for giving Constitutional protection to Hinduism. It is not accidental that of the nine states of India that have enacted anti-conversion laws, most are ruled by the BJP. According to most observers, the criminalisation of religious conversion is designed to protect Hinduism. The Indian government is believed to have played a back-channel role in 2015 in getting an amendment to the draft Constitution of Nepal for the protection of Sanatana Dharma. It may not be able to change the Constitution in the same way in India as it lacks the numbers in Parliament for now. However, it is marked as a goal on its strategic agenda.

The Hindi renaming of the IPC, CrPC, and Indian Evidence Act are almost untranslatable into English. It signals a shift to a Hindi-fied legal system, which could be the foundation for a future rewriting of the Constitution of India, something that the votaries of Hindutva have desired for a long time. The goal of fundamentally modifying the Constitution of India was already indicated in the abolition of the special status of the erstwhile Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir by reading down of Article 370, bifurcating it into two Union Territories and the immediate implementation of the decision through a Presidential Ordinance. It was the first signal of the desire to move India from an asymmetric federal union to becoming a unitary state.

The "one-nation" chant of the BJP seemingly arises out of its preoccupation with national unity and territorial integrity. But the concern for unitariness is largely ideological and civilisational. Against actual aggressive and intrusive action by China, the government has tended to assume the Ostrich-asana. Unitariness will be developed in the nation by suppressing linguistic diversity, the multiplicity of religions, the existence of different personal laws, cultural differences in dress, food and customs and the multiple identities that individual citizens of India derive from these affiliations. This is why Hindutva ideologues find it difficult to accept special provisions for different states and communities and have only very reluctantly recently accepted the idea of reservations and affirmative action for the Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The one nation of Bharat, in their conception, requires diversity to be melded into a homogenous culture. The Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens, in effect, exclude those whose ancestral origins and religions are seen as being resistant to incorporation into a singular "Bharatiya" identity.

The latest "One Nation" initiative, for "one nation, one election", is another building block towards a unitary Constitution. Critics are right to fear that this could pave the way for "one nation, one leader" and "one nation, one party". The choice of former President Ramnath Kovind to head the commission examining the proposal is not entirely fortuitous. As a former president, he cannot be easily criticised, but it is also important that as a Dalit, he can be counterposed to another Dalit luminary, Dr B R Ambedkar, the father of the Indian Constitution.

What India is witnessing, therefore, are not tactical manoeuvres for an electoral battle but a war for the soul of India. Even if it does not win a majority in the 2024 general election, the BJP would have created the discursive elements that could be used as building blocks to construct a Hindu nation whenever it returns to power.