However, when I searched for
this in the Constituent Assembly Debates from internet, I could
not locate any
discussion about this legal aspect about the choice of the name of the country,
Many people are under the
impression that ‘India’
is the name given to us by the British rulers. This is not a fact. The name
‘Bharat’ appears in the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas as well as the epic
Mahabharat. Our country was originally called 'Bharat' after Bharat, the brave son of Shakuntala and Dushyant. When the Persians came, they called it 'Sindhu Desh' after the river Sindhu. The word ‘India’
began to be used when the Greeks came here in the 3rd Century B C. Many
know that when Alexander asked Puru, the defeated King of Sindhu, how the latter would
like to be treated, he replied that he expected to be treated like a King by
another King. The Greeks called the Sindhu river as ‘Indus’.
They came across this river when they entered the area and so, called the
country as ‘India’.
Since then, our country has been known as ‘India’ in the international
community.
When Columbus
set out on the sea-route, he landed, in 1492, in what later came to be known as
America (so named after
Amerigo Vespuccii, who landed in The New World in 1501 and realized that it was
a new country and not India.)
That is why the native South Americans are still called ‘Red Indians’.
(By the way, as the river
Sindhu became a part of Pakistan,
one member of the Constituent Assembly suggested in a lighter vain that Pakistan should be named ‘Hindustan’!
The word ‘Hindustan’ is linked to the river
Sindhu and has nothing to do with Hindu religion.)
The Constituent Assembly
formed several Committees to discuss and prepare Drafts of the different parts
of the Constitution. Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel headed 2 important
Committes, viz. ‘Union Powers Committee’ and ‘State Powers Committee’
respectively. Similarly, there were other Committees to deal with Fundamental
Rights and other parts of the proposed Constitution. Reports of all these Committees
were processed, compiled and collated by the Secretariat of the Constituent
Assembly, headed by S. N. Mukherjee, who was the chief draftsman. He was
assisted by an expert ‘Constitutional Advisor’, B. N. Rau, a retired I C S
Officer.
The Constituent Assembly
then appointed a ‘Committee to Scrutinise the Draft Constitution’, headed by
Dr. B. R.Ambedkar. The other Members were Gobind Ballav Pant, K M Munshi, Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer,N Gopalaswamy Ayyangar and T T Krishnamachari.This Committee was and is popularly known as Drafting
Committee. This Committee finalized the Draft Constitution which was presented
to the Constituent Assembly for discussion and adoption with necessary changes.
This Draft contained Article 1 (1) which stated, “India, that is Bharat, shall be a
Union of States”.
When Article 1 of the Draft Constitution was
discussed in the Constituent Assembly, the debate was on whether the country
should be named as ‘India’,
or ‘Union of India’ or ‘United States of India’. Piloting the Draft, Dr. Ambedkar said, “India has been known as ‘India’ throughout
history and all these past years. As a member of U N O, the name of the country
is India
and all agreements are signed as such.”
H V Kamath proposed that the
Draft Article 1(1) should be amended as:
(i)
Bharat, or in
the English language, India,
shall be a Union of States, or
(ii) Hind, or in the English language, India, shall be
a Union of States.
Personally, he preferred the
first.
Kamalapati Tripathy felt
that it would have been more proper to say, ‘Bharat, that is, India”.
H V Kamath’s proposal was
negated by a vote of 51 to 38.
Apparently, the Constituent
Assembly never considered ‘Bharat’ as the only name of the country. ( I shall be glad to be proved wrong.)
The Draft Constitution was
prepared in English language and adopted as such by the Constituent Assembly.
After this Draft in English
was adopted, a Hindi translation of the Constitution was prepared. This
translation was approved by the Constituent Assembly as the official version. The 308 members signed the hand-written English and Hindi versions of the Constitution on the 24th January, 1950. When the original version was adopted on the 26th November, 1949, 284 members had signed it.
The original Constitution is hand-written with beautiful calligraphy, each page beautified and decorated by artists including Beohar Ram Manohar Sinha and Nandalal Bose (the famous painter) from Shantiniketan.
Years later, there was a controversy as it was said that after all, a
translation was only a translation and could never be same thing as the
original. Apparently, this legal conundrum is yet to be resolved. Hair- splitting?
Perhaps, had the Constitution been first prepared in Hindi and then translated into English, the sole name 'Bharat' would have been chosen or 'Bharat' would have been followed by the explanatory words 'that is India'.
But then, the framers of our Constitution, a large number of whom were lawyers, were familiar with British jurisprudence and the language used in the Courts at that time, was (and even now, is) English.
Interestingly and incongruously, there was a
reference to the British House of Commons in our Constitution as adopted by the
Constituent Assembly. Article 105(3) originally read as:
In other respects, the powers, privileges and
immunities of each House of Parliament and of its members and the Committees of
each House shall be such as may from time to time be defined by Parliament by
law, and, until so defined, shall be those of the members of House of Commons of United Kingdom.
The reference in the
Constitution of a sovereign country to the practice (U. K. does not have a
written Constitution.) in another country was odd. In 1978, when the Janata
Government led by Morarjee Desai was in power, the last part was amended as:
.. shall be those of that House and its
members and committees immediately before the coming into force of section 15
of the Constitution (Forty Fourth Amendment) Act, 1978.
The original Article 194(3)
dealing with the powers and privileges of members of State Legislatures was
similarly amended in 1978.
This is a queer situation
and if one asks what these privileges were before the Amendment, it will lead
one to the British House of Commons!
It may be pertinent to add
here that these ‘powers and privileges’ of the legislators have not yet been
defined either by our Parliament or any State Legislature. Parliamentary
privileges continue to be in a nebulous area and have on occasions, been used
to punish and harass citizens and journalists.
By the way, the Constitution
was adopted the on 29th November, 1949 and it came into force on the 26th
January, 1950. This date was chosen to commemorate the 26th January,
which was declared as the ‘Independence Day’ by the nationalist leaders led by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji and these leaders were confident of freeing India from foreign rule. However, they declared that if India would be given dominion status like Australia and Canada by the end of 1929, the demand for full freedom would be deferred. A session of the Indian National Congress was being held at Lahore on the 31st December, 1929.Since no such assurance came, at the stroke of midnight on the 31st December, 1929, Indian National Congress declared 'independence'. It was decided that on the 26th January, 1930, people all over the country would take the Pledge of Freedom. That date was called 'Independence Day' and every year, till the 15th August,1948, the 26th January, was celebrated as such.
('Dominion status' means that the British monarch remains the official Head of State but complete freedom is given to the area. India was in this position till the 26th January, 1950, when our Constitution came into force, India became a Republic and Dr. Rajendra Prasad took over as the Interim President on the 26th January, 1950. He was elected as the full-fledged President after the Parliament and State Assemblies were formed following the First General Elections in 1952. From 1950 to 1952, the Constituent Assembly functioned as the Provisional Parliament. Australia and Canada continue to be British Dominions with the British Queen as their formal Head of State. Their Governors General - Australians and Canadians - are appointed by the British Queen. Lord Mountbatten was the last Vice-Roy and the first Governor General of India. He was Governor General of India from the 15th August, 1947 to the 21st June, 1948. C. Rajagopalachari (the first Indian G.G. and the last G.G. of India) was the Governor General of India from 21.06.1948 to 26.01.1950.)
Isn’t it time to amend the
Constitution to name the country as ‘Bharat’ only, at the latest, before we celebrate the
centenary year of our independence in 2047?
Happy Republic Day!
Jai Hind, Jai Bharat!
TAIL PIECE:
Can we visualize a day when
a ‘United States of India’, comprising the present India,
Pakistan and Bangladesh will
be formed? Even, Mynamar, (the erstwhile Burma)
which was a part of India
till 1936, can be invited to join it! Isn't the region called 'the Indian sub-continent'?
