Of India and Bharat

India’s official name is Bharat and this is accorded equal primacy as the word India in the Constitution. In fact the First Clause of the Constitution begins with the words, “India, that is Bharat . . .

So, who is a Bharatiya? A Bharatiya is one who makes the culture of Bharat his/her own.

It does not matter whether one is born into the culture, one becomes a Bharatiya by the adoption of the culture of brotherly/sisterly love, concern for the environment and animals, deep respect for other cultures, and a longing for God.

Bha = radiance, splendour
Rath = engrossed
Bharatiya = those who remain engrossed in the worship of ‘tej’ (radiance, light etc.). That is to say, Bharatiya is one who is engrossed in spiritual practice. Consequently a ‘seeker’ from any part of the world is a Bharatiya. [Source: http://www.sanatan.org/en/organization.htm ]

And then we have the quandary of who is an Indian. Who is an Indian? Nowadays it is one who is born in India, or is descended from people born in India. They can be a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a follower of any religion. And India probably has the largest list of practitioners of different religions in the world.
 

Indians can be fair and blue-eyed – classically found in Kashmir, Himmachal Pradesh and among the Pathans; Asiatic in looks – originally from Darjeeling, Assam, Sikkim and states near Nepal; darker among the southern states and the brown Indian is found throughout the sub-continent. As well as the Anglo-Indians.

Religion for these variety of races can be any one or more of the 100 or more belief systems prevalent in India.
Race does not make an Indian, although the “Indians” would like us to believe it does. Race has been issue with India/Bharat from the time of the ‘Aryan invasion’, so much so that the country is split as to whether there was an invasion or not. It is the winner that writes (or rights) the history of a nation and in many cases the minority in India has been ignored in the search of the true Indian, if he/she is ever found.

In the 21st Century, race should not play a role for the Indian, for there is no particular race that can clearly validate its ‘Indian-ness’ by any method. But many Indian communities nevertheless try and the race card is employed in everything - from politics, to social and community affairs to giving out a ration card or buying a house.

The Aryans of north India are of a different stock to the Dravidians of the south. Each lays claim to the ‘ownership’ of India and both cannot prove it. The Aryans because the sore point of their origins around the Caspian Sea that cannot be laid to rest despite all the research to unearth evidence to the contrary, and the Dravidians because they admit to coming from a sunken kingdom called Kumari Kandam, off the coast of present day India (especially so for the Tamils).

Then there are the gypsies – the banjaras - and the adivasis (tribals). The Banjara (also called Lambadi or Lanbani) are people of nomadic tribes in India.

[It is now generally accepted that the Romani people migrated out of the Sindh, Rajasthan and Punjab regions of the Indian subcontinent west into Europe as early as the eleventh century.]

This gives a certain validity to the Aryan invasion theory, the nomadic aspect kept this group moving all the time. The banjara offshoots can be found in Romania (Romany Gypsies), thence onto the Spanish peninsula, even up to Finland (the Laplanders, also called Sami). These nomads have carved out a realm of their own which in recent times has been stamped on by individual countries, including Hitler’s attempt to wipe them off the face of earth.

Adivasi is an umbrella term for a heterogeneous set of ethnic and tribal groups believed to be the aboriginal population of India. They comprise a substantial indigenous minority of the population of India. (Wikipedia)

The adivasis had been around well before the coming of either the Aryans or the Dravidians. They are presently living in reservations and ‘protected’ areas in isolated parts of the sub-continent, a consequence of the British take-over of their land during the Raj. The trend to alienate the adivasis started with the Moghul invasion and did not let up until the end of the Raj.

But in the India of the pre-Moghul rajahs, the adivasis not only held their own land, but had their own kingdoms. In the past 400 years or so, they have lost not only their land, their sovereignty and their pride but, in some cases, their identity as well.

Adivasis speak languages which either share distinct North Indian (Indo-European) or South Indian (Dravidian) language components as well as Austro-Asiatic languages. Are the Adivasis the basis of the present-day Indian population/s or a distinct race/s in their own right?

Then we have the question of what is the culture of India. This from Wikipedia:
The culture of India has been shaped not only by its long history, unique geography and diverse demography, but also by its ancient heritages, which were formed during the Indus Valley Civilization and evolved further during the Vedic age, rise and decline of Buddhism, the Golden age, invasions from Central Asia, European colonization and the Indian independence movement.

India's languages, religions, dance, music, architecture and customs differ from place to place within the country, but nevertheless possess a commonality. The culture of India is an amalgamation of these diverse sub-cultures spread all over the Indian subcontinent and traditions that are several millennia old.

Regarded by some historians as the "oldest living civilization of Earth", the Indian tradition dates back to 8,000 BC and has a continuous recorded history for over 2,500 years. Several elements of India's diverse culture — such as Indian religions, yoga and Indian cuisine — have had a profound impact across the world.

Who decides who is Indian? No one can, actually, although everyone does. Legally, of course, there are processes: birth certificate, passports, state of origin, official lineage records, etc. But if you can prove an iota of Indian/Bharatiya blood in you, you can be treated as an Indian; in India, and in most other countries. It is a matter of belief and in most cases other methods of identification are considered more important than just belonging to India, or to the Indian Diaspora.

In modern India, the state of origin and the culture of a people play a more important part in identity than does national patriotism. The only time an Indian is an Indian is when a crisis of national magnitude looms for them, or if a national sports team is playing another country. I believe it is the English language more than anything that actually binds this nation of 1.2 billion people together.

So, an Indian is someone who is born on the sub-continent, or descended from someone born on the sub-continent. An Indian can be of any race, a speaker of any language, a person of any hue, professing any creed, ascribing to any caste.

Once an “Indian” starts getting specific about him/herself, his Indian-ness disappears, replaced by state of origin, caste, religious leanings, affiliations to groups, afflictions of religious fanaticism.

A true Bharatiya, on the other hand, has only these qualifications: believe in the oneness of everything, everybody has to be treated not only as an equal but as your own self, service overrides any rights or obligation, the world is unreal and God is the only trustworthy ‘element’ that can relied on.

Nationality, political leanings, ambition, pride, community affiliations, religious background and do not play any part in the make-up of the Bharatiya. Only Satya (Truth); Dharma (Right Conduct); Shanti (Peace) and Prema (love) plays a part in the life of Bharatiya.

A Bharatiya is a citizen of the world, a patriot to Mother Earth only, neither a friend or foe of anyone but wishing every living thing on this planet the best of everything, lacks selfishness, looks for unity at all times, makes no difference between the rights of a woman or a man, or an animal for that matter.

Remember, the term Hindu only came about because the Greeks dropped the ‘s’ from the word Sindhu which the Persians used for describing people ‘who lived beyond the Sindhu river’. Before this everyone was a Bharatiya, of Bharatvarsha. Today this term is only used to declare that India was named Bharat because of either:

1. After the Bharat clan that is mention in the Rig Vedas
2. Or after Emperor Bharat, one of the ancestors of the lineage that ended up annihilating each other in the Mahabharata War.

And in all this, the Indians from the Diaspora have their own issues. They pay homage to everything Indian but do not know what is the correct thing. For most times, they are the people of the country they reside in – voting in their candidates, raising their kids in the way of their country of residence, adopting their language, traditions and most everything.

Their Indian-ness is based on what their parents and their parents have passed on to them, or what they have learnt of their culture through the movies from their state. This they either accept and thrive on, or reject and adopt other lifestyles.

End Notes
1. Even before Asoka forged India’s greatest empire, India was called Bharatavarsha after the head of the Bharata clan.
2. The second stanza of “Jana Gana Mana” (national anthem), by Rabindranath Tagore, reads:
Day and night your call resounds,
And to the sound of your loving voice,
Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, Muslim and Christian,
Approach your throne from east and west,
And weave for you a garland of love.
Unifier of the peoples, thou, dispenser of India’s destiny!
Victory, victory, victory to Thee!
3. Bharat is actually a combination of three words: Bhava (BHA), Raga (RA) and Tala(TA).
4. The Bharatas are an Aryan tribe mentioned in the Rigveda, especially in Mandala 3 attributed to the Bharata sage Vishvamitra. In the "river hymn" RV 3.33, the entire Bharata tribe is described as crossing a river. Bharatá is also used as a name of Agni (literally, "to be maintained", viz. the fire having to be kept alive by the care of men), and as a name of Rudra in RV 2.36.8.
Mandala 7 (7.18 etc.) mentions the Bharatas as taking part in the Battle of the Ten Kings, where they are on the winning side. They appear to have been successful in the early power-struggles between the various Aryan and non-Aryan tribes so that in post-Vedic (Epic) tradition, the Mahabharata, the eponymous ancestor becomes Emperor Bharata, conqueror of all of India, and his tribe and kingdom is called Bharata. "Bharata" today is the official name of the Republic of India.

* Nalinesh Arun is a former Fiji journalist who lived in Indian for many years. He is now based in Christchurch