INDIA Will March On

The BJP's dream of ruling India for the next 50 years will be punctured by a diverse and powerful people's movement

- Sandeep Saurav

"WHAT'S in a name?" Four centuries ago, when William Shakespeare wrote the classic Romeo and Juliet, he was referring to the idea that names themselves do not have any worth or meaning, but are a mere convention to distinguish things or people. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," wrote Shakespeare. "India, that is, Bharat, shall be a Union of States," says the very first Article of the Constitution of India, stressing that the focus is on the people rather than the nomenclature.

Rattled by the emergence of a new coalition with the acronym INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), a jittery Modi camp is now trying to pit India against Bharat, thereby once again revealing its contempt for the Constitution of India. However, we all are, by now, aware of the Modi school of propaganda and his fondness for abbreviations and acronyms in order to create a buzz around his government's schemes. So much so that 52 of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government's schemes have India in their names, including Digital India, Make in India, Startup India and Skill India, and only five have Bharat. Shifting identity gears has been a trope of the BJP, and the India vs Bharat controversy is yet another 'masterstroke' by the BJP, rooted in a "distraction tactic" and "panic reaction" after the Mumbai conclave of the Opposition faction called itself INDIA, a coalition committed to prevent Narendra Modi from serving a third term, ahead of the 2024 general elections and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) centenary in 2025.