The 24-page magazine “Bharat: The Mother of Democracy” was created specifically for the summit and will be given for free to participants and media.
The “Bharat” nation tag on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s table during his opening comments at the G20 Summit on Saturday morning drew notice. Modi’s emphatic support for the country’s name came only days after President Droupadi Murmu extended an invitation to a luncheon in the name of the “President of Bharat” as part of the global event.
Interestingly, “Bharat: The Mother of Democracy,” a glossy 24-page magazine that’s flying off the shelves at the G20 Summit venue’s international media center, Bharat Mandapam in Pragati Maidan, explains its title on the second page: “Bharat is the official name of the country. It is stated in the Constitution and the 1946-48 deliberations that led to the ratification of the charter.
The use of Bharat as “the official name of the country” in a magazine distributed to G20 foreign delegates and journalists from both within and outside the country is the latest and clear indication that the name, which is currently used interchangeably with India, albeit primarily in a domestic context, will now be the name by which the country wishes to be known in the international context.
India may have been the name under which it assumed the G20 presidency, but Bharat was the name under which it announced the adoption of the Delhi Declaration at 3.30 p.m. on Saturday, September 9.
The magazine, published by the Union government, was created just for the summit and will be distributed free to participants and the media. The glossy identifies the beginning of Indian civilization as the “Sindhu-Saraswati civilization: 6000 BCE -2000 BCE,” which history books in India and abroad refer to as the “Indus Valley Civilisation” under the header “Democratic Ethos in Bharat Over Thousands of Years” on Page 2.
The preface also specifies “Ramayana: Beyond 2000 BCE” and the Mahabharata: “Beyond 1100 BCE,” implying that they were historical times rather than legendary events enriched over a thousand years of oral and written traditions in Indian folk and religious narratives.
It also relates to the Chinese monk Fa Hsien, who visited India in the fifth century CE. The magazine mentions various other periods in Indian history, including Mahajanapada and Gantantra (7th and 8th centuries BCE), Buddhism (since 500 BCE), and Jainism (since 650 BCE), as well as Megasthenes (the Greek explorer) and his political treatise, Arthashastra.
The sole reference of a Muslim ruler under the banner “The Understanding Monarch” follows the mention of the Vijayanagar Empire (14th to 16th century) in southern India. “Good governance should prioritize everyone’s well-being, regardless of religion.” “That was the kind of democracy that the 3rd Mughal Padishah Akbar practiced,” the journal says, adding that “Akbar’s democratic thinking was unusual and far ahead of its time.”
The magazine concludes by mentioning all of the country’s prime ministers and the “peaceful transfers of power” from 1952 and 2023.
