Memoir

Why Do We Call Bharata 'India'?

The chapter is dedicated toGirl_Onlinexoxo for being my two hundredth follower. Thank you for the follow :)

Also thank you all the readers for reading, voting and commenting it's only because of you that Memoir is back to Hot List and got the rank #11 in Non-Fiction today.

A big thank you to all the silent readers for reading too but if you like the book please vote and comment :)

Love you all ♥

----

Close to thirteen years ago when I was in school someone said something that made me ask this questions to myself.

     Why do we call Bharata 'India'?

    Why not simply call it Bharata?

   After all that's what our country's name is, isn't it?

   Then why create confusion between India and Bharata?

       These were the questions running in my twelve year old mind. And I still think about them sometime.

Now at twenty four I think I have some answers and some, I can guess but still I think there are many kids out there who has asked themselves these questions and has received the answers similar to what I got back then, let's see what were those answers.

Q. Hum Bharata ko 'India' kyu khte h?

(Why do we call Bharata "India"?)

Ans. Kyuki gaure Bharata ko "India" khte the.

(Because white people *Britishers* called Bharata "India".)

Q. Why can't we just call it Bharata, why change name of our own country?

Ans. Because that's how foreigners know us, they know us as India, not Bharata.

     I got these replies some thought it was good for me to be curious but others find my questions irritating and irrelevant.

      I guess some kids still got answers like this and of course reactions. They are not wrong you know, these answers,  may not satisfy a curious kids hunger for knowledge but these answers definitely give more questions to mull over.

     I didn't get my answer then but it gave me so much more to think. Like why some foreigners call us a different name?

why go to the trouble of naming a country which already have a name?

    You know so many questions but never a straight answer.

      Another question;

     We call India 'Bharata' or 'Hindustan' in hindi and we are told the reason behind these name since we were young but never about India. What's the reason behind the name India?

What does the word even mean?

Why are we called Indians?

     When we ask our elders about it, they simply reply

  "It's what white men had called us."

    And that's reason enough for us to call ourselves Indians?

And for them the answer is enough. They are satisfied with the thought that they tell their kids something but, is this something enough for the young generation of this age?

No, I don't think so. We, the young people of twenty first century want to know everything,  we want to know reason behind every small thing. It's the way we are taught in school, more importantly it's what science teaches us, that nothing is without a reason we just have to find it.