BRUSSELS: Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has hinted at changing the name of the opposition coalition from INDIA to BHARAT.
Speaking at the Sciences Po University in Paris recently, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the India-Bharat controversy was a “panic reaction” by the Modi-led BJP government.
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“I think maybe we irritated the government a little bit because we named our coalition INDIA so that got them all heated up,” said Rahul Gandhi.
He added: “We could always give our coalition a second name as well. So I don’t think it will solve the purpose but people act in strange ways.”
Further speaking on the matter, Rahul Gandhi said that if the BJP government changes the country’s name, as being speculated, it will prove that “they (BJP) are trying to deny the history of India’s freedom struggle against the British”.
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“People who want to change the name of anything are basically trying to deny history,” said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
“The fact of the matter is whether we like it or we don’t like it, we have a history. We were ruled by the British, we fought the British, we defeated the British,” he said.
Rahul further said: “English is spoken by more Indians than English people. It is our language more than theirs and we speak it in our own way. We twist it and we turn it maybe in ways they don’t like. So the English that is spoken in India is actually a different expression that is spoken in England. Embedded in that English is a huge history, a lot of pain, a lot of happiness… imagination, struggle… those things are embedded and the people who want to change the name want to erase that.”
“They don’t want the history of our country known to our future generation. It disturbs them. I believe that we should accept our history. If we were ruled by the British for 100-200 years… okay… we dealt with it and let’s move on,” Rahul said.