Last year, a high-level committee for social sciences, constituted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to revise the school curriculum, recommended that the word 'India' should be replaced with 'Bharat' in the school textbooks for all classes, sparking a debate.
In the wake of the recommendation, the Kerala government sought the intervention of the Central government to reconsider the suggestion made by the panel.
Now, wading into the 'India' vs 'Bharat' debate, spiritual guru and founder of the Isha Foundation, Sadhguru said, we should have reclaimed the name ‘Bharat’ as soon as the British left.
“A name will not do everything but it is important the country is named in a way that reverberates in everyone’s heart. Even though the Nation means everything to us, the word ‘India’ has no meaning. If we are unable or unwilling to change the name of the Nation officially, it is time we at least bring ‘Bharat’ into our daily parlance. Younger generations must know that Bharat existed long before India was born,” Sadhguru said in a tweet.
Sadhguru also congratulated NCERT in his tweet.
A few days ago, NCERT chief Dinesh Prasad Saklani had said 'Bharat' and 'India' will be used interchangeably in NCERT textbooks as is the case in the country's Constitution.
"It is interchangeable....our position is what our Constitution says and we uphold that. We can use Bharat, we can use India, what is the problem? We are not in that debate. Wherever it suits we will use India, wherever it suits we will use Bharat. We have no aversion to either India or Bharat," he said during an interaction with news agency PTI.
"You can see both being used in our textbooks already and that will continue in new textbooks. This is a useless debate," Saklani added.