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Indira Gandhi took oath as Bharat ka PM: Himanta says 'India vs...' is no debate
India and Bharat are interchangeable, Himanta Biswa Sarma said citing examples of prime ministers who took oath as PM of India and Bharat ka Pradhan Mantri.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma who was the first to change his Twitter bio to Bharat after the opposition alliance chose INDIA as their name said this India versus Bharat is no debate as both are the same and Indira Gandhi took the oath as 'Bharat ka Pradhan Mantri', not as the Prime Minister of India. "A few days back, Amit Shah ji in Parliament placed Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Then nobody opposed. Bharat and India are interchangeable and that is the decision of the Supreme Court in 2016," Himanta said.
"If I remember correctly, when Manmohan Singh ji took oath, he took the oath a Bharat ka Pradhan Mantri. When Deve Gowda ji took the oath, he took it as the Prime Minister of India, as far I remember. I tried to search on Google but could not find it. And as far as I remember, Indira Gandhi too took the oath as Bharat ka Pradhan Mantri, not as a prime minister of India. So this is not even a debate," Himanta said.
Himanta however pitched for replacing India in Reserve Bank of India with Bharat. “The name of the central bank should be ‘Reserve Bank of Bharat’. This is a phase of renaissance. Assam has changed several old legacies and many changes have been made in the Centre also,” Sarma said.
Himanta slams Shashi Tharoor's Jinnah comparison, calls it half-truth
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor -- amid the row -- hinted that the BJP government keeps supporting Jinnah's view, be it with the CAA or with the name of the country. "While the subject is live, let’s recall that it was Jinnah who objected to the name ‘India’ since it implied that our country was the successor state to the British Raj and Pakistan a seceding state. As with CAA, the BJP govt keeps supporting Jinnah’s view!" Shashi Tharoor tweeted.
“What Tharoor said was half-truth. What Jinnah said is not important. What is important for us is which name of sages and saints used, and it was not India but Bharat,” Himanta said.
Bharat replacing India in the G20 invitation triggered speculation about whether the government was moving to officially change the name to Bharat from India. Opposition leaders questioned whether the move was prompted by their choice of name INDIA that stands for Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance.
