Bharat is a continuity while India is an intervention, said Professor S Gurumurthy, editor of the Tamil political weekly magazine Thuglak, in an exclusive conversation with CNN-News18 on Tuesday, amid a raging row over speculation that the country’s “name change" is on the cards.
Politics over “India versus Bharat" has erupted since the opposition alliance adopted the acronym INDIA in July. It escalated further on Tuesday with the discovery that the term “President of Bharat" had been used for the first time in an official invite to foreign leaders attending the weekend G20 summit in Delhi, replacing the traditional “President of India".
“The name Bharat appears in the earliest literature of India. It is mentioned in all the Puranas…in the Mahabharata. It’s almost 2,000 years old. According to Iravatham Mahadevan, an unquestioned authority on Indus Valley scripts…he says Bharat appears in Indus Valley scripts itself. So Bharat is a continuity. India is an intervention," Gurumurthy said.
The RSS ideologue refused to be drawn into the political controversy over the possible “name change". “Whoever does it, BJP or Congress, it is the right thing to do. All political parties should support it," Gurumurthy said, adding that he was concerned about the “text" and not the “context".
The senior journalist also spoke on the issue of DMK’s Udhayanidhi Stalin, Tamil Nadu minister and son of chief minister MK Stalin, saying that Sanatana Dharma was against the idea of social justice and must be “eradicated".
“It’s very unfortunate that we have to respond to comments from such a person," said Gurumurthy.
Udhayanidhi compared Sanatana Dharma with diseases like dengue and malaria, inviting sharp criticism from BJP leaders.
“Essentially, this was a product of an attempt by the British to divide the entire country, particularly Tamil Nadu into Aryan and Dravidian," Gurumurthy said. “In Tamil Nadu, a special group began to work against the Brahmin community to consolidate the non-Brahmin and that was the Dravidian movement."
The people who are calling themselves Periyarists do not know that EV Ramasamy Naicker called the Tamil people barbarians, he said.
“If they had read something, you could have had a debate with them. It is purely an abuse and I don’t want to be involved in abuse and counter-abuse," the RSS ideologue said. “The three greatest exponents of Sanatana Dharma—Shankara, Ramanujacharya, Madhva—all three were born in Dravidian land… Ramanujacharya’s biography was written by Karunanidhi. Karunanidhi celebrated him as one of the persons who tried to eradicate caste. And he not only wrote the dialogue, but he also serialised it, and the serial appeared on Kalaignar TV, his own TV."
The DMK has created a platform for the BJP, he said. “They (DMK) will not get one vote added for them in Tamil Nadu. Because this is their stand and everyone knows. But they will lose 10 per cent votes elsewhere if the BJP properly articulates it," Gurumurthy said. “They’ve put the Congress in political ICU."
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