Q1.
In this reproduction of the first page of the original Constitution of India in Fig. 5.5 (page 82), can you make out the phrase ‘India, that is Bharat’?
Answer
Yes. Look at the very first numbered line of the handwritten text, just below the two headings.
| Where to look on Fig. 5.5 | What is written there |
|---|---|
| Top of the page, inside the decorated border | A drawing of a seal from the Indus civilisation, showing a bull |
| First heading | Part I |
| Second heading | The Union and its Territory |
| First numbered clause — Article 1(1) | “1. (1) India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.” |
| In the left-hand margin, beside that clause | The small note “Name and territory of the Union” |
Reading the phrase carefully. It is doing two jobs in six words:
- It gives the country two official names — India and Bharat — and says they mean exactly the same thing. Neither replaces the other.
- It joins the two families of names from this very chapter: Bharat, the name Indians gave themselves (from Bhāratavarṣha, ‘the country of the Bharatas’), and India, the name that travelled from Sindhu → Persian Hindu → Greek Indoi → Latin India.
The Hindi version says the same thing the other way round. The Don't Miss Out box on page 81 points this out: the Constitution was first written in English as ‘India, that is Bharat’, and the Hindi version reads ‘Bhārat arthāth India’.
Did you know? The original Constitution was not printed — it was written by hand in flowing italic script, and every page was decorated by artists of Santiniketan; you can see one artist's signature in the bottom-left corner of the border in Fig. 5.5. The Constitution came into force in 1950, as the margin note on page 81 tells you, and you will study it in Grade 7.
Why the very first sentence had to settle the name: a constitution must first say what it is the constitution of. In 1949–50 both names were in everyday use — one in Indian languages, one in the languages of the wider world — and both had long histories, as this chapter shows. Rather than choose, the makers of the Constitution wrote both into the first line. That is why the title of this chapter is exactly those words.