India-Bharat debate: Anurag Kashyap says this ‘impractical exercise’ will have an ‘adverse impact'

Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap weighed in on the India-Bharat debate in a recent interview and said that renaming the country would lead to huge waste of tax money and create unreasonable difficulties for everybody as all official documents would need to be reissued.

In an interview with Jist, where he was joined by his ‘Haddi’ co-star Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub and director Akshat Ajay Sharma, Anurag was asked about the India-Bharat debate. He said, ‘I don’t understand this. When was India not Bharat? Just writing ‘Bharat’ instead of ‘India’ on a piece of paper… And imagine doing this on all government documents, each and every one will need to get their passports renewed, Aadhar cards and ration cards will have to be renewed. They’ll spend four years worth of tax money on this alone.’

Anurag added, ‘Everything will need to be changed. Is it a humanly possible task to do it without wasting all that money? Ek whimsical aadmi ek whim pe aise kare, uske consequences sochta hai kabhi woh (A whimsical man can just do this on a whim, without thinking about the consequences). All bank notes will have to be changed, educational degrees will have to be changed, everybody will be issued new vaccine certificates. What all will they reprint? Are people just supposed to wait till all this is done? People won’t get ration, people won’t be able to travel. What in the world are they thinking?’

Speculations about an official name change from India to Bharat started ahead of the recent G20 summit in New Delhi after President Droupadi Murmu’s dinner invites referred to her as ‘President of Bharat’ instead of ‘President of India’.

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