prasad1
Active member
Nivedita Kannan:
Then recently I came across that word in my spanish class. We were reading about Mexico and Latin American countries. The words like Indians, Indiana were often repeated.When I asked my Mexican teacher naively whether they are referring to Red Indians. She said, no no they are the natives of the countries. They are the people who follow the actual tradition, religion and culture of the country . But there are very very few of them .(Almost the entire American land has been converted to Christianity/Catholic by the Europeans.) So why are they called Indians I had asked. She told this word comes from the Latin root "indegena" !!
Voila !! We all know the word " indigenous " don't we? It means ,originating from a region or inherent character of a region.All the languages of the European countries, English, Dutch, Portuguese, French, Spanish etc. have Latin root. And Europeans ruled most of the world. They had already conquered the West before coming to the East. They were used to calling the natives as Indians there. So when they pitched up in Bengal , they called it the East India Company. Europeans came to India during the Mughal reign. As far as I have read no one has referred to Bharat/Hindustan as India till the Europeans came. (I keep telling 'Europeans' because there were British, Portuguese and French who came looking for us!!)
So my conclusion:
'India' has everything to do with the word 'Indigenous' and very little to do with the word 'Indus' because the Persians who came through Indus did not call it India and the Europeans in whose era the name 'India' caught up, did not come through Indus!
'Hindusthan' might be a derivative of 'Indus', but not 'India' is my strong opinion!
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Then recently I came across that word in my spanish class. We were reading about Mexico and Latin American countries. The words like Indians, Indiana were often repeated.When I asked my Mexican teacher naively whether they are referring to Red Indians. She said, no no they are the natives of the countries. They are the people who follow the actual tradition, religion and culture of the country . But there are very very few of them .(Almost the entire American land has been converted to Christianity/Catholic by the Europeans.) So why are they called Indians I had asked. She told this word comes from the Latin root "indegena" !!
Voila !! We all know the word " indigenous " don't we? It means ,originating from a region or inherent character of a region.All the languages of the European countries, English, Dutch, Portuguese, French, Spanish etc. have Latin root. And Europeans ruled most of the world. They had already conquered the West before coming to the East. They were used to calling the natives as Indians there. So when they pitched up in Bengal , they called it the East India Company. Europeans came to India during the Mughal reign. As far as I have read no one has referred to Bharat/Hindustan as India till the Europeans came. (I keep telling 'Europeans' because there were British, Portuguese and French who came looking for us!!)
So my conclusion:
'India' has everything to do with the word 'Indigenous' and very little to do with the word 'Indus' because the Persians who came through Indus did not call it India and the Europeans in whose era the name 'India' caught up, did not come through Indus!
'Hindusthan' might be a derivative of 'Indus', but not 'India' is my strong opinion!
How and when did the name "India" come into use?
Answer (1 of 236): We didn't start with the name India at all. Let's take a trip down memory lane: 1. Jambudvipa: This was used in the our ancient texts, Puranas. It literally means the Island of Jambu Trees. The descriptions of which either match prehistoric geography or mythology. 2. Bharat: T...
