25 May 2015 - QA 3

Gurudev, in English, America is called as America, Nepal is called as Nepal, Sri Lanka is called Sri Lanka and so on. But why is Bharat (name for India in Hindi) called as India in English?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

When Bombay became Mumbai, then soon India too will become Bharat once again (referring to India returning back to its ancient times of peace and great prosperity). Just like Madras became Chennai, and Bangalore became Bengaluru once again. So we are slowly going back to using the original names as per the Indian culture.
After the British left India, we started using the names they had given to our towns and cities, which is why we have such differing names in Hindi and English. Though the British left India, the mentality of slavery and servitude towards their ways had not yet left our Indian mind-set. Now we are going back to our roots and we are seeing a revival of the pride that we took in our country and its culture. So this change will also happen soon.