There is a buzz that the Indian government is considering adopting the name “Bharat” alongside “India” to promote a unified national identity. If this change were to occur, it could potentially create identity-related challenges for websites using the .IN domain in their names.
Will India be officially known as Bharat? Speculation has intensified following the circulation of invitations to the G20 dinner to be held on September 9. What caught everyone’s attention was the use of “President of India” instead of the usual “President of India”. At the same time, there is also an upcoming special session of Parliament. So, people are connecting the dots and saying that in the upcoming Parliament session, the government will bring a resolution to change “India” to “Bharat”.
Let’s talk about India and India. At present we know and call our country by both. Both India and Bharat are used in the Indian Constitution. The distinction lies in language; in English, the country is referred to as India. In Hindi it is called Bharat. If the speculation turns out to be true, the country will be called Bharat in both Hindi and English languages.
Now let’s talk about .IN. This .IN is a ccTLD (Country Code Top Layer Domain) and it tells the world that any website using .IN had its domain name registered with INRegistry, the organization created by NIXI. Additionally, .IN has some subdomains that are specifically reserved for specific uses. For example, gov.in is reserved for use by the Government of India while mil.in is reserved for use by the Indian Army.
However, when it comes to TLDs, the name doesn’t matter that much. That’s why there are now all types of TLDs available for all types of uses. Still, given the fact that initially all ccTLDs were made up of two letters and all countries were given one, it means that they give a website an identity.
This means that when you come across a .IN website, you instinctively know that it is an Indian website.
Whether this is the case or not is a separate matter altogether. The same applies for all other ccTLDs. For example, .CN is a Chinese website. .US is an American website. The UK is a British website and so forth.
If India is going to be called India tomorrow across the web, it would be a good idea to have a new TLD for the country’s websites as well. Something like .BH or .BR would be fine. Even .BT can work. Unfortunately, all of these TLDs are already taken.
.BH belongs to Bahrain. .br is from Brazil. .BT is from Bhutan. Also, maybe we can request Bahrain or Bhutan to give us their ccTLD.
Or maybe we can take a few extra TLDs, even more so now that even more TLDs are allowed. So we can capture India. Or maybe .BHRT.
Now, it is important to note that the change from India to India does not bring any operational problems for the websites that are using the .IN domain. They will still be found on the Internet and you will still be connected to them.
This is merely a procedural, or rather an identity issue. If the country name is no longer India, will we still recognize our .IN websites as Indian websites? Or will they lose their “Indianness”? Or to ask that perennial question from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: What’s in a name? We are sure that different web users accessing .IN websites will have different answers after changing the country name from India to India. Some people will ignore this and continue to love their .IN. Some will lament the loss of .IN’s way of associating itself with the nation of India.
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