When the king of Swaziland changed the name of his country to Eswatini back in 2018, the Communist Party of Swaziland called it out as a populist distraction and continued to use the colonial name while demanding real change.

http://www.solidnet.org/article/ba5f172f-e2d7-11e8-a7f8-42723ed76c54/

So I think the question should be, what are Indian communists calling their country? How do they feel about the various names?

Officially, it’s both. Culturally, there’s those two, plus Hindustan. You can call it whatever. Bharat is being championed by the Hindu-right as the only official/indigenous name. So you might want to steer clear of that for those reasons.

I’ve never met any Indians who referred to their country as anything but India when speaking in English. So if they’re not doing it, I - a non-Indian - will not try to one up them for no reason lol

Like some native Americans prefer to be called Indian, some prefer their specific tribal name, some want xyz. I’m not going to just say “uhmm actually it’s indigenous American, not Indian.” Or vice versa

That's up to them, I think. There's precedent for countries changing their official English names.

See Czech Republic -> Czechia and Turkey -> Turkiye

Your guns go peru peru, my guns go BHARAT BHARAT : : :

As an Indian I use India because the whole 'Bharat' thing is just a propaganda campaign by the bjp. Although it's also the legal alternate name of the country so you can use it.

India because then Hindutvas will out themselves to "correct" you

If the name does change I hope the more principled transliteration of 婆羅多 gets used in Chinese.

AFAIK, the use of Bharat is considered to be a form linguistic imperialism foisted by the plains-dwellers upon the rest of the country.

I'd call 'em any, depending on which crowd I'm referring that likes either or both names...