India's most visible public spaces have been quietly rewritten — and Union Health Minister and BJP National President J. P. Nadda wants the country to notice. On Sunday, August 9, 2026, Nadda took to X to celebrate what he called India's march toward self-respect and 'Bharatiyakaran' — the Indianisation of national identity — under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In his post, Nadda wrote: 'Gulami ki virasat se bahar nikalkar Bharat ke aatmsamman aur Bharatiyakaran ki yatra aage badhi hai' — 'India has moved forward on a journey of self-respect and Indianisation, stepping out of the legacy of slavery.' He pointed to three changes as proof: the renaming of Rajpath to Kartavya Path, Mughal Gardens to Amrit Udyan, and the installation of a statue of Subhas Chandra Bose at India Gate in New Delhi. The post carried the hashtag #HarGharTiranga, linking the message to the national flag-hoisting campaign that mobilises millions of households each Independence Day season.

From Rajpath to Kartavya Path: the logic of a rename

Rajpath — literally 'King's Way' — was the ceremonial boulevard built during British rule as an axis of imperial power. In 2022, the Modi government rechristened it Kartavya Path, or 'Path of Duty', reframing the same stretch of tarmac as a symbol of citizen responsibility rather than colonial authority. The redesigned promenade was inaugurated by PM Modi as part of the Central Vista redevelopment project, one of the most consequential urban overhauls of the capital in decades. Around the same period, the Mughal Gardens inside Rashtrapati Bhavan — the President's estate — were renamed Amrit Udyan, or 'Nectar Garden', shedding a Mughal-era appellation for one drawn from the lexicon of India's Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, the 75th anniversary of Independence.

Netaji's statue at India Gate: a freedom fighter reclaimed

Perhaps the most striking of the three changes Nadda cited is the granite statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose that now stands beneath the canopy at India Gate — the same canopy that once held a statue of King George V, removed decades after Independence. The Netaji statue, unveiled by PM Modi in 2022, places the commander of the Indian National Army at the symbolic heart of the capital's ceremonial landscape. For the government, it is a deliberate act of historical correction — a freedom fighter, long argued to have been under-acknowledged, now occupies the space once reserved for the colonial sovereign.

Cultural reassertion as a governing philosophy

These three changes are not isolated gestures. Since 2014, the renaming and recasting of public spaces — from city names to stadiums to government schemes — has been a recurring instrument of cultural policy. The argument, consistently advanced by the BJP, is that India's post-colonial state inherited too many markers of subjugation and that correcting them is an act of civilisational dignity. Critics have countered that such renamings risk erasing layered, composite histories. Nadda's post, timed to the #HarGharTiranga campaign, is a reminder that this debate is not settled — it is, in fact, an ongoing pillar of the ruling party's political identity. As the tricolour goes up on millions of homes, the government's message is clear: the flag and the landscape it flies over should speak the same language of a free, self-assured India.