India is talking about INDIA… in the virtual world for sure, as perhaps also in the real world. No, it isn’t about the world’s most populous democracy but about the name the 26-party Opposition alliance for 2024 general elections has chosen for itself.

Ever since the Opposition alliance meet in Bangalore announced its strategically rechristened self as the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, or INDIA, on Tuesday, the twitterati is abuzz with the relevant hashtag. Last checked, I-N-D-I-A remained firmly positioned among the top trending subjects on Twitter with over 252,000 tweets and fast counting.

“Chak De! INDIA” was among the first tweets on the name game that was put out by senior Trinamul parliamentarian Derek O’Brien immediately following the formal announcement from the Bangalore stage. The initial clamour soon turned to a thunderous roar on the platform and showed no signs of dying down a day later.

Mamata Banerjee’s “NDA, BJP, can you challenge India?” and Rahul Gandhi’s “Battle to save India under attack” chants had already set the tone for this new front opening up in the country’s war of alliances. But the ownership and appropriation battle over names and catchwords in a largely bipolar political climate that’s split between forces rooting for or against Prime Minister Narendra Modi has evidently now drawn the common citizenry in, well and sundry.

If the 2024 polls, as Rahul Gandhi called it, is going to indeed be a “battle between ideologies of BJP and INDIA” then the stage for the conflict certainly has been set by the Opposition’s nomenclature move that caught popular imagination.

“We were not just looking for a name,” O’Brien’s follow up tweet said. “We were looking for a BIG IDEA. We believe with INDIA we have that. INDIA vs NDA,” the explainer was crystal. All that was left to the people was to support or oppose it.

Other Opposition entities like the Aam Aadmi Party did away with the subtleties. A photo-shopped picture of Arvind Kejriwal carrying the Triclolor before what looked like the Narendra Modi cricket stadium in Ahmedabad in the background was tweeted from the party’s official handle. “Hum hain team India wale (We are Team India)”, read the message. “India jitayega, India jitega (India would help win, India will win),” Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s tweet followed suit.

But it just wasn’t INDIA which became the site of contest between the adversarial camps in the country’s national political arena. ‘Bharat’, too, was up for grabs. Assam chief minister and BJP leader from the North East, Himanta Biswa Sarma, pinned a tweet stating: Our civilisational conflict is pivoted around India and Bharat. The British named our country as India. We must strive to free ourselves from colonial legacies. Our forefathers fought for Bharat, and we will continue to work for Bharat . BJP for BHARAT.”

Quickly, camp INDIA added a tag line to its newly-approved name: Jitega Bharat (Bharat will win). The effort, for obvious reasons, was to try and usurp the word from the saffron ecosystem.

That move, though, did not deter Biswa Sarma from changing his Twitter bio from Chief Minister of Assam, India to Chief Minister of Assam, BHARAT. His statement was met with a jibe from Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh who said that the BJP leader should take his theory “to Prime Minister Narendra Modi who gave names such as 'Skill India', 'Start-up India' and 'Digital India' for programmes in the country”. The face-off also found mention in Ramesh’s Twitter timeline.

Clearly, the Opposition’s strategy to take the "nationalism" wind off the sails of the ruling dispensation has had some initial success. But leaders of the camp know there are many more battles to be won, within and outside the alliance, in the run up to the general elections next year. But, for now, one is left to wonder whatever happened to the Shakespearean soliloquy that began with ‘What’s in a name’!