NEW DELHI, Sept 8: The United Nations can change the name of a country in its records if all formalities are completed and an official request received from the government, UN officials said.
The assertion came in the wake of the reported move by the Narendra Modi government to change India’s name to Bharat. The “UN will change India’s name to Bharat in UN records when New Delhi completes all the formalities for the same,” a spokesperson for the global body said on Friday. “When India completes the formalities to change the name, they will inform us and we will change the name at the UN (records),” United Nations Secretary General’s chief spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
Farhan Haq, the Deputy Spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, had also stated earlier that the UN considers requests from countries to change their names as and when the world body receives them.
The statements came days after a huge controversy broke out over the shift to India from Bharat in the dinner invitation from President Droupadi Murmu to foreign leaders attending the G20 summit this weekend. “It’s not for the UN to comment on the debate,” Dujarric said on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Delhi. “As long as the formalities are done, the UN will change the name too. It’s a bureaucratic issue when it comes to what the UN needs to do,” he added.
India will not be the first country if, at all, the name change happens. There’s a long list of countries that have changed their names due to political, social, or other reasons. The UN top official also cited the example of Turkey changing its name to Turkiye last year and said “history has shown that it has happened a number of times for several countries”.
The Opposition has accused the Centre of planning to drop India and stay with just Bharat as the country’s name. Several ministers and BJP leaders have said there need not be any controversy as ‘Bharat’ has been “in use from time immemorial.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently spoke on the issue during his interaction with the Union Council of Ministers in which he laid down the dos and don’ts to be observed by them during the upcoming G20 summit. He told his ministerial colleagues to avoid the political row around the Bharat issue, noting that it has been the country’s ancient name.
(Manas Dasgupta)