If a request was made to formally change the name of India to Bharat, the world organisation would consider it, a spokesperson said on Wednesday -- and, going by a recent precedent, it would probably take just a letter from External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.

Asked by a Chinese media reporter what would be the process to change the name if India were to make a request similar to Turkey’s, which changed its name to Turkiye, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said, “In the case of Turkiye, we responded to a formal request delivered to us by the government. Obviously, if we get requests like that [from India for changing its name] we will consider them as well”.

The government of Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan changed its name internationally to conform to the Turkish language name last year and just a letter from Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusogalu to Guterres made the new nomenclature formal at the UN.

Guterres’s Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said at that time that as soon the letter Cavusogalu asking for a name change was received on June 1 last year it went into effect.

India’s constitution refers to the country also as Bharat. Describing the nation, the constitution says, “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States”.

A dinner invitation sent to the leaders attending the G20 Summit from President Droupadi Murmu with her title "President of Bharat" in English, has stirred speculation that the name India was going to be abandoned.

It has become a politically fraught issue after the opposition coalition named itself the  Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance with INDIA as its acronym ahead of next year’s election campaign.

While the ruling BJP uses Bharatiya in its name, while also using the English word Party, the opposition Congress Party has styled itself the Indian National Congress from the time it was formed in 1885, becoming the driver of the Independence movement.

The Sanskrit name Bharat has been in use for millennia, while the name India was said to have been first used by  early Greek travellers and is a derivative of the River Indus. 

(SAM)