Uber bans a woman named Swastika Chandra, later apologizes

Uber has banned a 35-year-old woman from Sydney, Australia, from using her name from any services after it was flagged as “potentially offensive.”

The woman, Swastika Chandra, said her name means “good luck” in Sanskrit and that it was her name when she was growing up in Fiji, News.com.au reports a common name. The company later apologized to her for the move.

Chandra said she learned she was banned from Uber when she tried to order food from Uber Eats.

“One afternoon I was ordering food and then I got to the payment stage and a pop-up came up that said: ‘Your name is in violation and you need to change your name on the app,'” she told A Current Affair, Australia TV show.

Chandra said she was proud of her name while acknowledging its association with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party. She also said she would not change her name for anyone.

“It’s a very common name. I personally know four or five girls with the same name,” she said.

this ‘swastika“, a cross with each leg bent at a 90-degree angle, was used by Adolf Hitler on the swastika flag and turned into a symbol of hate. In Nazi theory,”swastika” signifying those of German origin belonging to the Aryan race, Adolf Hitler claimed that the symbol was anti-Semitic.

Chandra said she could use her name on her birth certificate, certificate of Australian citizenship, health card and driver’s license without any issues.

“They don’t know that Hindus had been using it for thousands of years before Hitler used it in the wrong way,” she said.

After five months of intervention by the Hindu Council and the New South Wales Attorney General, Chandra finally had her Uber account reinstated.

Recently, Uber released new guidelines on potentially offensive words, including “swastika‘. This decision was taken in the context of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7 last year.

Uber apologizes to women

In a statement to news.com.au, Uber said it had apologized to Chandra and said the issue was being reviewed for longer than expected. “Uber is committed to creating a safe and welcoming environment for all of our users,” the company said.

“For this reason, Uber has a global policy restricting access to users whose names entered into the Uber app contain potentially offensive terms,” ​​it said.

Uber acknowledged that there are cultural differences in names and that its team “fairly” evaluates users’ accounts to resolve such incidents on a case-by-case basis.

“In this case, after reviewing Ms. Chandra’s request, we restored her access to the application. We have apologized to Ms. Chandra for the inconvenience this caused her, and we thank her for We are exercising patience as we review this matter, which may take longer than we would have liked,” it said.