The Dalai Lama and China's play
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Hindustan Times
44 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
A lost ledger of Delhi's history of diplomacy
On a December afternoon in 1955, Soong Ching-ling – known better as the 'Mother of Modern China' – stood beneath the high grand Victorian Edwardian-style arches of Chandni Chowk's Town Hall, bathed in the warmth of applause. The Town Hall's visitors' book with the signature of Queen Elizabeth. 'India, China. Two nations resurgent. Peking, New Delhi. The new Asia arising. Peace, Friendship. One Billion Pairs of hands. Your protectors! Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai. Hindi-Chini Bhai,' she wrote in the Town Hall's visitors' book in Chinese, sealing the moment with the optimism of the short-lived Hindi-Chini friendship of the 1950s. Soong, an honorary president of the People's Republic of China and a revolutionary figure in her own right, had come to New Delhi in the dawn years of India's independence. Back then, Delhi's Town Hall was more than a civic building – it was the city's diplomatic salon. Under its colonnades, mayors welcomed presidents, poets, and heads of state. Civic receptions were staged with the gravity of statecraft: symbolic keys to the city exchanged hands, garlands draped over shoulders, abhinandan patra (formal letters of congratulations) read aloud as cameras clicked. For decades, those encounters seemed to live only in fading photographs, and in the faint memories of dignitaries and of the officials who were part of these meetings. Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, in the centre, flanked by DMC president Ram Niwas Agarwal on right and Jawaharlal Nehru on left, in Delhi in November 1956. (Photo courtesy: Mahika Agarwal) Then, during a routine record room cleanup last year, a municipal heritage team stumbled upon a piece of history. A battered, leather-bound visitors' book. Its spine cracked, its pages foxed and crumbling, the ledger held in its hand-inked lines the ghost of an era — signatures, messages, and sketches from foreign dignitaries who passed through Delhi from the 1950s to the 1980s. 'It's a treasure,' said a senior official from the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), which is now restoring the book. 'Every page tells you what the world thought of India in those formative years, and how Delhi presented itself to that world.' The first pages record Soong Ching-ling's flourish in 1955, followed by a neat November 1956 note from Zhou Enlai, China's premier. He wished for the 'peaceful construction' and 'long friendship' of two nations, ending with 'Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai' in carefully brushed Chinese characters — hope inked just years before the 1962 border war would shatter it. Two lines down, a royal signature: Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian emperor whose reign bridged the colonial and post-colonial worlds. His 1956 visit was steeped in solidarity. Ethiopia still remembered India's support during Italy's brutal occupation two decades earlier. Selassie came to speak with then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru about African and Asian decolonisation, Delhi at that moment being the nerve centre of what is now known as the Global South. On India's foreign policy through the 1950s and '60s, the Indian Council for World Affairs (Sapru House) publication on '75 years of Indian foreign policy' writes: 'The colonial experience also helped India in that sense to develop an independent approach to international relations. And the significance that was attached, for example, to anti-racial campaigns, anticolonial campaigns, anti-apartheid, those struggles, and, of course, the complete focus on decolonisation..' These grand gestures often unfolded under the watch of Ram Niwas Agarwal, president of the Delhi Municipal Committee from 1954 until 1958, just before the creation of the unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). His granddaughter, Mahika Agarwal, has preserved photographs in a family album she calls Bauji's Delhi: her grandfather alongside Nehru and Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia; her grandmother welcoming Soraya, the Empress of Iran, in February 1956; her grandfather greeting Queen Elizabeth. Also among these photographs are of Zhou signing the book, flanked by Nehru and a young Dalai Lama in 1956 – three years before the Tibetan leader fled to India and sought refuge. In the visitors' book, Tito's own words appear – a typewritten note from November 15, 1956, during the UNESCO General Conference held in Delhi: 'The days which we spend in New Delhi will remain as an unforgettable memory in our minds. The warm and cordial reception given to our delegation by the citizens of this beautiful and blooming city has left a deep and pleasant impression on us.' DMC president Ram Niwas Agarwal greets Soraya, the Empress of Iran, in Delhi in February 1956. (Photo courtesy: Mahika Agarwal) The 1956 UNESCO conference, which was the first to be held east of the Mediterranean, transformed Delhi into a diplomatic amphitheatre. For a month, global faces, ministers and intellectuals debated science, education, and culture even as the Suez Crisis and Hungarian Revolution shook the world. Tito's friendship with India would later be immortalised in the naming of Josip Broz Tito Marg in south Delhi. The ledger, which became a chronicler of that historic summit, reads like a roll call of mid-century history. There is Nehru's own signature in 1955, then President Rajendra Prasad's in the same year, Japanese PM Nobusuke Kishi in 1957, Harold Macmillan and his wife in 1958, New Zealand's PM Keith Holyoake, and Mohammad Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, in February 1958. In 1959, Edwina Mountbatten – the last Vicereine of India – signed her name during a visit from then Burma, a reminder of the colonial past still within living memory. The Town Hall's embrace was not limited to politics. On November 21, 1957, Marian Anderson – the celebrated African American contralto whose voice became a weapon against segregation – is found mentioned as well. Anderson was a poignant figure in American civil rights movement. Two decades earlier, barred from performing before an integrated audience in Washington, Anderson had sung instead on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in a concert arranged by Eleanor Roosevelt. By 1957, she was a goodwill ambassador for the US State Department, touring Asia. In Delhi, under the gaze of Gandhi's statue behind Town Hall, she performed 'Lead Kindly Light' – the first Westerner to sing at his memorial. Archival footage shows Delhiites in woollen shawls, rapt and still as her voice rose into the winter air. Some entries, meanwhile, are more surprising, especially in hindsight. In 1974, a young Saddam Hussein – the then deputy leader of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council – filled half a page in Arabic, praising 'shared experiences and historic relationships' between the two nations. At that moment, he was a rising regional figure; decades later, his name would be synonymous with war and dictatorship. By the late 1970s, the tone of the book changes. Many entries are signed not by presidents and premiers but by committee members, bureaucrats, and cultural delegations. Pages are missing, torn, or water-damaged. Officials suspect the gaps conceal other major visits – or perhaps that they were lost during Delhi's political upheavals in the 1980s and '90s, when the municipal corporation itself was suspended for years. Today, about 140 pages have been painstakingly restored. Conservators humidify the brittle paper, flatten creases, and reinforce torn corners with Japanese tissue. The fragile handwriting – from elegant calligraphy to hurried scrawls to foreign scripts – is being digitised, each name cross-referenced with municipal archives, newspaper clippings, and family collections. Photographs and, where possible, film footage are being sourced to accompany the book in a planned municipal museum gallery. Saroj Kumar Pandey, a conservator working on the conservation project, said that such brittle papers with handwritten notes using ink require extra care. 'Paper has not strengthened and torn pages are are filled in with Japanese rice paper. We use gluten-free starch as an adhesive. Each paper is tested through bleeding test and ink signatures are stabilised using chemicals after removing stains.' Since then, the visitors book has been sent back to the MCD. 'This was a time when the city, through its mayor, was part of international diplomacy,' said a municipal heritage official. 'Receptions were held not just in Town Hall, but at Ram Lila grounds, even at the Red Fort. These events were grand, with schoolchildren, music, and pageantry – they were meant to tell the world what Delhi stood for.' In Chandni Chowk, Town Hall stands restored on the outside, its mustard-yellow façade bright against the jostle of traders and rickshaws. Inside, the council chambers are silent. But in the ledger's pages, Delhi's voice is vivid – hopeful, confident, eager to be seen. The rediscovered visitors' book is more than civic memorabilia. It is an atlas of mid-century diplomacy mapped onto one city's address book. And in that sense, the book is not only a record of who came to Delhi, but of how Delhi imagined itself – as a Capital not just of India, but the epicentre of the post-colonial world.
NDTV
an hour ago
- NDTV
As Trade Tensions Escalate, China Files WTO Complaint Over Canada Steel Duties
China filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over Canadian steel import restrictions on Friday, the commerce ministry said, escalating simmering trade tensions between Beijing and Ottawa. Economic and political relations between China and Canada have been testy in recent years, with trade ties deteriorating even as both countries are targeted by US President Donald Trump's tariff blitz. Last month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced an additional 25 per cent tariff on steel imports that contain steel melted and poured in China. He said the move was needed to protect the domestic industry after the United States increased import duties on steel to 50 per cent, prompting fears that firms would divert exports and dump steel in Canada. China's commerce ministry said in a statement that it had filed a complaint against the Canadian measures on Friday, labelling them "discriminatory" and saying they "disregarded WTO rules". "Such actions are typical unilateral and protectionist measures that undermine China's legitimate rights and interests and disrupt the stability of global industrial and supply chains for steel," it added. The WTO complaint comes days after Beijing announced new temporary duties on Canadian imports of canola and preliminary levies on halogenated butyl rubber -- a material used for tyre linings and hoses -- as well as an anti-dumping probe into Canadian pea starch imports. Canada said on Tuesday it was "deeply disappointed" with the move to impose duties on canola. Beijing had already slapped a 100 per cent surcharge on various Canadian agricultural products in March, in what it said was a response to Ottawa's decision last year to place 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
Time of India
3 hours ago
- Time of India
Next round of India-Asean goods pact review in Oct
New Delhi: The next round of review talks for the Asean-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA) will be held on October 6 and 7 in Jakarta, the government said Friday. The 10th round of the negotiations were held in New Delhi from August 10 to 14. Independence Day 2025 Modi signals new push for tech independence with local chips Before Trump, British used tariffs to kill Indian textile Bank of Azad Hind: When Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose gave India its own currency The commerce and industry ministry said the joint committee focused on advancing the ongoing review of the pact to enhance its effectiveness, accessibility and trade facilitation capabilities . "The discussions built on the progress achieved through eight active rounds of negotiations," it said, adding that delegates from all 10 Asean member states participated. Asean, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. "Bilateral trade reached $123 billion in FY25, reflecting the strong economic ties between the two sides and creating opportunities for enhanced cooperation in the years ahead," it said. Singapore trade, investment In a separate statement, the ministry said India and Singapore reviewed the ongoing collaboration in semiconductor sector and digitalisation of trade, and explored potential partnerships in skills development and capacity building. The issues were taken up at the fourth meeting of the India-Singapore Joint Working Group on Trade and Investment (JWGTI) held on August 14 in New Delhi. "The discussions focused on identifying priority sectors for greater alignment, improving logistics and supply chains, streamlining regulatory frameworks and exploring ways to facilitate cross-border trade," the ministry said. Singapore is India's largest trading partner within Asean, with total bilateral trade of $34.26 billion in FY25. It is also India's second-largest source of foreign direct investment with equity inflows of $163.85 billion between April 2000 and July 2024, accounting for about 24% of India's total inflows.
