By Anoop Bose, Advocate, Supreme Court of India
The prodigious British Prime Minister Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, once remarked, on a veiled laudatory note, ‘We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English!’ I have always been an indefatigable admirer and protagonist of Ireland, the warm, wider and wonderful country and its zestful people have held an exalted place in my thoughts and have followed, with a deep and abiding interest, the truly momentous changes and developments that Ireland has experienced.
I have enjoyed the superb music of John Field, Hamilton Harty and Charles Stanford, the sheer beauty of James Galway’s rendering of Beethoven’s flute sonatas, the majestic writings of John McCormack, John McDermott, Morgan Crowley, Ronan Tynan, John O’Connor and Isabella O’Connell, and the wonderful writings of James Joyce, Oliver Goldsmith, Samuel Beckett, Jonathan Swift and William Butler Yeats.
I have over the years met and befriended many Irish men and women, including ministers, teachers, economists, lawyers, diplomats, musicians and others like Bertie Ahern, Ireland’s former Prime Minister, Eamon O’Cuiv, the grandson of Ireland’s former President Eamon de Valera, and Lord Diljit Singh Rana, the Sanghol-born and Belfast-based property developer, hotelier and philanthropist who was singularly responsible for the economic regeneration of Belfast and the protection of a number of heritage buildings in the city. Brian McCuliff, the Irish Ambassador to India, and his worthy predecessors have also been important connections.
Ireland is not an unfamiliar country in India and many Indians have grown up in the adoration of Ireland and its exemplary ideals and objectives. India and Ireland are both parliamentary republics with Westminster style systems of unicameral parliamentary democratic governments representing various constituencies and sharing a common faith in democratic institutions and the democratic way of life and are dedicated to the cause of peace and freedom.
The visionary framers of the Indian Constitution were appreciably motivated by the Irish Constitution. In this context, Nehru had expressed his admiration for the Irish Constitution, one of the finest achievements of de Valera. Strong links between India and Ireland stretch back to ancient times. There are discernible threads between the languages and social customs of the Old Irish and Celtic and the Sanskrit worlds.
In the 1600s, the East India Company bought and leased lands in Ireland for timber for the construction of its ships. The company, which also bought lands in the north of Ireland, was eventually chaired by Laurence Sullivan, an Irishman from Cork. In the 1850s, swift ‘clipper’ trading ships that sailed between India and Britain were built in Belfast.
Murphy set up schools and hospitals in Madras and Hyderabad. Loreto nuns from Dublin worked in India from 1841, setting up schools around Calcutta and influencing Mother Teresa, now known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Care for leprosy victims was pioneered by Wellesley Bailey from Dublin in the 1870s and inspired ‘The Leprosy Mission’. Irish influence on India’s relentless march to freedom was equally significant.
Ireland and India’s Freedom Struggle
The thoughts and actions of Indian political leaders were galvanised by Ireland’s experiences as Ireland had gained freedom from British rule more than two decades before India. As a young student Nehru, whilst on a visit to Ireland, had beheld with awe the first rumblings of the Sinn Féin movement which Arthur Griffith had set in motion in 1900.
The Easter Rising, the armed insurrection in the Easter week of 1916 which Yeats described in his poem ‘Easter, 1916’ as a time when ‘All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born’, stirred his heart and mind. He was moved by Roger Casement’s speech from the dock and was dumbstruck by the unconquerable spirit which engulfed it.
Nehru developed a close friendship with de Valera. Both were imprisoned by the British and Nehru’s letters from prison to his daughter Indira in the early 1930s contained numerous references to the Irish independence struggle, with particular emphasis on de Valera’s stellar role.
In his monumental treatise The Discovery of India, Nehru said that India would never forget Ireland’s very generous help in its hour of trial. Nehru visited Ireland as Prime Minister on two occasions, in 1949 and 1956.
On his second visit, Nehru had gone for a walk in the sleepy little village of Drumconrath comprising about 200 inhabitants. With Nehru was Mr. D.E.T. Lindsay, proprietor of the Aclare House Hotel, where Nehru had come to relax for two days. On his 40-mile drive from Dublin in one of President Sean T. O’Kelly’s cars, the party outpaced a police car ordered to accompany Nehru discreetly. When the police arrived, Nehru was standing on the hotel steps, laughing: ‘We got here first!’
The fourth Indian President, Varahagiri Venkata Giri, studied law at University College, Dublin, and used to proudly boast, ‘When I am not an Indian, I am an Irishman.’ His active association with the Sinn Féin movement and its leaders, and his suspected role in the Easter Rising, triggered his expulsion from Ireland in 1916.
Contemporary Relations
Ireland’s Prime Minister Garrett Fitzgerald visited Delhi to attend the funeral of Indira Gandhi in 1984. On 23rd June, 1985, a most tragic event united the two nations in unbearable grief and led to a further bonding of ties beyond the political arena. Air India’s Boeing 747-237B aircraft christened ‘Emperor Kanishka’ exploded in mid-air under the devastating impact of a powerful bomb surreptitiously placed by a terrorist and crashed 150 miles off the coast of Cork, claiming the lives of 329 people.
The inauguration by the Indian government in March 2007 of the Eamon de Valera Marg, a new road in Chanakyapuri, Delhi’s diplomatic district, celebrated the historic links between the republics of India and Ireland.
In September 2011, a bust of Tagore was installed in St. Stephen’s Green, the only non-Irishman to be so honoured at this prestigious location in Dublin. On 23rd September 2015, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a whirlwind five-hour visit to Dublin – the first Indian Prime Minister after Nehru to visit Ireland.
Whilst in Dublin, Modi asserted: ‘India and Ireland share much in common. We can compare notes on our shared colonial history. Our Constitutions have something sacred in common. The Directive Principles of State Policy in the Indian Constitution are inspired by the Irish Constitution.’ Modi presented Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach of Ireland, a selection of rare manuscripts and papers from the National Archives of India, recognizing the contribution of Thomas Oldham and Sir George Abraham Grierson to India.
Ireland is one of India’s major trading partners. Indian exports to Ireland cover textiles, garments and clothing accessories, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, light engineering goods, food and computer software and hardware. Major Indian companies with a presence in Ireland include Wockhardt Ltd., Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.
Ireland is home to more than 26,000 Indians or persons of Indian origin who are fully integrated in all aspects of Irish life and are well respected. Many settlers in Ireland were Hindus from the Punjab who emigrated before and following the British-induced dismemberment of India in 1947.
The Rule of Law, swaying neither to the right nor to the left, however political tides and currents may flow, is the bedrock of freedom. Independence of the judiciary is the surest bulwark against tyranny and retrogression of totalitarian government.
‘Go raibh mile maith agaibh’, which simply means ‘may you have a thousand good things’.
With inputs from Sanjay Nath Singh, elder son of Lal Bahadur Shastri’s daughter Suman Singh.