Congress leader Jairam Ramesh labelled Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “super-premium frequent flyer” after the latter landed in Argentina as part of his longest diplomatic mission.
In a long post on X, the 71-year-old veteran reminded that, besides legendary footballers Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi, there are several other connections between the Latin American country and India – including its 1986 honour of Indira Gandhi, wherein Argentina had released stamps with her picture.
“The Super Premium Frequent Flier is in Argentina today. 3 down, 2 more to go,” Ramesh tweeted.
Ramesh mentioned Rabindranath Tagore’s stay in Argentina in November 1924 at the invitation of Victoria Ocampo, a prominent literary figure.
“Tagore’s works were already very well known. He and Ocampo developed a warm friendship which has been written about extensively by Tagore’s biographers, with Ketaki Kushari Dyson having devoted an entire book to it. Tagore’s collection of 52 lyrical poems called Purabi – published exactly a hundred years ago – was dedicated to ‘Vijaya’, his name for Ocampo,” the Congress leader tweeted.
Sharing a few pictures, he further wrote that Indira Gandhi met Ocampo in Buenos Aires in September 1968, and conferred on the latter the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature of Tagore’s Visva-Bharati University, at which she had herself spent nine months beginning July 1934.
Jairam Ramesh also mentioned Jose Luis Borges, an Argentine short-story writer and essayist who is regarded as a key figure in Spanish language and international literature.
“When he was seven years old in 1906, Borges had read Sir Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia and that led him to read and explore the life of the Buddha even more. The impact of the Buddha is reflected in Borges’s short stories, essays, poems, and lectures. By 1969, he had become completely blind but that inspired him to even further fame. Ten years before his death in 1986, Borges’s book Que es el budismo (What is Buddhism), reflecting a lifetime of fascination with the Buddha, was published. On July 6, 1977, Borges gave his famous lecture on Buddhism in Buenos Aires which survives on – where else – YouTube,” the Congress leader tweeted.
The third person Ramesh mentioned is Raul Prebisch, a prominent economist and former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) known for his work in developmental economics. The Congress leader wrote about the time UNCTAD’s second session was held in New Delhi in 1968.
“Dr Manmohan Singh worked at UNCTAD in New York during Jan 1966 to May 1969 and there is a lovely picture of him with his two daughters during this time. UNCTAD’s second session was held in New Delhi during Jan-March 1968 -the first time a developing country hosted a major UN event. It was UNCTAD that propagated the idea of G77, the collective of developing countries that has become influential in global forums. The collective now has 133 developing countries. China does not consider itself a formal member and so the collective is called G77 plus China,” he tweeted.
Taking a dig at PM Modi and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Ramesh said the term ‘Global South’ that both leaders frequently use was also propagated by UNCTAD, “although it was first used by a British banker Oliver Franks way back in 1960”.
Ramesh has been taking jabs at PM Modi on his five-nation tour for eight days since it started, reiterating Congress’s stance that the Prime Minister hasn’t visited Manipur once since the ethnic violence broke out in May 2023.
The Prime Minister landed in Argentina on Friday evening (local time) for a two-day visit, marking the first such visit by an Indian PM in 57 years. He is in the Latin American nation after wrapping up a visit to Ghana and Trinidad & Tobago. He will next go to Brazil for the BRICS Summit, and Namibia.