Poland India Relations: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Poland on Wednesday 21 August while heading to Ukraine where he will hold talks with Polish President Andrzej Duda and PM Donald Tusk in Warsaw, but do you know that this is the first time in nearly five decades that a Prime Minister from India will visit Poland. Who visited Poland before PM Modi? Diplomatic relations between India and Poland were established in 1954, but how did such a long gap come this time? While the truth is that there is a decades-old unbreakable relationship between the two, about which I will tell you in detail.
Also, it is interesting to know who had visited Poland from India before this visit of PM Modi? Let us tell you that Morarji Desai, who was the Prime Minister of India between 1977 and 1979, had visited Warsaw in 1979. This will be the first visit of an Indian Prime Minister to Poland after Morarji Desai’s visit in 1979. Before him, both Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi had visited this country.
The foundation of relations between the two countries was laid when the Indian Embassy was opened in Warsaw in 1957 and the Polish Embassy in New Delhi in 1954. Now, taking these relations forward, the PM will hold bilateral talks with his counterparts. The focus of Prime Minister Modi’s visit will be defense and strategic. The Prime Minister will visit the memorials of the Maharajas of Jamnagar and Kolhapur.
India gave shelter to the Poles during the Second World War…
According to an information, during the Second World War, between 1942 and 1948, more than 6,000 Polish women and children were given shelter in two princely states of India: Jamnagar and Kolhapur. Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja of Nawanagar gave shelter to more than a thousand Polish children in his state. Many other children found shelter in a large camp in Kolhapur. People who spent their childhood in the Polish state and India will remember this relationship very well. This period connects the two countries very well.
Polish scholars translated Sanskrit…
Poland has a long and strong tradition of Indological studies. Polish scholars translated Sanskrit into Polish as early as the 19th century. Sanskrit has been studied at the 600-year-old Jagiellonian University in Krakow since 1860-61, where a Chair in Sanskrit was established in 1893.
Poland and India have business ties worth billions of dollars
Trade relations between the two countries are still very strong today. Poland is India’s largest trading and investment partner in Central and Eastern Europe. Trade between the two countries in 2023-2024 was $5.72 billion, with India exporting $3.96 billion and importing $1.76 billion. According to experts, the trade balance has been largely in India’s favor, increasing from $650 million in 2010 to $2.6 billion in 2022. India exports tea, coffee, spices, oilseed crops, seafood, cereals and vegetables to Poland.
Tags: Explainer, International news, pm modi news, World news, World War 2
FIRST PUBLISHED : August 20, 2024, 08:08 IST