Your Excellency,
Mr Tharoor ,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is an honour and a pleasure for me and the entire delegation from Hamburg to meet with you tonight. It gives us a chance to deepen the excellent relations between India and Germany, in particular my own home town.
Please let me confirm on behalf of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg the Ambassador´s words of welcome.
I have very much enjoyed getting to know this marvellous city of New Delhi, with its architectural and cultural highlights personally. At least a small part of it. I have been fascinated by the Sikh Temple, the Friday Mosque, the Red Fort, to mention but a few. I am looking forward to the performance coming shortly tonight.
New Delhi, the capital city, the political and cultural centre of the country, is I am sure one of those cities in the world to which a visit is an enrichment for both the intellect and the senses.
The city scape, with its mosques, Islamic tombs, gardens, fortifications and palaces all speak of a long and moving history.
New Delhi is now a cosmopolitan city, very much characterised by its multi-ethnic and multi-cultural influences. Similar applies to Hamburg, although on a more modest scale. I will be taking lasting impressions back with me.
For our nation, the Republic of India was the first friendly state in the Far East, because, after its western allies, India was the first country to grant the young Federal Republic of Germany diplomatic recognition.
India is represented by a general consulate in Hamburg since 1952. The current incumbent, Mrs. Subashini, is very engaged and successful in moving towards the goal of deepening the levels of mutual information, knowledge and collaboration.
Having said that, the cultural and business relations between our countries are much older.
Everything started of course with seafaring. Trade relations between Hamburg and India reach back into the 16th century.
In the centuries that followed, however, Indian philosophy, religion and music have over many years and still do today, influenced Europeans of every age group.
I would mention your national poet and Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore, and for example the cultural philosopher Tarachand Roy. These two Indian philosophers visited Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s, and were very well received and generated a great deal of interest.
As the years moved on, young men and women in Germany were fascinated and enthralled by artists such as Ravi Shankar, and also the new religious revivalist movements.
And needless to say the outstanding personality of Mahatma Gandhi made a deep and lasting impression on many Germans and shaped their picture of India.
Today this modest man is seen as the epitome of aspiration paired with the absolute will to aspire to and reach goals without violence. Satyagráha means, "insisting on the truth. Truth not in the sense of being right, but rather: non compliance with unjust laws and rules, non co-operation with oppressors.
This stance helped Mahatma Gandhi change the world. The impression made by his behaviour on his contemporaries and continues to make on subsequent generations is without parallel.
Hamburg is hosting a very active Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Initiative. And we have our own Mahatma Gandhi Bridge which connects part of our new HafenCity neighbourhood; a place which brings together the seafaring tradition and the lifestyle of an upwardly mobile major city and its inhabitants.
The people of Hamburg do have a special relationship to your huge country, which on many occasions in the past has honoured us with the visits of leading celebrities. Many have never forgotten the visit by your former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to our city, at which time the university granted him two honorary doctor titles. That was in 1956. Nehru was accompanied at that time by his daughter Indira Gandhi and his grandson Rajiv Gandhi, two future prime ministers. Seen in that light, that visit can definitely be described as an historical occasion.
In 1989, when Germany and indeed the whole of Europe were on the threshold of major and deep seated political turbulence, we were honoured in Hamburg by the visit of the Indian Republic's president, Mr Ramaswami Venkatamaran and his wife.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
we remember well how the Republic of India took an early and leading role in establishing a non-aligned movement. The foreign policies goals were to establish stable relations with the two then super powers, the USA and Soviet Union; nuclear disarmament and a global economic order which would enable the inhabitants of all corners of the globe to share in the earths riches. India was also ahead of many others with its international commitments in the field of environmental protection.
Last year, in 2011, Hamburg once again organised its almost traditional India Week, Hamburg itself being European Green Capital 2011. This honourable title, which of course also represents an obligation, was borne by Hamburg for the entire year. Environmental protection, renewable energies and sustainability, including wind power, are just some of the fields in which the collaboration between Indian and German companies as well as research in both countries is already bearing visible fruits.
India Week 2011 again represented a significant and definite step forwards in terms of quality and scope and reinforced Indias standing in Hamburg. We again intend to organise an India Week in Hamburg in 2013, from the 7th to the 15th of September.
And it is only a few months ago that I had the pleasant task of opening the Days of India in Germany Connecting Cultures event in Hamburg. During her visit to India German Chancellor Mrs Merkel had officially opened the Year of Germany and India on 31 May 2011 here in New Delhi. Hamburg was particularly active at the German year in India by way of the culture project Yamuna Elbe and also in the A Wall Is a Screen project. Reciprocally, and with a little bit of luck, the message of our joint events in Hamburg will also extend here to India.
I was personally very happy that India was the partner country to Hamburgs annual port anniversary this year. Indeed the port anniversary was selected by India as the starting event for the year of India in Germany. The Indian government was represented in Hamburg by minister of commerce, Anand Sharma.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
More than five million Europeans now live in our metropolitan region; that is a good one per cent of all EU citizens. 2.5 million people in employment add value to the local economy. Our gross domestic product is 162 billion euros.
I would like to make the following claim: there is no better place in Germany where the dynamics of the business relations between our two countries are more apparent than in Hamburg.
Our city and its port, Indias gateway to the European Union, is responsible for some 30 per cent of all sea container traffic involving India and the leading ports of Europe.
No less than two thirds of the entire exports of Indian tea and Indian carpets into Europe, two of your countrys famous products, pass into Europe through Hamburg. The much loved and characteristic tea aromas have for many, many years been one of the trademarks of Hamburgs historic warehouse complex, the Speicherstadt.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
All of us are looking forward to the talks that lie ahead during this week, and to the forthcoming years of Indian-Hanseatic relations. The best is yet to come.
Thank you.
The spoken word applies.