Team News Riveting
Amidst border standoff and tension, Chinese and Indian students commemorated the 110th anniversary of the birth of the Indian physician Dwarkanath Kotnis, or Ke Dihua in Chinese, calling for a renewed bond of friendship.
Ke Dihua is a household name in China. His full name was Dwarkanath Kotnis, one of the five Indian physicians sent to China to provide medical assistance during World War II. He never made it home again.
Dwarkanath was born on October 10 1910 in a middle-class family in Solapur, Maharashtra. “The army has lost a helping hand; the nation has lost a friend. Let us always bear in mind his internationalist spirit,” Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, mourned the death of Dr Dwarkanath Shantaram Kotnis.
The Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and Centre for South Asian Studies, Peking University, launched an online commemorative activity “a good friend of Chinese” to commemorate Kotnis 110th anniversary. The activity attracted about 300 participants, including representatives from Chinese Embassy in India and college students from both countries.
A professor of Indian languages from Peking University said the current mutual suspicion and misunderstanding between the Chinese and Indian people was largely due to the lack of communication and mutual understanding between the two sides. Chinese and Indian university students learning each other’s languages shoulder the important task of telling the story of China-India friendship, he added.
Another participant said the Chinese and Indian people have to be vigilant to all outside powers that attempt to instigate and mislead China-India relations. “We believe the governments and people of the two countries have the wisdom and ability to properly handle differences and resolve conflicts to bring more benefit to the 2.7 billion people of the two countries,” he added.
