For the first time in October 1949, the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru reached America. (Photo Credit: Truman Library)
PM Narendra Modi He is on a 4-day US tour. This visit of PM is special. The Prime Minister will be the second Indian PM to create history by addressing a joint meeting of the US Congress. This tour will also be important from social and business point of view. America Relations with will be better. The same expectation was made even then the first Indian Prime Minister of the country Pandit jawaharlal nehru Had reached America.
October, 1949 was the first time when an Indian Prime Minister reached America. In the American trip, he met the then President Harry S. Truman and addressed the joint assembly of the US Congress.
US President reached to receive Indian PM
Former PM Nehru’s visit to America was considered important. It was said to be an important initiative to strengthen the roots of the relations between India and America. It was believed that this visit would improve relations between the two countries. It was a 3 week trip. Many countries around the world were eyeing this trip. US President Harry himself reached the airport to receive former PM Nehru.
During his visit, Pandit Nehru met the members of the Senate and the House. Meet America’s leading artists, businessmen and education figures.
What did India get?
According to The Print report, this visit was an initiative to start a new chapter in bilateral relations. Nehru sought to secure commitments of food aid during his visit to the US in 1949, noting that the Bengal famine had occurred just six years earlier. In many reports, this trip was described as a flop. It was told that the President refused to give US economic aid to a nation that had recently emerged from British colonial rule.
Some experts felt that the visit was significant because it also included important meetings with farmers in the Fox River Valley of Illinois.
“How Nehru toured three family farms in Illinois and was amazed to discover gas-powered stoves, mechanical corn pickers and milking machines,” the Truman Library Institute, a presidential library, wrote in a 2018 blog post. . This was in contrast to farming in India which was and is still done mainly by hand.
However, India and the US eventually struck a loan deal for two million tonnes of wheat two years later. Apart from the food aid, the visit was significant from the point of view of China, where the Chinese Communist Party had come to power just two weeks before Nehru arrived in America.
Experts said that India had adopted a policy of non-alignment, under which neither friendship nor enmity was to be maintained with anyone. India did not want to be a laggard of America at any cost. This also became the reason for the cold relations between the two countries.
expressed happiness by sending a letter
Before leaving America, Pandit Nehru wrote a letter to the President on 6 November 1949. He wrote, “Dear Mr. President, I am leaving the United States tomorrow to return home. On the eve of my departure, I again express my deep gratitude for your hospitality. I spent three and a half weeks in this great and wonderful country and I was very impressed by what I saw and heard. I am overwhelmed by the kind and warm reception I have received from all sections of people.
He wrote, “My visit has led to a deeper understanding between our respective countries, which will lead to closer ties in the future.”
Following this letter, Truman wrote to Pandit Nehru in a letter dated November 23, 1949, “You can be assured that your visit has been a source of great pleasure not only to me but also to the American people.”
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