INDO-US RELATIONS - THE VOYAGE FROM THE NEHRU-KENNEDY SPIRIT TO THE NAMOBAMA MANTRA AND WELL BEYOND

The genesis of India’s relationship with the United States of America can be traced back to 19th November, 1792 when the first American President George Washington nominated Benjamin Joy of Newbury Port as the first American Consul to Calcutta.

- ANOOP BOSE

But Washington’s move was ill timed as the then Governor General of India Lord Charles Cornwallis, smarting from the ignominy of having surrendered to Washington at the battle of Yorktown, simply refused to accept Joy’s credentials. Interestingly, The Star-Spangled Banner, the national anthem of the United States, was written by a 35 year old American lawyer Francis Scott Key aboard an Indian teak built British warship, HMS Minden, on 14th September, 1814!

Indo-American business relations began literally with ice! By the 1830s, ice had become a very profitable American export. The most famous ice maker was Frederic Tudor, the founder of the Tudor Ice Company who was known as Boston’s “Ice King”. In 1833, Tudor was approached by Samuel Austin, a fellow Boston based merchant of silks and spices, to ship ice to Calcutta as ballast to add weight to his empty ships. The first consignment of nearly 100 tons of sparkling clean Massachusetts ice, popularly known as “crystal blocks of Yankee coldness”, arrived in Calcutta aboard the American brigantine clipper ship SS Tuscany on 6th September, 1833, after an arduous four month voyage of 14,000 miles. Joachim Hayward Stocqueler, a colourful journalist and editor of The Englishman, the forerunner of The Statesman, was rudely awakened by his Man Friday who could not wait to give him the news that “burruf” (ice) had arrived from America.