India, Ireland stand to gain enormously from collaboration based on co-creation

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, executive chairperson, Biocon, and honorary consul general of Ireland for south India

- ABHINAV SINGH

IN 1916, WITH BRITAIN preoccupied by World War I, coordinated home rule leagues were founded in India-one by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and the other by Annie Besant. Both were modelled on the Irish home rule movement. Born in London to an Irish mother, Besant had spent years supporting the Irish cause before arriving in India in 1893.

The league she founded in Madras in September 1916 grew into 200 branches. When she was arrested in 1917, protests erupted across India, and the British raj had to release her. She would soon become the first woman president of the Indian National Congress.

Three decades later, when the Constitution was being written, India drew inspiration from Ireland.

The directive principles of state policy, speaking of welfare, equity and the obligations of government to its people, came from the Irish constitution. In fact, a member of the Constituent Assembly complained that large parts had simply been copied out. B.R. Ambedkar said there was nothing to be ashamed of it.

Then there was W.B. Yeats, who found the translation of Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali tough to put down. He wrote in the introduction to the book-which won the Nobel in 1913-how it stirred his blood as nothing had for years. Their friendship was complicated; Yeats romanticised India in ways Tagore found uncomfortable. But, it was one of the first moments the literary energies of the countries recognised each other. In Sligo-inspiration for much of Yeats's poetry-there is a statue of Tagore, a gift from the Indian embassy, unveiled in 2015.