'China occupied special place in heart of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose'

China had occupied a special place in the heart of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose who had sent a medical mission to the country 80 years back, the Director of the Netaji Research Bureau Professor Sugata Bose has said.

“Eighty years ago Subhas Chandra Bose as Congress president had sent a medical mission to China led by Dr M Atal,” Sugata Bose, an eminent academician and the grandnephew of Netaji, said at a seminar: ‘China-India Connections in Modern History’ at Netaji Research Bureau last evening.

The seminar was attended by many dignitaries from abroad.

Pointing out luminaries from Bengal had always kept a special place for China, Sugata Bose also referred to Rabindranath Tagore's visit to China in 1924.

That visit paved the path for the long-standing association between China and Tagore, Visva Bharati, he said.

Bose also recalled that on the day of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949, Sarat Chandra Bose had “exchanged congratulatory telegrams with Mao Zedong”.

Many Chinese and Indian scholars participated in the seminar which explored Sino-Indian relations from 1850 till this date.

Academician Arunabh Ghosh of Harvard University spoke about the visit of Zhou Enlai to the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, in 1956, and PC Mahalanobis trip to China in 1957.

The participants also viewed a special exhibition titled ‘1943: One Year, One Man and a World at War’ which celebrated the 75^th anniversary of Netaji's assumption of the Supreme Command of the Indian National Army in July 1943.