London: Indian High Commissioner to the UK Vikram Doraiswami led a minute’s silence in the memory of Ratan Tata as news of the passing away of the legendary businessman, aged 86, came in from Mumbai.
During a pre-scheduled Diwali reception co-hosted by the High Commission of India in London with the India All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) near the Houses of Parliament in London on Wednesday, Doraiswami paid tribute to the Tata Group chair as a great champion of the India-UK partnership.
“On a sombre note, I share the news with great sorrow of the passing of one of India’s most celebrated businessmen Ratan Tata,” said Doraiswami, addressing a cross-party gathering of parliamentarians, entrepreneurs and community leaders.
“No man has embodied the India-UK partnership quite as much as Ratan Tata did. This is a man for whom Mumbai/India and London/UK were both home. This is a man who created the sense of an India-UK partnership embodied in everything – from Air India, which is back as Tata airline, to Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) to Taj Hotel to Tata Steel to indeed everything, including industries of the future with his decision to invest in a battery factory in the UK,” he said.
Lord Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra beer and co-chair of the India APPG, paid tribute to a “fellow Parsi” who worked hard to nurture the bonds between India and Britain.
“Mr Ratan Tata led many CII delegations across the world and really showed us the way on how Indian companies’ footprints would be spread around the globe. In his memory, it is good to pledge from the Indian industry side that this (India-UK) economic and commercial corridor would be deepened and taken forward in the true spirit in which he started the globalisation of Indian companies,” said Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), in his address.
The event, backed by British Indian think-tank 1928 Institute as a first for the newly regrouped APPG following the general election in July, also highlighted other aspects of the bilateral partnership, with ministers expressing confidence that the ongoing free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations would end in a mutually beneficial pact in the near future.
“The main thing we have all been waiting for is the trade deal,” said Catherine West, the minister for the Indo-Pacific in the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
The Foreign Office minister said she was hopeful an India-UK FTA would be signed off by the Labour Party government, now in its 14th round of talks and at enhancing the estimated GBP 38-billion a year bilateral trade partnership.
“The India APPG is here to work together to strengthen the UK-India relationship. I come to this with a sense of humility and openness, indeed I have a lot to learn as one of the new crop of parliamentarians, but with a commitment to work towards closer ties especially at this moment when we do face a more dangerous global environment and where we have to transition to net zero,” said Jeevun Sandher, recently elected British Indian Labour MP in the House of Commons and co-chair of the India APPG.
“What we do in the decades ahead will not just be about the prosperity of our two nations but, of course, the planet as a whole. With that in mind, there are three key priorities that the APPG will have – prosperity and working together to ensure we do what we can to get the India-UK trade deal over the line; strategy and security to ensure a global rules-based order; and to keep the cultural and educational exchanges between our two nations going,” he said.
