Commemorating 70 years of Indo-Russian friendship on the occasion of UN Russian language Day in the capital, School of Foreign language under Indira Gandhi National Open University's (IGNOU), organised a seminar on 'Russia and The Changing World'.
The seminar witnessed maximum participation with experts on Indo-Russian relations and language & culture, including Ambassador Anil Trigunayat, Prof Aswini Mohapatra from JNU, Prof RN Menon-President of INDAPRYAl and Cultural Counsellor of Russian Embassy Nana Mgeladzhe among others.
The panel discussion on the topic was moderated by Dr Shivaji Bhaskar, School of Foreign language, IGNOU. "As India-Russia celebrates 70 years of Diplomatic Relations-- Both PM Modi and President Putin are taking Indo-Russian relations to the highest level, attempts are being made to diversify the fields of cooperation and elevate the annual bilateral economic partnership to 30 billion dollars by 2025"-said Dr Shivaji Bhaskar, Convener of the seminar.
Prof Mohapatra in his address to the audience dwelt upon the old ties that the two countries share. It has weathered the cold-war era which was bi-polar with erstwhile USSR and USA as two powers maintaining the world balance and now when the world is in transition with China as emerging power and Russia trying to assert itself in the new world order.
Prof Menon being a linguist restricted his shared thoughts to Russian language and talked about Russian as a language going through changes more so after 1985 when Perestroika and Glasnost reforms were kicked in by Soviet leader Gorbachev. He said that has helped Russian language becoming democratized and accommodative of words from other languages specially English.
Nana M Mgeladze in her speech referred to the President Putin's recent meeting with Prime Minister Modi and St Petersburg declaration which further strengthens the relationship between the two countries. She also recited a poem by Alexander Pushkin who is considered to be the father of the Russian language.
Ambassador Anil Trigunayat in his address highlighted the changing world order where nations are re-aligning and he cautioned that this churn might lead to some adjustments in the power equations at the global level. He reiterated the fact that Soviet era saw best of relation between the two countries at that time. "With time Sino-Russian relations have improved while Indo-Russian relations are still very strong but future direction would be determined by the national interests of both the countries, said the ambassador giving pragmatic assessment of the relations," he said.