New Delhi: India stands out as the biggest democracy in the world, has behaved according to international rules and will be a key player in upholding the rules-based order, Lithuania’s ambassador to India, Diana Mickevičienė, has said.
Speaking about the Lithuanian outlook towards India in an interview with ThePrint, Mickevičienė said that it is important today to engage with India “more than usual”, given its role in the Indo-Pacific region. The ambassador conceded that Lithuania is a new player in the region and many “first steps” have to be taken, but there is political will to intensify relations with India.
Lithuania is a country of about 2.6 million people, according to the CIA World Factbook. A former Soviet republic, it is located on the shore of the Baltic Sea in Eastern Europe, bordering Russia. The country has been a member of the European Union since 2004 and is also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
Earlier in October, the Lithuanian embassy in India held a lecture series showcasing how close their language, Lithuanian, is to Sanskrit. During that lecture series, the ambassador had said that Lithuanian is the “closest living sister language to Sanskrit” as reported by ThePrint earlier.
On the topic of the cultural ties between India and Lithuania, Mickevičienė told ThePrint that as a native Lithuanian speaker, she can “testify” to its very close link with Sanskrit. “There are not only common words, which are plenty, but the grammatical structures are quite similar. When we change nouns, when we conjugate verbs, it’s striking how similar the structure is. Which points to a deeper connection beyond borrowing the words,” she said.
“Lithuania in particular has been a hub for Indology studies in the Baltic states. We have a group of faculty and professors who study India and Sanskrit. We have felt that this is a connection that deserves the attention of the state; it needs to be studied,” Mickevičienė added.
On 27 October, while addressing a Tulsi Peeth programme in Madhya Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had acknowledged the ambassador’s efforts in learning Sanskrit while talking about the research being done on the language globally.
In April 2023, India operationalised its embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania. The decision for this was taken by the Union Cabinet in 2022. Lithuania became the first of the three Baltic states to open an embassy in India in 2008.
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‘Momentum high for India-EU FTA’
Mickevičienė said that currently, the momentum is high to negotiate and conclude a free trade agreement (FTA) between the European Union and India.
“On both sides, the momentum has been very high. So the negotiations are on. India is also negotiating on several fronts, so I understand that on both sides, there are also various internal considerations to be made,” Mickevičienė said.
“I am very optimistic. I have followed that relationship for over a decade and I have never seen such motivation and political will, which I think is the most important thing. So I am sure that this will be done,” added Mickevičienė.
The ambassador also said that India has been taking the relationship with the EU very seriously and has been actively encouraging new areas of cooperation, including in pilot areas such as the trade and technology council.
“It shows the unprecedented trust and mutual interests that need to be pursued to tackle the modern challenges and also tap the modern opportunities that come in critical infrastructure and next-generation technologies,” Mickevičienė said.
In May 2023, India and the EU held the first meeting of the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) co-chaired by India’s External Affairs minister S. Jaishankar, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, and Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar with European Commission executive vice-presidents Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis.
The two sides agreed to coordinate policies on the semiconductor industry, bridging the digital skills gap and enhancing cooperation on IT and telecommunications standardisation, according to the joint statement issued after the TTC.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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