On 16 December 2009, ICS, in collaboration with the India International Centre, held a memorial meeting to condole the passing away on 13 December 2009 of Ms. Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea, a founder-member of the China Study Group and the Institute of Chinese Studies, former Director and Co-Chairperson of the Institute, and - at the time of her death - ICS Emeritus Fellow. The well-attended meeting was addressed by Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty, Amb. Vinod Khanna, Mr. Kuldip Nayar, Amb. Shivshankar Menon, Prof. Sreemati Chakrabarti, Mr. P.R. Chari, Prof. Alka Acharya, Mr. Jagat Mehta, Mr. Ravi Bhoothalingam, Col. Virendra Sahai Verma, Prof. Ashis Nandy, Amb. Ranjit Gupta, Prof. Suresh Sharma, Mr. Javed Laik, Amb. TCA Rangachari and Dr. Kokila Rangachari, Dr. Bharati Puri, Dr. Raviprasad Narayanan, Ms. Nirmala Narula, Mr. Ajit Bhattacharjea, and Prof. Patricia Uberoi. |
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Born on 18 April 1930, Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea was educated in Delhi , Karachi , Lahore , London , Oxford , and New York . She was selected for the Indian Foreign Service in 1955 and served in the Indian Embassy, Beijing , from 1957 to 1960 when she resigned from the service. As a Ford Foundation Fellow at Columbia University , New York (1964-1968), she obtained an MA/MPhil in East Asian Studies, specializing on China . She returned to India in 1968 to teach the first post-graduate courses on Chinese Foreign Policy and Chinese Politics at Delhi University , retiring from the University in 1995.
Professor Bhattacharjea has been Editor and Consulting Editor of China Report , the journal of the Institute, and continued to serve on its Editorial Board. She was also an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses, New Delhi (1985-1991), and a member, Executive Committee of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi .
Professor Bhattacharjea was an acknowledged authority on China 's international relations, world view and foreign policy strategies; India-China relations; Nehru's China policy; the Tibet issue in India-China relations; China and the SCO; and the negotiating strategies of India and China on the border issue, on all of which she had written extensively in both academic journals and the public media. As Senior Fellow of the ICSSR (1975-1978), she had also undertaken a comparative study of Gandhi and Mao Zedong, and on the making of Gandhi in South Africa .
Professor Bhattacharjea's best-known publication is China , the World and India (Samskriti Publications, 2001). At the time of her death, she was working on book-length manuscripts on China's Foreign Policy for the 21 st Century: Managing the Post-Soviet World ; India-China Relations 1949-1999 ; and China and Regional Security: the Role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. |
