The 39th US President Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday night at the age of 100, had a special relationship with India and even a village in Haryana has been named ‘Carterpuri’ after him.
On January 3, 1978, Mr. Carter, accompanied by then-First Lady Rosalynn Carter, traveled to Daulatpur Nasirabad, a village in Haryana, an hour from Delhi. According to the Carter Centre, an NGO founded by Mr Carter, the visit was so successful that residents named the area ‘Carterpuri’ in honor of the former US President. He also remained in contact with the White House during the remainder of Mr. Carter’s tenure.
Since then, January 3 was declared a holiday in ‘Carterpuri’.
When Mr. Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, villagers celebrated and celebrated his honor en masse.
This visit of the former US President took place exactly one year after the lifting of the emergency and the victory of the Janata Party. During his stay in India he also addressed the Parliament. Speaking out against authoritarian regimes, Mr. Carter said, “Over the remainder of this century and into the next, the world’s democracies will increasingly turn to each other for answers to our most serious, common challenge: our political and how spiritual values ”can provide a basis for dealing with the social and economic stresses they will undoubtedly face.”
What’s more, Mr Carter also shares a personal connection with India as his mother Lillian worked in the country as a health volunteer with the Peace Corps in the late 1960s.
Since the Carter administration, the US and India have worked together on energy, humanitarian assistance, technology, space cooperation, maritime security, disaster relief, and counterterrorism. In the mid-2000s, the two countries signed a historic agreement to work toward full civil nuclear cooperation, and bilateral trade has skyrocketed since then, the Carter Center said.
Jimmy Carter dies at the age of 100
Jimmy Carter, the longest-lived US president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, died at the age of 100. He had been in hospice care since mid-February 2023 at his home in Plains, Georgia – the same town where he was born and once ran a peanut farm before becoming governor of the Peach State.
“Carter passed away peacefully surrounded by his family at his home in Plains,” the Carter Center wrote in a statement.
“My father was a hero not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights and selfless love,” Mr Carter’s son Chip told AFP news agency.
US President Joe Biden expressed grief over Mr Carter’s death and declared January 9 a national day of mourning.
“I call on the American people to gather that day in their places of worship to pay tribute to the memory of President James Earl Carter, Jr. I invite those of the world to join us in remembering our Let’s share the grief,” he said.
