President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov was invited as an honorary quest to the celebration of the India Day and high-level summit «India – Central Asia» in January next year. The jubilee 2022 year will be marked by 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Turkmenistan and India and 75th anniversary of Independence of India. The invitation letter from Prime Minister Narendra Modi notes that India and Turkmenistan are linked by traditionally close historical and cultural relations.
The deep roots of these relations are evidenced by archaeological finds confirming that contacts between the Turkmen and Indian peoples have existed for a long time. Indian traders knew very well Turkmenistan, located in the very heart of the Great Silk Road. As you know, the mentor of Emperor Akbar Bairam Khan and his son, a famous philosopher and poet, were Turkmens who served in the Mughal Empire. The Turkmen Gateway to Delhi, built in the late 1650s, also testifies to centuries-old ties between India and Turkmenistan.
An important event in the history of Turkmen-Indian relations was the visit to Turkmenistan by Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the most prominent political figures in the world, who, after the country gained independence on August 15, 1947, became the first Prime Minister of India. In 1955, Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi made a tour of the Soviet Union, during which he also visited Ashgabat. Temporary residence of the Indian leader in the city center, Ashgabat residents call Nehru's home. Until the beginning of 2016, this mansion housed the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Turkmenistan, and now there is the Russian consulate. The oldest medical school in Ashgabat bears the name of Indira Gandhi.
Today, Turkmenistan and India maintain a high dynamic of the development of interstate dialogue in the political, diplomatic, trade, economic, cultural and humanitarian spheres. Opportunities for further strengthening mutually beneficial Turkmen-Indian cooperation were discussed in October by Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan Rashid Meredov and his Indian counterpart Subrahmaniyam Jaishankar on the sidelines of the 6th meeting of foreign ministers of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Nur-Sultan.
The diplomats noted the active interaction of Turkmenistan and India within the framework of the Central Asia-India Dialogue, the Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technological Cooperation, and also stressed the importance of the implementation of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) international gas pipeline project, designed to revive in a new format, the historical ties between Central and South Asia and make a significant contribution to the sustainable socio-economic development of the states of the Asian region as a whole.
