Friends In Civilization And Partners Of Strategy

One of the key features of the sovereign state is constitution. Though Mongolia has long history of written laws like Great Yasa which transcends time and distance in modern time, she has enacted four successive constitutions in 1924, 1940, 1961 and 1992. They represent important periods in her history. For instance, the Constitution of 1992 became a legal framework for political democracy and market economy which embraced a new principle on political pluralism, parliamentary democracy, human rights, free press, open and transparent governance. It cherishes a rule of law and human rights in all walks of social life. Since then, interesting voyage with full of learning and doing experience commenced.

It is a pleasure indeed to greet to our friends - the readers on this solemn occasion of the Constitution Day of Mongolia. This kind of event provides us with a moment to sum up what we have accomplished and define the goal for the forthcoming months in our respective areas.

Visit of Indian PM and strength of our bilateral relations 
When Shree Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India announced to offer Mongolia one billion US dollar Line of Credit (LoC), the two governments encountered with daunting task to identify where and how to use this unprecedented offer in terms of its volume and potential implications in most effective way.

Host of surveys were painstakingly conducted and repeated reviews followed with series of negotiations to select possible areas for bilateral cooperation as well as on terms and conditions to materialize LoC in sustainable manner. I am pleased to note that these are the prerequisites but inevitably preludes, have successfully been completed. After scrutiny, the Mongolian government made its decision to apply the soft loan in areas such as railways, agriculture and processing industry including oil refinery. The decision, I think, took into a consideration of unique geographic settings of Mongolia as land-locked spread across the enormous landmass, with a large number of animal husbandry and rich endowment of natural resources surrounded by huge markets.

Mongolia has been exploiting crude oil and exports it to China while meeting its refined petroleum and lubricated materials demand by imports from Russia. In doing so for years it allocates a roughly $1.5 billion annually. Henceforth, decision to build an indigenous oil refinery though may be little belated should help reduce if not eradicate either upstream or downstream dependency. It would also give a chance to save much needed foreign exchanges for other acute needs. Moreover, hundreds of new job places would be created and reduce unemployment and poverty too.
 
The decision has been ratified by the Parliament and enthusiastically endorsed by Indian side. With that issues of where, how and when to take benefit of the LoC has gradually turned into a concrete project augmented by law of the land.

Thus, focal agency with a title of Public Company for Mongolian Oil Refinery (MOR) has been formed up accordingly. Next question was who and when to materialize this quintessential project. With direct involvement of EXIM Bank of India, tender has been announced among the Indian companies' active in oil and petroleum sector. As of now Engineering India Limited Company has been selected as consultant to develop DPR (Detailed Project Report). Having had intensive but fruitful consultations both clients and bidders agreed to fine tune their work plan and formalized. Nowadays, they are another but equally important stage for efficient implementation of the project. Having this stage completed, I am optimistic that DPR will be made available early next year and Project Monitoring, Consulting and Implementing companies will be selected one after another. Thus, actual construction on site would begin accordingly. Along with it two sides also working to launch up IT Outsourcing and training center in Ulaanbaatar. Although changes in governments and disparities of understanding between client and bidders we have managed to iron out them and reached at their common understanding.

I wish to underline that the Deep Collection (Shree Deep Barnawal) in Varanasi, UP a sheep wool importer from Mongolia has produced fine quality hand woven carpets and expressed an interest to continue its purchase in sustainable manner for manufacturing a fine hand-made carpets and healthy yoga mats. Apart from that GOI has given its official consent for code sharing flights between our national airlines in August 2017. And, talks are progressing amongst certain commercial banks of Mongolia and India for maintaining a direct tie up to simplify and expedite transactions. However, small and first ever attempts, I believe, these endeavors encourage to broaden our bilateral trading activities.

The historical perspectives
Last September the first conference was held in September 2016 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on Chinggis khan, his legacies and Indian Cultural with the deliberation of over 30 papers. If agreed upon, then we are contemplating to publish a compilation and organize the second conference on Scripts and literary heritage of Mongolia and historical linkages between Mongolia and India in near future. I am pleased to convey that that we have consulted with India and Mongolian scholars and received their endorsement to the idea which I mooted as a topic for the second Conference.

By the way ICCR, MEA of GOI started working to assist Mongolia in building up statue of Buddha and his two disciples to be placed at one of the largest Buddhist temple in Ulaanbaatar.

Mongolia and India have ancient cultural and spiritual ties. These ancient ties which constitute a solid basis for the development of the present bilateral relations and future development of friendship and cooperation between India and Mongolia are required to be made known to younger generations.
 
Therefore, the Mongolia Foundation and The Elbegdorj Institute have organized scholarship program for young researchers to study Mongolian language, Mongolian culture and nomadic civilization and arranged numerous interesting events in August 2017.  

According to some annals, Indians from Kangra Kingdom in Himalayan foothills migrated to the present territory of Mongolia and Mangaldev, the son of the king headed the expedition. However, the many of Indians are said to have returned to India after staying there for over 2000 years.

Historical traditions about Kushanas have been preserved in Mongolia for centuries, even long after the fall of Kushana Empire. The Mongolian chronicle of the second half of the XIII century Cagan tukhe (White History) refers to Kushan-u Mongol (Uls) the Mongol power of Khushana.

Both Mongolia and India especially between V and VII centuries were in close contact.  Their intellectual interactions in its turn inspired Mahayana Buddhism and its philosophy in Mongolia.

With Buddhism, Mongolians accepted its philosophy, rites, rituals and culture. Though, we don't share common border, we are connected through civilization. A cultural heritage of Indian origin that found a home in Mongolia for centuries are reservoir of sources. During the spread of Buddhism across the Mongolian steppe, Mongolians translated compilation of the Kanjur and the Tanjur which are gems of our common literary heritages. Over 1200 works with nearly one lakh pages of the Kanjur translated into Mongolian language. Translation of Indian literature, including theory, practice and poetry developed in Mongolia. It had started in XIII century and completed in XVII century. The Tanjur translation contains great Indian literary works starting from linguistics to philosophy. The XIV century India's scholar Shantideva wrote poetry with the comments of philosophical work titled as Boddhicharya Avatara as well Lord Buddha's genealogy. So, Mongolians not only accepted Buddhism but also further developed it through their own contributions and share unique cultural heritages.

It is my view that there are vast literary properties on our historical ties in archives, museums, libraries and research institutions in both countries. They are in need to be restored and studied. We are also working to digitalize some of them so that researchers will have access regardless their locations

Besides the teachings of the Buddha, secular culture and literary works were also disseminated and have major impacts even today. The famous Indian compilation of fables Panchatantra was translated centuries ago in Mongolia in various versions. The great epic of Ramayana of Valmiki found in Mongolia has more than five versions. The sagas of King Bhoj and Krishna, the trilogy of tales about King Vikramaditya and Sanskrit story of thirty-two wooden men are a part of Mongolian folklore. Dandin's Tale of the Ten Princes, Kavyadarsha a treatise of Sanskrit prosody and Kalidas's Meghaduta (Cloud Messenger) have been translated time and again and commentaries written on them by several Mongolian scholars. Alikali is an extraordinary manual of Sanskrit with Tibetan and Mongolian translations, which has served as a textbook in Mongolian monasteries for generations.

Based on this tradition Mongolians invented and practiced no less than seven different scripts, including the much elaborated one which had been used by some of Mongol tribes and later adopted by Chinggis Khan for reining his vast empire. As early as XIII century Mongols used to apply elaborated literary language and were known with well acknowledged correspondences in writing for records, which corroborated by Chinggis khan's letter inscribed on rock in 1225. It indicated well defined writings with proper denting.

As Mongol language and Mongol script are not only possession of past and current generations they also belong to future generations. Scholars research on legends, traditions and annals recording their ancient ties. These should be studied systematically in distinguished universities of the two countries. Therefore, we have suggested ICCR to organize the Second India and Mongolian conference on this very topic in India.

Keeping in view of NDA government's Act East policy on political front, number of exchanges are being expected through Parliamentary lines and between governmental departments in forthcoming months.

 We are also contemplating to mark a centenary of late Renpuchi Kushok Bakula, who had represented India as her Ambassador in Mongolia for ten years and made enormous contributions in strengthening the relations of friendship between our two countries.

Gonchig GANBOLD is Ambassador of Mongolia in India since 2 September 2015.  He studied in Ulaanbaatar, New Delhi, Moscow, Oxford, Geneva, Hawaii and Munich. Joined the Foreign Service in 1980, served at Ministry of Foreign Affairs(MFA). He worked at Mongolia Embassies in New Delhi (1988-1991, 1996-2000 and 2015-), Washington D.C., London as well as Ministry of Finance, National Security Council, Mongolia. He contributed articles to the media and translated two dozen books.