india

Updated: Oct 02, 2019 23:51 IST

Beijing: The 150th birth anniversary celebration of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday on Wednesday was hurriedly shifted to the Indian embassy premises after China denied permission for it to take place at a public park a day before the event.

The October 2 event has been annually held for over a decade at a folk art museum at the Chaoyang Park, a sprawling and popular public park in Beijing, which has the only sculpture of Gandhi in China.

The tradition was all set to continue until on Tuesday when authorities of the Jintai Art Museum, the venue, informed the embassy that the Beijing government had denied them permission to hold the event. No reason was offered for the abrupt denial.

It was learnt that embassy officials had visited the museum at least twice to prepare for the event.

Beijing is among the four municipalities directly administered by the central government in China.

The foreign ministry didn’t respond to questions emailed by Hindustan Times asking for the reason behind the decision. Officials didn’t comment on the possible reason behind the cancellation but said it was done “at the last minute”.

The short morning event comprising a quiz competition for children on Gandhi, a recital of religious songs by members of the Indian community and a speech by ambassador Vikram Misri was then shifted to the embassy auditorium.

There was no representation from the Jintai Art Museum at the embassy event either.

The annual tradition of holding “Gandhi Jayanti” at the museum in the park had been more or less formalised since 2005 when the Gandhi sculpture was unveiled by then-Indian home minister Shivraj Patil.

“A sculpture for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the renowned father of the Indian nation, created by well-known Chinese painter Yuan Xikun was unveiled on Friday in Beijing’s Chaoyang Park. The statue, 1.08 meters in height and 1 meter in width, stands in the international friendship forest located in the western part of the park. It depicts Gandhi doing some reading,” the official news agency Xinhua had then reported.

The celebrations had been held at the same venue until 2018.

The sudden snap in tradition comes ahead of an expected summit meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping. Modi and Xi are expected to meet in India for the second round of the “informal summit” mechanism later this month.

Neither New Delhi nor Beijing, however, has officially confirmed the summit, its dates or the venue.

After an upswing in ties since April 2018, following the first “informal summit” in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, bilateral ties have been dampened recently following Beijing’s strong reaction to the change of status of Jammu and Kashmir. Beijing subsequently supported Islamabad in internationalising the situation in Kashmir at the UN.

The Gandhi Jayanti celebrations continued later in the evening at the embassy where ambassador Misri unveiled paintings of Gandhi done by a dozen Chinese artists.