Rajnath Singh kick starts UK tour with visit to Gandhi memorial

London: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh kick-started his UK tour with a visit to Mahatma Gandhi’s statue at Tavistock Square in central London on Tuesday.

Singh’s visit comes after a gap of 22 years, with the last one by an Indian defence minister to the UK dating back to January 2002.

Accompanied by Indian High Commissioner to the UK Vikram Doraiswami and members of his delegation, Singh paid floral tributes to the Father of the Nation at the memorial which dates back to the 20th century.

The iconic sculpture of Gandhi in a meditative pose is the site of Gandhi Jayanti and Martyr's Day commemorations by the diaspora.

The minister then made his way to Whitehall to inspect a ceremonial Guard of Honour at the Horse Guards Parade before a bilateral meeting with his UK counterpart, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps. The two leaders are expected to cover a wide range of defence, security and industrial cooperation issues.

Later on Tuesday, Singh will visit the Ambedkar Museum in north London to pay tributes to the Dalit rights activist and architect of the Indian Constitution, Dr B R Ambedkar, before offering prayers at the BAPS Swaminarayan Temple, known as Neasden Temple in London.

Singh, accompanied by a Ministry of Defence delegation of senior officials from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Service Headquarters, Department of Defence, and Department of Defence Production, arrived in London on Monday night on a three-day visit. Besides a dialogue with Shapps, he is expected to call on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and hold a meeting with Foreign Secretary David Cameron.

On Wednesday, the Raksha Mantri will interact with defence industry leaders at a roundtable event and later meet representatives of the Indian community at a reception organised by the High Commission of India in London.

“In substantive terms, the visit will seek to deepen military cooperation and defence industrial partnerships with the UK by building on the November 2023 Defence Consultative Group (DCG) meeting in Delhi at the level of Secretaries and the inaugural meeting of the 2+2 Foreign and Defence Dialogue at the level of Joint Secretaries in October 2023,” said Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Senior Fellow for South and Central Asian Defence, Strategy and Diplomacy at the London-based think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

The defence analyst believes that through the ministerial-level dialogue, the British government could seek to provide an “enabling environment” for British companies to pursue these objectives in India.

“Also, with India’s and the UK’s recent focus on the Indo-Pacific, there is a unique opportunity to bolster naval and maritime security cooperation with third countries in the western Indian Ocean region, including with Oman and Kenya, which host UK military and naval presence amidst a greater role and influence in the area by the Indian Navy,” he noted.

A previously planned visit by Rajnath Singh to the UK in June 2022 was called off by the Indian side for “protocol reasons”.