It will be his 48-hour trip to India, not a big length of time, but he is expected to spend his second day in Kolkata. It’ll be an honor for the city, but more than that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s forthcoming Kolkata visit is yet another firm indication that the state is back in reckoning for doing business.
Incidentally, in February this year Italian PM Romano Prodi came visiting Kolkata with 200-member strong business delegation and stayed here low-key for several days.
PM Abe’s contingent is expected to have over 100 top Japanese industry captains, and it is expected that he may announce some mega projects for the state during his talks with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
Kolkata has strong cultural cum historical bond with Japan. Personalities like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Tagoe are revered in that country. But PM Abe has another strong reason to come to Kolkata.
His grandfather Kishi Nobusuke was one of the detainees at the hands of Allied Forces during WW-II when Pearl Harbour was bombed in a Japanese air strike. At the war-crimes’ trial conducted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Radhabinod Pal, the lone Indian jurist in the tribunal, dissented the decision of awarding capital punishment to several detainees.
In his judgment he remarked:
I would hold that every one of the accused must be found not guilty of every one of the charges in the indictment and should be acquitted on all those charges.
In other words, Radhabinod Pal held the view that the legitimacy of the tribunal was circumspect and questionable as the spirit of retribution, and not impartial justice, was the underlying criterion for passing the judgment (source: Wikipedia).
During his visit to Kolkata, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet the family of Justice Radhabinod Pal as a grateful grandson [collated from TT].
[Image source]
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