Li meets the family of Dr Kotnis in Mumbai

The statue of Dwarkanath Shantaram Kotnis is seen in the Martyrs’ Memorial Park in Shijiazhuang, central China’s Hebei province. Right:  Manorama Kotnis speaks during an interview in Mumbai on Monday.

Agencies/Mumbai

China’s premier paid his respects yesterday to the family of an Indian doctor who died treating Chinese troops more than 70 years ago, becoming a rare symbol of friendship between the two nations.

Li Keqiang, like Chinese leaders before him, took time out of his busy India visit to meet relatives of Dwarkanath Kotnis, who provided emergency medical aid for four years during the Sino-Japanese war of 1937-1945.

Manorama Kotnis, one of the doctor’s seven siblings and the only one still alive, met the Chinese premier at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, along with four of her younger relatives.

Li warmly and humbly welcomed Manorama, her granddaughters Shalmali Borkar and Sanika Jain, her husband Abhay Jain and cousin Kishore Khot.

“He arrived on the dot in a conference room adjacent to the Golden Room. He greeted us all warmly and made us instantly feel at ease,” said Shalmali, 26.

Expressing his “great happiness” at the meeting, Li inquired after Manorama’s health and said all Chinese leaders make it a point to the visit the Kotnis family whenever they are in India.

The premier told the family that China still remembers Kotnis and his help to his countrymen.

“I’m very proud and happy that such a big (personality) still remembers my brother,” the 92-year-old Manorama said on Monday at her home in Vile Parle suburb, where old pictures of her legendary brother sit proudly on display.

While ties between Beijing and New Delhi have often been strained, with a legacy of distrust from a border war in 1962, Kotnis has remained a widely revered figure in China for his war work, which cost him his life.

Born in Maharashtra, he was one of five medical volunteers dispatched from India in 1938, following a request for help from the fellow Asian giant.

Manorama, who was a teenager when her older brother left, said the team was only supposed to go for a year.

But her brother stayed on for four years, joining the Chinese Communist Party and marrying a Chinese nurse, with whom he had a son a few months before he died of epilepsy in 1942, aged 32.

Manorama, a former nutritionist, said he struggled with the workload and the lack of proper food on the frontline, where he was required at times to operate continuously for 72-hour stretches.

“He developed weakness because of that. Even in the hospital there was not much assistance.”

The family kept in touch with his widow Guo Qinglan, who died last year and whose portrait also sits in the apartment, along with ornamental Chinese gifts from their high-profile visitors over the years.

Former Chinese president Hu Jintao met the family in Mumbai in 2006 and they gave him a copy of the Bollywood film Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (The Immortal Story of Dr Kotnis). A Chinese movie has also documented his life.