The Hindu : National : Chilean honour for Siddharth Varadarajan

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Friday, Mar 31, 2006

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National

Chilean honour for Siddharth Varadarajan

Staff Reporter

Conferred with Bernardo O'Higgins Order

Siddharth Varadarajan.

NEW DELHI: The Ambassador of the Republic of Chile, Jorge Heine, conferred the prestigious Bernardo O'Higgins Order on Siddharth Varadarajan, Deputy Editor of The Hindu , at a function here on Thursday.

In his remarks during the ceremony to confer the award, the ambassador said Mr. Varadarajan was being honoured for his contribution to a greater public understanding of Indo-Latin American relations in general and Indo-Chilean relations in particular and "for his extraordinary contribution to Indian journalism, mostly over the past couple of years" since he joined The Hindu in 2004.

Mr. Heine said that journalism "provides the first draft of history" and that "when the history of South Asia and its interaction with the rest of the world, including Latin America, is written in the future, the inputs provided to it by Mr. Varadarajan and The Hindu will take pride of place." The Hindu , he noted was India's "newspaper of record."

In his remarks, Mr. Varadarajan noted his long emotional association with Chile going back to the 1980s during the struggle against the Pinochet dictatorship.

For too long, he said, India had been thinking about globalisation and world order only along predictable geopolitical axes, and that increased economic and political engagement with Latin America and Chile was urgently needed.

Established in 1956 after Chile's Founding Father and first President, the Order Bernardo O'Higgins is an honour conferred on foreign citizens for their outstanding contribution to the field of arts, education, industry, commerce or humanitarian and social cooperation.

The Order is conferred by the President of Chile at the proposal of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

"Mr. Varadarajan has done much to increase awareness about Latin American developments in India.

It is for that reason that the Government of Chile has deemed it appropriate to confer on him this distinction, one of the highest the Republic of Chile confers on deserving foreign nationals," said an official release.

Over the past few years Chile has put great emphasis on developing its ties with Asia and especially so with India, of which the latest expression has been the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) between both countries signed on March 8, the first between India and any Latin American country.

In December 2004, Mr. Varadarajan received the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize Silver Medal for his writings on the Iran nuclear question from the New York-based United Nations Correspondents Association.

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