PM Narendra Modi to be guest of honour at Mauritius' National Day, to visit on March 11-12

Mauritius celebrates its National Day annually on March 12, marking its independence from British rule in 1968.

Updated on: Feb 22, 2025, 10:13:17 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam announced on Friday that PM Narendra Modi will be the 'Guest of Honour' at Mauritius' 57th National Day celebrations. PM Modi is set to visit Port Louis on March 11-12.

PM Narendra Modi with Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam. (File photo)

Navin Ramgoolam, addressing the Parliament, also highlighted the honour of hosting such a leader, especially given Modi's packed schedule and recent international engagements in Paris and the United States.

"I have great pleasure to inform the House that following my invitation, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, has kindly agreed to be the Guest of Honour for our National Day celebrations. It is indeed a singular privilege for our country, to host such a distinguished personality who is doing us this honour, despite his very tight schedule and his recent visits to Paris and the United States," Ramgoolam said.

Ramgoolam added that Modi's visit serves as a testament to the strong and enduring relationship between India and Mauritius.

"He has agreed to be here as our special guest. The visit of Modi is a testimony of the close relations between our two nations," the Mauritian PM said.

It is understood that the Mauritius PM was keen to announce the visit of PM Modi in Parliament to cement bilateral ties with India.

Mauritius celebrates its National Day annually on March 12, marking its independence from British rule in 1968. The day also signifies the nation's transition to a republic within the Commonwealth in 1992.

Earlier in November 2024, Modi congratulated Ramgoolam on his historic electoral victory in Mauritius.

Modi, in his wishes, had said he looked forward to working closely with Ramgoolam to further strengthen their “unique partnership”.

Sharing a post on X, Modi wrote, "Had a warm conversation with my friend @Ramgoolam_Dr, congratulating him on his historic electoral victory. I wished him great success in leading Mauritius and extended an invitation to visit India. Look forward to working closely together to strengthen our special and unique partnership."

India shares close and long-standing ties with Mauritius, an island nation in the Western Indian Ocean, anchored in shared history, demography, and culture. A key reason for these special and strong ties is that Indian-origin people comprise nearly 70 per cent of the island's 1.2 million population.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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