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He was a member of several official, ministerial and Prime Ministerial delegations for discussions with various countries. (Express photo)
Avtar Singh Bhasin, a former Indian diplomat and a prolific author on foreign policy, passed away in Delhi on Sunday. He was 90.
Born in June 1935, Bhasin served with the National Archives of India and the Ministry of Defence before joining the Ministry of External Affairs in 1963, where he served for the next three decades, retiring in June 1993 as Director (Historical Division).
He was posted in the Indian Missions in Kathmandu, Bonn, Vienna, and Lagos. He travelled extensively within and outside the country in the discharge of his duties in the Ministry. He was a member of several official, ministerial and Prime Ministerial delegations for discussions with various countries.
He took to rigorous academic studies after retirement in 1993, and was seen working in the IIC library all day until very recently. He was a Senior Fellow at the Indian Council of Historical Research from 1994 to 1996, and an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Studies of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library from 1996 to 2000. He attended several seminars on South Asia and contributed research papers at these dialogues. He published several articles on South Asian affairs in newspapers and journals, and wrote for the popular ‘Explained’ section of The Indian Express.
Bhasin was an outstanding chronicler of the evolution of India’s foreign relations, and did voluminous work on compiling documents relating to Pakistan, China, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh among others.
His magisterial work, a five-volume documentary study of India-China relations from 1947 to 2000, is an invaluable archival resource for scholars and laypersons alike. Bhasin also published compilations of documents on India’s relations with Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
Among the books he authored include India in Sri Lanka: Between Lion and the Tigers (2004), Some Called It Partition, Some Freedom: Last 75 Days of the Raj (1998), and India and Pakistan: Neighbours at Odds (2018), Nehru, Tibet and China (2021) and Negotiating India’s Landmark Agreements (2024).
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