As the Indian economy adds strength to our region and the world, it will also benefit Mongolia.

—Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Mr Modi’s words spoken during his May 2015 visit to Mongolia have come true. Significant developments have taken place in Indo-Mongolian ties during the past five years, even as the two nations complete 65 years of diplomatic relations, and record 2,200 years of shared history.

As Mongolian Ambassador H.E. Gonchig Ganbold tells us in his cover interview, Mr Modi in 2015 presented a sapling of a banyan tree and pledged to give statues of Lord Buddha and his two disciples to the Gandan monastery. During my visit to Mongolia in June 2019 I witnessed these majestic statues, gloriously sculpted and designed by the highly decorated father-son duo of Ram and Anil Sutar. When President of Mongolia H.E. Kh. Battulga visited India in September 2019, he and PM Modi inaugurated the statues virtually. The statues are of enormous spiritual significance—Ambassador Ganbold believes they will further cement age-old spiritual, historical and cultural bonds that bind the two ‘spiritual neighbours’ inexorably.