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Jimmy Carter, the former US President who died at the age of 100 on Sunday night, shared a special connection with India. A village in Haryana that he visited was named after him - 'Carterpuri'.
On January 3, 1978, Mr Carter, along with the then First Lady Rosalynn Carter, travelled to Daulatpur Nasirabad - a village in Haryana which is an hour away from Delhi. According to the Carter Center, an NGO founded by Mr Carter, the visit was so successful that the residents renamed the area 'Carterpuri' in the president's honour. They also remained in contact with the White House for the rest of Mr Carter's tenure.
January 3 was declared a holiday in 'Carterpuri' since then.
When Mr Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, the villagers held massive festivities and celebrated his honour.
The visit by the former US President came just a year after the removal of the Emergency and the victory of the Janata Party. During his time in India, he had also addressed parliament. Speaking against authoritarian rule at the time, Mr Carter said, "For the remainder of this century and into the next, the democratic countries of the world will increasingly turn to each other for answers to our most pressing, common challenge: how our political and spiritual values can provide the basis for dealing with the social and economic strains to which they will unquestionably be subjected."
Mr Carter also shared a personal connection with India as his mother, Lillian, had worked in the country as a health volunteer with the Peace Corps during the late 1960s.
Since the Carter administration, the US and India have worked closely on energy, humanitarian aid, technology, space cooperation, maritime security, disaster relief, and counterterrorism. In the mid-2000s, the two countries struck a landmark agreement to work toward full civil nuclear cooperation, and bilateral trade has since skyrocketed, the Carter Center said.
Jimmy Carter dies at 100
Jimmy Carter, the longest-lived US President and Nobel peace laureate, died at the age of 100. He had been in hospice care since mid-February 2023 at his home in Plains, Georgia - the same town where he was born and once ran a peanut farm before becoming governor of the Peach State.
"Carter died peacefully at his home in Plains surrounded by his family," the Carter Center wrote in a statement.
Mr Carter's son, Chip, told news agency AFP, "My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights and unselfish love."
US President Joe Biden expressed grief over Mr Carter's death and declared January 9 as the national mourning day.
"I call on the American people to assemble on that day in their respective places of worship, there to pay homage to the memory of President James Earl Carter, Jr. I invite the people of the world who share our grief to join us in this solemn observance," he said.