Vilnius 700-th Birth Anniversary Celebrations start in Tughlaqabad, 3rd city of Delhi
On January 25th, 2023 Lithuanian Embassy in India, with partners and friends in New Delhi, has started the year long celebrations of 700-th Birth Anniversary of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.
To mark the occassion Embassy invited friends to a historical walk in Tughlaqabad, 3rd City of Delhi, the contemporary of Vilnius, and to the imaginary walk-through Vilnius, located 5000 km away. Ambassador-designate Diana Mickevičienė, together with Sohail Hashmi, Delhi‘s historian, writer and film maker, were looking for parallels and paradoxes, connecting and distinguishing the two cities.
From the citadel of Tughlaqabad the gathering of friends has sent the birthday greetings to Vilnius in several different languages, thus signifying the openness and multiculturalism of both cities.
The celebrations of Vilnius 700 will continue all year long, please follow Embassy's announcements for further events.
There are more than few parallels between Vilnius and Delhi-Tughlaqabad: both cities have legends of origin – Vilnius has the legend of the dream of Grand Duke Gedimimas, and Tughlaqabad – the story about the dream of it‘s founder the Sultan. In Sanskrit and Lithuanian languages word „sapna“ means a dream, and an idea or aspiration, and therefore connects the legends of the two contemporaries. Lithuania and India were quite often at war with descendants of Genghis Khan Empire, Mongol Tatar states, which at that period were separating the lands of the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania and India. One of the most famous historiographer of Delhi of that period Ibn Batuta, before coming to Delhi, has visited Crimea and the lands of South Ukraine, which just after 20 years, after the victory of Algirdas, the son of Gediminas against the Golden Horde, became part of the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania.
The chronicles of historic travellers, the architectural conceptions, the peculiarities of the household and the entertainment of the rulers may be compared.
The symbol of founded by Gediminas Vilnius – a wolf, and the ambitious sultan‘s curse by the sufi saint foretold, that soon only jackals will be dwelling in it‘s ruins, unfortunatelly, it came true. It‘s paradoxical that even though the existance of Tughlaqabad was short lived, it‘s Sultans toumb still stands grand above the ruins of the city, and Vilnius continues to prevail and prosper for 700 years, however, the grave of it‘s founder unknown.
Social media
