P. K. Banerjee

Purnendu Kumar Banerjee entered the Indian Foreign Service in 1948 after studying in Calcutta and pursuing legal studies in New York and at Harvard. He served in Tokyo before taking charge of India's embassy in Beijing in 1961. During the deterioration of Sino-Indian relations and the 1962 border war, his meetings with Premier Zhou Enlai provided a channel for communication between the two governments. ¹

Banerjee subsequently served as minister in Washington and acted as chargé during the 1965 India–Pakistan crisis. On June 16, he delivered India's account of fighting near Kargil to Assistant Secretary of State Phillips Talbot. Banerjee attributed the clashes to Pakistani action and defended India's occupation of two posts across the ceasefire line. The American record noted that this explanation differed from Ambassador B. K. Nehru's earlier account. ²

His Washington work included public discussion of Asian affairs. In March 1966 he addressed a Harvard conference on China's relations with India and Pakistan; Representative William Widnall placed the speech in the Congressional Record. After retirement, Banerjee published My Peking Memoirs of the Chinese Invasion of India and Assignment Americas. He died in 2003. ^{3, 1}