Update: The Hindu has acknowledged the problem with Mr Manash Bhattacharjee’s article not crediting the source of its information, and has edited his article online to give credit to Mr Thanvi. The paper has also added this note at the end of the article: “This article has been edited to include the original source of Che Guevara’s remarks on India, made during the revolutionary’s first visit to the country. All of his quotes have been drawn from Om Thanvi’s ‘The Roving Revolutionary,’ published originally in Hindi in Jansatta and later in English in Himal magazine in December 2007.”

Also see Mr Bhattacharjee’s response in the comments section of this post.

(In August-September 2007, Om Thanvi, editor of Jansatta, a Hindi daily of the Indian Express group, published in his paper a series of articles giving a vivid account of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara‘s historic 1959 visit to India. The articles were accompanied by a few photographs of Che in India: Che talking to peasants in a north Indian village; Che being interviewed by All India Radio at Hotel Ashok where Che and his six Cuban colleagues were staying; Che in a warm handshake with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru at Teen Murti Bhawan, and so on. Jansatta even carried a sketch drawn by the famous cartoonist Abu Abraham, on which Che put his initials on the collar in 1962. Continue reading When Che Guevara came to India: Om Thanvi →