PANJIM: The Centre must procure a copy of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s logbook diary kept in a museum abroad, to trace India’s rich maritime history, Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Culture, Meenakshi Lekhi said here on Tuesday.
She was talking to reporters after laying the keel for the construction of an ancient era ‘stitched ship’ at a private shipyard in the presence of Chief of Naval Staff Admiral R Hari Kumar, member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council Sanjeev Sanyal and others.
“India cannot get the original diary back because Vasco da Gama was not our citizen. But we can get a facsimile of the diary so that we can trace the country’s rich maritime history. The aim is to get correct facts based on the narrations by noted archaeologist, Padmashri Dr Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar,” she said.
“When Wakankar went abroad, he found the diary of Vasco da Gama in one of the museums there. In that diary, Vasco da Gama mentioned how he went up to Zanzibar and when he reached Africa, he said he wanted to go to India. He saw an Indian ship which was three times bigger than his,” she said.
