Chennai sources stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s translator cum interpreter, during the interaction with Chinese President Xi Jinping at mahabalipuram was madhusudhan Raveendran, a 2007 batch IFS officer whose first posting was in the Indian Mission at Beijing. He is ailing from Chennai, Madhu had done engineering at Anna University in Guindy and his first posting being in the Indian Mission at Beijing, he picked up Mandarin and soon mastered the difficult language.
Furthermore he was well versed in Chinese language, apart from Hindi and Malayalam and of course, mother tongue Tamil and English. Moreover sources said he, along with foreign minister S. Jaishankar, who was also an IFS officer from Tamilnadu, had contributed substantially to Mr Modi’s use of Tamil during his present trip to Tamilnadu. Perhaps in fact, the PM at his conference with Xi on Saturday made his welcome statement in Tamil, and explained to his guest that he used Tamil which is one of the most ancient languages in the world, with rich literature and culture.
Moreover madhusudhan did his first stint as the Third Secretary at the Indian Mission in Beijing for two years before transfer to the Mission at San Francisco. Apparently he was again sent back to Beijing as the First Secretary and assisted Prime Minister modi as translator cum interpreter during the latter’s china trip last year and after his promotion in the cadre, madhusudhan is at the external affairs ministry in delhi as its joint secretary.
