Narendra Modi’s Tamil interpreter was Chennai’s Madhusudhan Raveendran

Chennai: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s translator-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. Hailing from Chennai, Madhu had done engineering at Anna University in Guindy.

His first posting being in the Indian Mission at Beijing, he picked up Mandarin and soon mastered the difficult language. He was well versed in Chinese language, apart from Hindi and Malayalam and of course, mother-tongue Tamil and English. Sources said he, along with foreign minister S. Jaishankar, who was also an IFS officer from Tamil Nadu, had contributed substantially to Mr Modi’s use of Tamil during his present trip to Tamil Nadu.

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.

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. He was again sent back to Beijing as the First Secretary and assisted Prime Minister Modi as translator-interpreter during the latter’s China trip last year.

After his promotion in the cadre, Madhusudhan is at the external affairs ministry in Delhi as its deputy secretary.