'India always defended highest ideals in UN charter'

United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator for India Renata Lok-Dessallien on Thursday commended India for always backing and defending the UN's "highest ideals".

Hosting a reception here to mark the 74th UN Day, she said: "For the UN it is a celebration of 74 years of partnership with India".

India was with the UN from the very start and "has always stood in defence of the highest ideals we have vested in the UN Charter peace and security, the equal human rights of all people, and development for all," she said.

"This is not surprising as it is in India's age-old civilisation that we find the great wells of philosophical wisdom that have inspired the world's thinking for centuries, and surely also informed the drafting of the UN Charter".

India has been ahead of the times since the UN was founded and in 1947, it was India which urged the UN to change the wording of the universal declaration of human rights from all men are created equal to all human beings are created equal, Lok-Dessallien said.

It was India which brought the International Day of Non-Violence to the UN, "underpinned by this country's great reservoir of Gandhian philosophy in particular", the UN resident coordinator for India said.

UN India commemorated the day by remembering Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary with the theme "Gandhi and Sustainability".

"Gandhi gave us the moral courage that continues to inspire peaceful movements against hatred and bigotry around the world," she said after paying tributes to the Mahatma.

Housing and Urban Development Minister and former Permanent Representative of India at UN, Hardeep Singh Puri, recalled the 74 years of India and the UN's "valuable partnership" and termed New Delhi's contributions to the UN as "unparallel".