Indian Consul General Mulay: Building Bridges in a Better Environment

When then 53-year-old Dnyaneshwar Mulay was inducted as consul general of India in New York City on April 23, 2013, it was said to come as little surprise to the people of India.

When then 53-year-old Dnyaneshwar Mulay was inducted as consul general of India in New York City on April 23, 2013, it was said to come as little surprise to the people of India. Mulay had become well-known throughout that nation of 1.25 billion people for his governmental service during his 30-year career. On an international level, that service included assignments to a variety of key diplomatic positions in locations as diverse as Tokyo, Moscow, Mauritius, Maldives, and Damascus. And on the domestic front, his assignments covered an array of mostly major financial posts, including the high-profile position of director of the Ministry of Finance.

In addition, Mulay had become celebrated in India for his accomplishments in another field—that of literature. His 15 nonfiction books, in which he analyzed often complex educational, social, environmental, theological, technological, and international issues, had won him national and international critical acclaim, along with a host of prestigious literary awards; also critically heralded was his one book of poetry, which describes the dilemma of young men and women trying to find meaning in post-independence India, and his one novel, which was based on his own life story: that of rising from a humble childhood to his current prominence.

If you guessed, however, that with such an impressive résumé, Mulay’s first initiative as consul general back in 2013 would be directly connected to his prior impressive public and private career, you would be wrong. “In fact,” Mulay informed me when I interviewed him in the historic Consulate General Building in Midtown Manhattan recently, “My first task when I took over 18 months ago was to try to clean unnecessary papers stored in the building.”

The government of India and the Metropolitan Museum are modernizing the consulate building.