Jimmy Carter, the 39th US President, passed away at the age of 100 on Sunday (local time) at his home in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family. He was 100 years old. The longest-lived US president passed away more than a year after entering hospice care at his home in the small town of Plains, according to The Carter Center.
Carter served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, earning widespread admiration for his integrity and humanitarian efforts. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in promoting democracy and human rights around the world.
In a statement released by The Carter Center, Chip Carter, the former president’s son said, “My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love. “My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family because he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”
Carter is survived by his children—Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his wife, Rosalynn, and one grandchild.
He was the first American president to visit India after the removal of the emergency and victory of the Janata Party in 1977. In his address to the Indian parliament, Carter spoke against authoritarian rule.
“India’s difficulties, which we often experience ourselves and which are typical of the problems faced in the developing world, remind us of the tasks that lie ahead. Not the Authoritarian Way,” Carter said on January 2, 1978.
“But India’s successes are just as important because they decisively refute the theory that to achieve economic and social progress, a developing country must accept an authoritarian or totalitarian government and all the damage to the health of the human spirit which that kind of rule brings with it,” he told members of parliament.
“Is democracy important? Is human freedom valued by all people?. India has given her affirmative answer in a thunderous voice, a voice heard around the world. Something momentous happened here last March, not because any particular party won or lost but rather, I think, because the largest electorate on earth freely and wisely chooses its leaders at the polls.
A day later at the signing of the Delhi declaration along with then Prime Minister Morarji Desai, Carter said at the heart of the friendship between India and the US is their determination that the moral values of the people must also guide the actions of the states, the governments.
“The United States gave the world an illustration of a new form of government, with a new relation between the citizen and the state a relation in which the state exists to serve the citizen, and not the citizen to serve the state,” he said.
“India experimented with creating political unity from overwhelming human diversity, enabling people of different cultures and languages and religions to work together, both in independence and also in freedom. Yours is an experiment whose success the world is celebrating anew,” Carter said in the Ashoka Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhawan.
According to the Carter Centre, on January 3, 1978, Carter and then First Lady Rosalynn Carter traveled to the village of Daulatpur Nasirabad, an hour southwest of New Delhi.
He was the third American president to visit India and the only one with a personal connection to the country his mother, Lillian, had worked there as a health volunteer with the Peace Corps during the late 1960s.
“The visit was so successful that village residents renamed the area ‘Carterpuri’ shortly after and remained in contact with the White House for the rest of President Carter’s tenure.
The trip made a lasting impression: Festivities abounded in the village when President Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, and January 3 remains a holiday in Carterpuri,” the Carter Centre said, adding that the visit laid the groundwork for an enduring partnership that has greatly benefited both countries.
