Indian community pays homage to their champion

David Lange at the Mahatma Gandhi Centre in Auckland last month. Picture / Greg Bowker

New Zealand's 100,000-strong Indian community is mourning the loss of a great friend and champion in David Lange.

"He is one man who changed the face of New Zealand," Auckland Ethnic Council president Ganges Singh said of the former Prime Minister who took time out from campaigning in the 1984 election to drop in on his daughter's wedding.

"He didn't reply to the invitation, but when we were at the reception he just popped in saying: Here I am - didn't you expect me?"

Mr Singh, who first met Mr Lange about 30 years ago and remains thankful for his decision soon after the election to reopen New Zealand's High Commission in India, recalls having to make some swift reseating arrangements.

It wasn't Mr Lange's first visit to the family's Pukekohe home.

"One time he came in a beat-up Vauxhall Viva and it broke down, so we had to take him back [to the city]."

But his guest's lack of attention to protocol did not diminish the regard in which the Indian community held him, not least for patching up diplomatic relations after Sir Robert Muldoon closed the high commission in a spat with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

"We are all saying thank you, David Lange, for what you have done and may God give you the best place in Heaven," said Mr Singh, a Sikh and former president of the New Zealand Indian Central Association.

Only last month, the association made Mr Lange and former National Party Cabinet minister Sir William Birch honorary members of the Indian community.

Mr Singh also praised Mr Lange for opening up opportunities for Indians and other Asian people to migrate to New Zealand, and for sticking to his principles in resisting pressure from the United States to back down from declaring this country nuclear-free.

"Even on his death-bed he showed that principle is not negotiable," Mr Singh said of Mr Lange's expression of concern that National may yet undo the nuclear-free legislation.

He said the Indian community would undoubtedly hold some form of commemoration for its hero but would wait for his funeral first.

Sir Edmund Hillary, who went to New Delhi in 1985 as high commissioner, said Mr Lange's reputation in India made his job relatively easy.

"David Lange was a very, very impressive gentleman. He was greatly admired in India."

Thakor Parbhu was a senior lawyer at the Auckland law firm of Haigh, Charters, Carthy when a teenaged David Lange arrived in 1961 to take on duties as a lowly law clerk.

The young man took a keen interest in Mr Parbhu's recollections of early life in the Indian state of Gujarat, and became a regular visitor to his home, where his children called him "uncle".

As late as last week Mr Parbhu and his wife were taking curry to Mr Lange's bedside as he was "getting bored with hospital food".