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From: "Architexturez." <interface.services@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:48:56 +0530
| Widely syndicated Associated Press story
NEW DELHI - Laurie Baker, a British-born architect who spent more than
60 years in India building homes that were ecologically sound and
affordable for the poor, has died. He was 90.
cont'd....
http://www.observer-reporter.com/OR/Story/04_09_OBIT_BAKER
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| Baker's citizenship, on his biographer's authority:
Twenty years ago Laurie Baker received a call from the Queens office in
London to inquire whether he would accept the OBE if it were to be
conferred on him. At the time, after a long awaited and frustrated bid
for Indian citizenship, Baker replied that he would be grateful if
Buckingham Palace could help him became an Indian citizen instead. The
short telephone exchange was typical of a man who spoke little; but when
he did, it was his own mind.
...no one - least of all the Ministry of External Affairs - could ever
doubt his status as an England-born native son of India. Baker
eventually received his Indian citizenship, and with the threat of an
OBE looming large, the Government of India also hastily dumped a Padma
Shri on him.
cont'd.....
http://www.architexturez.net/+/subject-listing/000071.shtml