Stockholm, June 1: Prime Minister Narendra Modi was ridiculed when he said in Mumbai in October last year that plastic surgery was practised in ancient India. Right-wing scientists were similarly laughed at five months ago for insisting at the 102nd Indian Science Congress that Hindus in ancient times had mastered aviation and that the Wright brothers were no pioneers compared to the Indians.

But when a modern European mind with expertise in her chosen profession says something that sounds equally bizarre and outlandish there is less of an outrage, possibly because it comes from a foreigner, that too a white-skinned person.

Tomorrow President Pranab Mukherjee will be briefly exposed to a Swede from this country's west coast who argues that the opera and 19th-century western classical music are products of Indian influences.

Charlotta Huldt, a well-known Swedish opera singer, along with two Bengali women living here will sing Vande Mataram while Astad Deboo, the famous dancer and choreographer, will dance to the tune of the patriotic song.

Huldt has marshalled enough facts to make a convincing case that gypsy music made its way into 19th-century western musical traditions. And the gypsies, of course, came to Europe from India, making their way to the Continent through Iran, Turkey and North Africa from the sixth century onwards.

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Gypsies have no written notes of music and they play from memory, but those who have listened to their music will agree that it is often a magical experience. Their musical tradition is handed down from generation to generation: they learn their music by listening and thereby creating a folkloric tradition.

Huldt's arguments cannot be dismissed out of hand. After all, Carmen, the four-act opera composed by Georges Bizet, is about a gypsy girl by the same name. Sergei Rachmaninoff has put into operatic form Alexander Pushkin's famous poem, The Gypsies.

Huldt is now working on producing the world's first Bollywood opera. It will be based on Rossini's The Italian Girl in Algiers. She will sing in the production but the dances will be themed on Bollywood in style and action. Once it is completed, the Bollywood opera will perform in the poorer and depressed sections of Stockholm.

One of the two Bengali women who will sing Vande Mataram tomorrow before the President is Suparna Sanyal, the head of the department of microbiology at Uppsala University. She founded the Uppsala Indian choir, which will perform at the university after Mukherjee addresses students and faculty on "Tagore and Gandhi: Contemporary Relevance for Global Peace" on Tuesday just before leaving Sweden for Belarus.

The other Bengali woman is Shipra Nandy, who has done much to popularise Indian music in Sweden.

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Although he is now President, Mukherjee had an opportunity to replay the role of finance minister - a post he held twice - when he met Sweden's leader of the Opposition. It was also an occasion when the voracious reader and book lover in Mukherjee came to the fore.

A lot of Mukherjee's conversation with Anna Kinberg Batra centred on her book on India. It has the title Indien - fråstackare till stormakt. The Swedes have taken the liberty of popularly translating it as "India - From Wretch to Great Power".

Anna told this writer last year that she disapproved of the translation, which is misleading. According to her, a more appropriate translation would be "India - From Poverty to Great Power".

Mukherjee's meeting with her was important. In all likelihood, unless the present government can work a miracle in running the country, which seems improbable, Anna could be Sweden's next Prime Minister.

She is married to a person of Indian origin, David Batra. The PIO spouse is this country's most popular stand-up comedian. He is also a very popular prime-time television entertainer.

Anna's interest in India is primarily owed to her marriage to Batra, who is author of a popular Indian cookbook: David Batras inte så tråkiga indiska mat, which translates as "David Batra's not-so-boring Indian food".

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Swedish protocol for visiting heads of state has an unusual requirement. The guest has to entertain the host in return for the state banquet that the former is given in the Royal Palace.

So, Mukherjee will host a lunch at his hotel tomorrow for King Carl XVI Gustaf, Queen Silvia, Crown Princess Victoria and the prince next in the line of succession, Prince Daniel.

On the menu is one Bengali dish: Norwegian salmon prepared with Bengali spices. Swedes eat mostly salmon imported from Norway because their own catch is from the Baltic Sea, which has a high level of pollution.