In October 1998, Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov stopped by a government school in Delhi while he was on a state visit to India. The occasion was special. Tucked in a lane in Defence Colony, Kanya Vidhyalaya was being renamed in honour of a 19th-century revolutionary and writer who is revered in Bulgaria – Georgi Stoykov Rakovski. Rakovski was a key figure in the Bulgarian National Revival. In the mid-19th century, he developed a special interest in India, going as far as learning Sanskrit and establishing links between the ancient language and Bulgarian. A big impetus for his decision to understand...