The flag's first appearance at an international gathering was in March-April 1947 at the Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi.The Conference, organized by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, hosted Asian states and anti-colonial movements. The representative of the British government of India in Lhasa, Hugh Richardson, personally shared the invitation from the Indian Council of World Affairs with the Tibetan Foreign Office and advised that the conference was a good opportunity to show Asia and the world that Tibet was de facto an independent country. At the conference, leaders of each of the thirty-two delegations sat on a dais behind a plate with the name and flag of their country. American historian A. Tom Grunfeld asserts that the conference was not government-sponsored, and so Tibet's and the Tibetan flag's presence had "no diplomatic significance", adding that the flag was removed after representatives from the Republic of China protested to conference organizers who then issued a statement that Jawaharlal Nehru had invited the Tibetan delegates "in a personal capacity". A Tibetan delegate who attended the conference claims that this did not occur and the only existing photos from the conference show the flag displayed along with other participating countries' flags.