Demolishing policy myths and principles

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S. Nihal Singh

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By Krishnan Srinivasan [4]

Rs 750

Krishnan Srinivasan belongs to that small breed of Indian diplomats who have a hard-headed and non-sentimental view of the country’s interests and policies. He was India’s foreign secretary for a rather brief period of 13 months in 1994-95, but his stint coincided with an eventful period in the country’s, and world’s, history in an era of transformation.

In this idiosyncratic memoir of sorts there are two substantial portions relating to his period in office recounting the problems, policies and personalities involved and on the metamorphosis of non-alignment employing to the full his acerbic wit and an unusual command of language. Not only are they critiques of the policies India pursued but also provide cameos of the principals involved, Indian and foreign, with a candour quite out of character for senior Indian diplomats recording their careers.
The author is equally frank on the merits and otherwise of the policy of non-alignment dividing it into three periods or ages, as he calls them, of idealism, realism and opportunism. In an analysis that is no respecter of persons or countries, Srinivasan provides an inside view of the goings-on behind the correctness of statements and declarations, and what India’s leadership and its foreign counterparts thought and wanted.
He dismisses his ministry’s minister of state, R.L. Bhatia, as “overall, his diplomatic perceptions were juvenile.” Nor is his rounded assessment of P.V. Narasimha Rao, then Prime Minister, more flattering, describing him as being “exceptionally nervous about relations with the USA” and that he “liked to be his own inscrutable man. He was, in essence, a cold fish”. His conclusion was that he “was, therefore, the opposite of charming”.
But the author gives him the benefit of the doubt in one respect: “Narasimha Rao was well aware, as all Indian Prime Ministers before and after him, that there was no ‘national consensus’ either in India or in the USA on how to deal with the other country.” Nor is he kinder to Washington: “Like the three monkeys, the Americans when told of facts running counter to their policies — the Taliban, missiles, nuclear transfers — problems all originating in Pakistan — they just rolled over and played possum.”
Srinivasan demolishes some other myths: contrary to popular perception, the Chinese do care about criticism of their record on human rights; the former King of Bhutan was willing to pay a price to China for being left in peace; the Nepali communists, despite their rhetoric, did not seek an amendment of the Indo-Nepal Treaty; Iran wanted to improve relations with India on its own terms (“We were suspicious of their speaking in two voices, one in New Delhi, and a vastly different one in Islamabad.”); Israelis were difficult people to deal with, “heavily laden with too much gravity and self-righteousness, coupled with a total absence of any sense of humour; and the Palestinian Authority had my sympathy in having to deal with them” although he found Chinese “the other most frustrating interlocutors”.
The author has little new to add on the tortuous journey of non-alignment and the disastrous 1962 Sino-Indian border war except to conclude that after it “India could play little meaningful role in world affairs for the next three decades.” Indo-Soviet relations prospered but for the unfortunate comment of the then Indian ambassador, A.S. Gonsalves, on the anti-Gorbachev coup that “India cannot be party to the break-up of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, he commends the diplomatic skills of three of his former colleagues, Chinmaya Gharekhan, Hamid Ansari (now the country’s vice-president) and Satinder Lambah, who “would be highly placed on the all-time list of diplomatic representatives of any country”. His conclusion is that, shorn of Jawaharlal Nehru’s idealism, non-alignment became an instrument of opportunism.
The rest of the volume consists of a conversation with Jagat Mehta, his predecessor several degrees removed; reprints of his newspaper columns on sundry subjects, especially in the field of foreign policy; with a short story on a diplomat’s monologues thrown in to display his literary skills, undoubtedly drawn on a living person in his various stints around the world. (It is for his colleagues to determine who the principal character is based on.)
The author was the sole Indian diplomat in September 1969 when King Idris was overthrown in Libya. In his later interactions with Muammar Gaddafi, he came to the conclusion that “Gaddafi had a world view roughly equivalent to what you would expect from a newly-recruited Indian Army jawan.”
Given his frankness and perspicacity and the quality of his writing, the reader is left somewhat unfulfilled. It is a pity Srinivasan did not think of writing a rounded memoir integrating his unique experiences, rather than resorting to a potpourri of several genres. As a record of an Indian diplomat who climbed the highest ladder in his profession, the volume is nonetheless a delight to read.