Words, Words, Words

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Words, Words, Words
Adventures in Diplomacy

T. P. SREENIVASAN

Foreword by I. K. GUJRAL

An imprint of Pearson Education

Copyright © 2007, T. P. Sreenivasan
Licensees of Pearson Education in South Asia

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 At the feet of my parents
Late Shri K. Parameswaran Pillai
and
Shrimati N. Chellamma
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Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.

—William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii
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Contents

Foreword by I. K. Gujral xi
Preface xiii

1. My Story 1
2. Magic of Multilateralism 79
3. Nuclear Winter, Kargil Spring 125
4. On Whom the Sun Never Sets 179
5. Quest for Balance 203
6. Back to the Backwaters 235

Index 239

Illustrations follow page 138.

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Foreword

The author, T. P. Sreenivasan, had sent me some excerpts of his lucid mem-
oirs. In an inimitable and eminently readable style, it took me down the
lanes of memory. We met for the first time in 1975 when among the group
of the South Asian diplomats and the Indian Embassy officials, who
received Sheil and me at the Sheremetyevo airport, was a keen youngster,
T. P. ‘Sreeni’. He was accompanied by his wife, Lekha. During the two years
that we spent together in the Moscow Mission, I discovered his talents and
charm. As the head of chancery, he was always solicitous about our needs
as we settled down in Moscow. We also got to know his four-year-old son,
Sreenath ‘Kiku’ as he was then called. We were sorry to see them go from
Moscow, but such were exigencies of the diplomatic life. This brief cama-
raderie turned into a life-long friendship. With time, he went ahead in his
career while his two sons, Kiku and Mishu, did well in life one is now the
dean of students in the famous Columbia University, while the other is in
International Civil Service.
Sreeni’s abilities were put to severe tests during his eventful assignments
to New York, Yangon, Fiji and Nairobi, but he brought credit to India and
himself from each of them. We were deeply disturbed when he and Lekha
sustained grievous injuries in a senseless attack on them in Nairobi. I
admired his grit and determination when he insisted on staying at his post
even when he was offered more tempting assignments.
Later as prime minister, I turned to him when I was looking for a
dynamic deputy chief of the mission in Washington at a particularly crucial
time in Indo-US relations. He vindicated my trust. He was equally success-
ful as ambassador to the IAEA and the other UN bodies in Vienna. Lekha
stood by him throughout, bringing up the boys and making her own con-
tribution by way of performing classical dances, doing social work and rais-
ing charity funds for various causes.
 Thanks to Sreeni’s diligence and skill of narration, we now have a very
enjoyable chronicle of his extraordinary experiences of his first 60 years.
His childhood in the sylvan surroundings of God’s own country, his deter-
mined efforts to fulfill his father’s dream to see him in the foreign service,
his steady rise in the hierarchy, his commendable contributions to multilat-
eral diplomacy, the political and physical challenges he overcame in Fiji
and Kenya and his commendable work in Washington and Vienna are nar-
rated in his characteristic lucent style. He narrates those events with con-
siderable objectivity with no pride, rancour or self-pity, but with a touch of
humour. Apart from its compelling readability, it is also a valuable piece of
history, which should give source material to those who wish to study his-
tory of Indian diplomacy at the United Nations in Washington and at the
IAEA. His insights into the way of life of the Indian diaspora in different
parts of the globe are also valuable.
I have heard Sreeni addressing the UN meetings, seminars and confer-
ences. He always has something to say and he says it convincingly, effectively
and with a sense of humour. I have received good advice on foreign policy
from him during my days as ambassador in Moscow and as minister of exter-
nal affairs and prime minister. I am, therefore, not surprised that his book of
memoirs has a wealth of information, with political analysis and anecdotes.
He has chosen to be a writer and commentator on international affairs for the
print and electronic media. I am confident that we can look forward to his
continuing contribution to the making of Indian foreign policy.

I. K. GUJRAL
Former Prime Minister
India
Preface

My father, whose dream was that I should join the foreign service, was insis-
tent that I should also tell my story in a book. After him, my wife, Lekha;
my sons, Sreenath and Sreekanth; my daughter-in-law, Roopa; and a good
friend, Lilykutty Illickal, among others, kept urging me to write, whenever
I told them an interesting experience of one kind or the other. For many
years, whenever anything significant happened to me, even a good score on
the golf course, I used to say that I had one thing more to tell my grandchil-
dren. Now that Durga and Krishna, my grandchildren, are old enough to
hear stories, if not to read them, here is my story for them and my other
grandchildren, as yet unborn. If anyone else reads it, it will be a bonus.
I joined the Indian Foreign Service with little knowledge about its
charms and challenges. But if I were faced with the same choice today, as
I was in 1967, I would again choose the same vocation. There was never a
dull moment. There was so much to learn and to do. I may not have made
any difference to the world, but the world made me what I am today. And
that world consisted of many people of different nationalities, colours and
creeds, whom I met in different continents. Some of them figure here, some
of them do not. But I am grateful to each one of them. My thumbnail
sketches of people are positive, except when honesty dictated that I should
not gloss over their flaws altogether.
Having returned, after my wanderings around the globe, to the very soil
on which I grew up, here is an effort to recapture the first sixty years of my
life. It may not be accurate in every detail, but it is authentic.
Diplomacy is about words written, spoken and unspoken. So are
books, and hence the title, inspired by William Shakespeare.
Apart from those who inspired and encouraged me to write, there are
several people who read the book, the whole of it or excerpts, and made
valuable suggestions. These include my wife, Lekha, who was a witness or
a participant in many of the events narrated in this memoir; my sons,
Sreenath and Sreekanth; my daughter-in-law, Roopa Unnikrishnan; my
brother, Brigadier T. P. Madhusudanan, and his wife, Jayashree; my
brother, who is in the foreign service, T. P. Seetharam, his wife, Deepa,
and their daughter, Devi; former Prime Minister I. K. Gujral; former Foreign
Secretary K. P. S. Menon; Jagdish Bhagawati; Karl Inderfurth; Shashi
Tharoor; former Ambassador Thomas Abraham; Vivek Katju; Suchitra
Durai; and Vinutha Mallya. I am deeply indebted to them.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Pearson Education and its team, for
working diligently to produce my first book.

T. P. Sreenivasan
Thiruvananthapuram
 Chapter One
My Story

The paddy fields stretched in front of my ancestral home at Kayamkulam

in Kerala had a deep impact on my life. They determined my seasons, pro-
vided my sustenance and gave me my play fields and toys, rain or shine.
Their earth and water were part of my very being. Their changing moods
were a constant delight to the eyes. A riot of colours adorned those fields
in every season: green when the plants were young; golden-yellow when
the paddy pods made their heads bow; and grey when the harvest was over.
My brothers and I swam in the muddy waters and fished when they were
flooded, and rolled on the sand in the dry season as we struggled to keep
our kites afloat. We grew up as the sons of the soil.
Our home itself was a sprawling ‘nalukettu’, or a quadrangular building
with a yard in the middle. Built with wood and thatched with coconut
leaves, which required annual replacement, it had no windows or habit-
able rooms. The rooms were meant more for storage of grains and other
produce rather than for human habitation. The open verandahs provided
enough airy areas to sleep, and privacy appeared an unnecessary luxury. A
judicious mix of appropriate timing of activities and discretion compen-
sated for the lack of private space and time. The floor was covered with
local cement in certain areas and clay mixed with cow dung in others. Prac-
tical requirements rather than pomp and show dictated the use of material
for the floor and roof. We coexisted with animals of various kinds, ranging
from spiders to rats and snakes to lizards in perfect harmony. Many years
2 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

later, my children called our ancestral home a zoo and a biodiversity labo-
ratory as well.
We also worked in the fields, lending a helping hand, carrying a load of
grain, pulling the plough, or pumping water by pushing the pedals of an
ingenious wooden contraption. We enjoyed working as much as playing,
and nobody saw it as child labour. We relished sharing with farmhands their
gruel with spicy condiments that appeared to give them great strength. And
when it was time to go to school, we walked with a load of books, balanc-
ing ourselves with bare feet on the slippery mounds of earth that separated
the fields. Mud and sand did not repel us; they gave us our habitat.
I could well have ended up in those very fields as a sun-drenched and
rain-soaked farmer. Or if I was academically inclined, I could teach in the
local primary school, keeping an eye on the labour in the field during inter-
vals between classes. I did not sit under a street lamp to read, as there were
no street lamps in our village. In fact, there was no electricity; only smoke-
emitting kerosene lamps were to brighten up the pages of my textbooks.
But I ended up in the elite Indian Foreign Service (IFS), a quantum leap
for a village boy, a spectacular achievement. As if by the touch of a magic
wand, the foreign service gave me the wings to go beyond the village, the
state, and the country. I travelled the globe; flew the national tricolour on
Mercedes cars; dined with the high and mighty; drove to work for days
together beside the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, the Kremlin in Moscow, the
White House in Washington DC and the Hoffburg Palace in Vienna; signed
agreements with foreign states; and spoke for India to a variety of audiences
across the globe including the United Nations (UN); General Assembly and
the Security Council. In New York, Geneva, Nairobi and Vienna, my name
became synonymous with my motherland.
One man made all the difference in my life. A humble schoolteacher,
with no bank account or property, dared to dream, aimed high, and made
sacrifices for his children. My father, Kochu Pillai Parameswaran Pillai,
was born into a family with just enough land to subsist. The high caste
and tradition of the family dictated that they did not work in the fields,
but employed low-caste labour to till the land. They had a hand-to-mouth
existence with the produce. After five more girls were born, my grandfa-
ther died leaving the six children in the hands of my father’s uncle, who,
by matrilineal tradition, was the lord and master of the family. Those days,
 MY STORY 3

among Kerala Nairs, uncles had greater responsibility for nieces and
nephews than for sons and daughters. After all, paternity was only an idea,
while maternity was a fact. Marriage was only a ‘sambandham’ or connec-
tion, and the children remained in the mother’s home. Legend has it that
women were so liberated that a lady merely had to throw her husband’s
wooden sandals out to signal that he was not required anymore!
The uncle took young Parameswaran (affectionately Kochupacharan)
under his wing, gave him his own name (Kochupillai) as surname and sent
him to school for long enough to finish his middle school. Once he came
out of the middle school, he was asked to train himself as the next patriarch
of the family to eke out an existence from the modest farmland and take
care of the children of his five sisters. Parameswaran was heartbroken that
he could not study more and decided to leave home rather than argue with
his uncle. The only worldly possession he had was a gold chain around his
neck, and he decided to sell it and use the proceeds to make a trip to Sri
Lanka to seek his fortune. It was no pleasure trip, and he faced more hard-
ships en route than in his home. He was relieved when he was discovered
and transported back to his village. We used to speculate as to what would
have happened to us if he had remained in Sri Lanka. With a name sound-
ing like Velupillai Prabhakaran, his children could well have ended up as
Tamil Tigers.
Parameswaran’s act of protest was not futile as the uncle took him seri-
ously and decided to make an additional investment in him by sending him
to a high school and for teacher’s training. There he acquired the title of
Shastri, which became his name for the rest of his life, and became a teacher
in the same school in which he studied. He became an orator and an actor,
and worked occasionally with a theatre group. It was during this period
that he met a young lady, Narayaniamma Chellamma, a revolutionary in
her own right, who chose to defy her parents and pursued a teaching career.
She was the eldest child and had two younger brothers. Contrary to tradi-
tion, she decided to work and support the family as her uncles had already
pawned away much of the land for running property cases in the local
courts. She did not want to marry any of her many suitors. But she chose
Shastri as her partner, quite a courageous move for a lady at that time. Both
the families blessed the Shastri-Chellamma wedding, but soon complica-
tions arose as it upset the traditional social milieu. Instead of staying back
4 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

at his own village and looking after his sister’s children, he moved to his
wife’s home after giving his entire property to his sisters. His mother and her
younger sister, who remained unmarried all her life (we called her the lit-
tle grandma), lived in the family home with the daughters till they got mar-
ried one by one and left with a share of the property. They did not
appreciate my father leaving them for his wife and kept complaining to us
about his dereliction of duty. But he continued to take care of them, found
bridegrooms for them and settled them in different places.
Some of our happy moments as children were spent in my father’s
ancestral home, ‘Thettalil’, the name that I carry to reflect my paternal
genealogy. The grandmas and the aunts pampered us and laughed at our
antics. They gave us the kind of attention that we never got from our own
parents, whom we held in awe, my mother even more than my father. But
at Thettalil, we were great heroes, whom everyone seemed to admire. We
acted out scenes from movies, sang and danced, much to the delight of the
female audience. My parents could not believe that we were capable of so
much fun and frolic. Every time we had the opportunity and some cash, we
would hire bicycles and pedal furiously to Thettalil to have some fun.
On the occasion of Onam and the festival in the Chettikulangara tem-
ple, our parents accompanied us to Thettalil. The temple, whose deity
Durga is my favourite goddess to this day, had an unusual spectacle of huge
‘horses’ and ‘chariots’ made for the occasion by different villages in the
area. These were huge structures made of wood and textiles that could be
moved on wooden wheels by a large number of men. The horses did not
resemble a horse; they were simply larger chariots with their own unique
features, which remained unaltered over the years. The villagers competed
with each other in producing and displaying their horses and chariots. Some
villages, traditionally, brought massive images of mythological characters.
These were lined up for days when the temple grounds were packed to
capacity. A unique feature of the Chettikulangara temple was that
Durga’s favourite offering, fireworks, had to be ordered from a designated
Christian home next door. But Christians, even from that family, could
not enter the temple grounds.
Every time someone admires the single dimple on my right cheek, I recall
one of those visits to Thettalil, where I acquired that dimple by accident. My
brother and I were playing in the yard with a sharp instrument when the
 MY STORY 5

newspaper boy threw a newspaper over the fence as usual. Both of us ran
for the paper and reached it together. In the struggle that ensued, the sharp
instrument I had in my hand went deep into my right cheek. My grandma
held my hand and took me from home to home in the village to see whether
anyone had any antiseptic. Someone found an old bottle of iodine, which
was the only medicine I had for the wound. No stitches, no dressing. The
wound healed by itself, but left a scar, which, because of its location, is mis-
taken for a dimple.
Survival of the children in the villages, including us, was more by acci-
dent than by design. Even today I look with astonishment at the rusted
pair of scissors, which was used by the village midwife to cut the umbilical
cord of all the children born in the family. My father treasured it not as a
relic but as the only pair of scissors he ever possessed for daily use. Only
natural immunity must have saved us from all the germs we imbibed from
the dirty water in the fields and the injuries we sustained. I believe that I had
a bad skin infection from which I miraculously came out, but not without a
permanent scar on my right elbow. A divine hand seemed to protect us from
grave dangers. No other explanation is possible for the dangers that we sur-
vived. During one of my cycle rides, I tried a stunt and landed inches away
from a deadly instrument, which was stuck on the ground to remove husks
from coconuts.
In my mother’s home, ‘Valliyil’, where we were born and brought up,
Shastri was a bit of an intruder in the eyes of my mother’s parents and
brothers, as he appeared to interfere in their affairs. They preferred a visit-
ing son-in-law, not a live-in one. When my elder brother, Gopalakrishnan,
was born, my uncles felt threatened, as they had to share the family prop-
erty equally with their sister’s children. They pushed for partition of the
property, which led to many arguments and even threats of violence. They
felt that their sister would have behaved differently if she did not have her
husband’s advice. The situation came to such a pass that when my brother
and I were still young, my parents even pretended to live separately to make
her people feel repentant. We used to go to see our father in a neighbour’s
house during this period. But things settled down and my father returned
to our home as my mother’s parents and brothers moved out and my
mother and elder brother inherited the ‘tharawad’ (ancestral home). My
younger brothers, Madhusudanan, named after a famous doctor in the
6 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

locality, and Seetharam, named after the brightest of my father’s students,

were born thereafter. Without the help of her parents, my mother found it
hard to continue to teach and bring up the children, but her iron will
enabled her to accomplish things beyond an ordinary woman’s reach. I
remember her carrying the crying baby Madhusudanan, now a Brigadier
in the Indian Army Medical Corps, to the school, leaving him in a neigh-
bour’s home, going to feed him during intervals and carrying him back in
the evenings.
My father set the goals for us and my mother steadfastly ensured that
we were enabled to pursue those goals. He was a dreamer, while my mother
was the doer. Compromise was not in her vocabulary either in the matter
of her relationships or in bringing up her children. Her capacity for hard
work and suffering was legendary. Even after she reached a certain degree
of mellowness after seeing her children do extremely well and after
spending long hours in prayers, she never compromised on what she
considered right.
My mother’s routine was back-breaking, having to cope with her
diverse duties, involving four boys, the farm and her teaching at the school.
She would get up early and cook not only breakfast but also lunch for the
box that my brother and I carried to the school. After we left, she would get
ready and leave for the school, virtually running a mile in the bargain. At
the end of the work at the school, she would walk back and prepare our
evening snacks and dinner. As electricity and refrigerator were unheard of,
fresh food had to be cooked for every meal, a luxury in modern terms. She
had some domestic help, but she cooked all the food herself with firewood
in a smoky kitchen. My father would leave for his own school by bus and
come back late in the evening after taking care of some odd things for the
household and for his sisters. He would then focus on our studies, making
sure that we read out our lessons loud. I had a table and a chair at the one
end of his bed, and my brother had the same at the other. He could sleep
as we droned on, but he woke up the moment we stopped. If he saw us in
our beds, spread on top of the grain store, he would flash his torch to the
clock to see whether it was past 10 p.m., our bedtime. Then he would wake
up with the alarm at 4 a.m. and get us out of bed to continue the drill. The
only way we could sleep early was by turning the clock forward, but one of
us had to wake up in the middle of the night to turn the clock back to avoid
 MY STORY 7

getting up at 3 a.m. There were nights when both of us turned the clock
back and landed up in a mess.
Unlike my younger brothers, Gopalakrishnan and I were not named
after any personality, but after God Almighty Himself. It is a good omen to
name children after the many names of God. Legend has it that an atheist
gained salvation when he called out the name of his son, which happened
to be one of the synonyms of Vishnu, the creator. My name came up, as my
parents wanted a name beginning with ‘Sree’, an auspicious syllable in
Hindu mythology. In a caste-ridden society, the name was a mixed blessing
as it pointed to castes other than mine, and I was mistaken to belong to
other castes. The advantage was that I came to know what the other castes
really thought of Nairs. But the disadvantage was that I did not gain recog-
nition as belonging to my own caste. My father, who believed in the unity
of the Hindus, which was fashionable at the time, chose not to add a
surname to our names, and thus the mystery was even more.
The complications about my name chased me to Japan and Fiji. In
Japan, they thought that I was adding the honorific san to my own name
wrongly and called me Mr Sreeniva. In Fiji, they thought that I was adding
the honorific Sree to my own name wrongly and called me Mr Nivasan. My
initials, when expanded, gave out my parentage and mailing address, but
many people thought that they represented my first name and called me by
my father’s name, Thettalil Parameswaran Pillai or just TP. My father was
overjoyed when he read in the papers that my name appeared as Thettalil
Parameswaran Pillai in the announcement of my appointment as the High
Commissioner to Fiji.
My brother, Gopalakrishanan, was technologically oriented and did not
care much for textbooks. He, therefore, chose not to go for academic pur-
suits, and took up technical training. I remember vividly the morning on
which we saw him off to Madras, to an uncertain future, at the advice of
Major N. Ramachandran, a son of a friend of my father. He did well in a
training institution attached to the heavy vehicles factory at Avadi and
spent most of his official career there. He married Shanta just two days
before my own wedding. Their daughters, Sunitha and Sangeetha, gave us
much happiness, but Sangeetha died two years after her marriage to Surej,
plunging us in deep grief. Sunitha and her husband joined the IT trail to
live in San Diego. My brother retired as the head of the institution he
8 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

joined 30-odd years earlier and moved back to our ancestral home to be the
patriarch of the family.
The Kayamkulam Boys’ High School, where I studied up to class X,
had no famous alumni to speak of except the cartoonist, Shankar Pillai,
who pioneered political satire in cartoons in the Shankar’s Weekly and
blazed a trail for many cartoonists from Kerala in later years. Everything, in-
cluding English and Hindi, was taught in Malayalam. I had a certain advan-
tage as my mother taught in the neighbouring girls’ high school, but an
obvious disadvantage was that all my pranks were reported promptly to my
mother. I remember very few of my classmates, except Gopi, who kept in
touch through his service in the army: Parthasarathi, who inherited a dis-
pensary and a bank from his parents; Zachariah, son of the local Magis-
trate; Suresh, son of a teacher in the same school, who became a senior
officer in the Indian Army; and Yakub Sait, son of the leading merchant in
Kayamkulam, Hajee Hassan Yakub Sait. I do not know what many of them
ended up doing in life. A boy, Madhavan Nair, who was a year junior to me
in the school, whom my mother taught, joined the University College with
me and was with me at the National Academy of Administration as an In-
dian Administrative Service (IAS) officer. He rose to become the secretary
to the president of India.
Two institutions in Kayamkulam, one religious and one secular, helped
my learning process as a child. The Ramakrishna Ashram, where I went
on Sundays, gave me grounding on the Bhagavad Gita and on the teach-
ings of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. I could recite almost the whole of
the Gita by the time I finished schooling. An added attraction was the tasty
prasadam we were given at the end of the Gita classes. My mother too was
active in the Women’s Group, which functioned in the Ashram. The other
institution was the Social Service League, run by John Joseph, who later
became a priest. The league offered free tutoring classes, particularly in
mathematics, from which I benefited immensely. I was like a member of
John Joseph’s family and participated in Christmas carols and other Chris-
tian rituals. I saw no contradiction in practicing Hinduism and Christian-
ity at the same time. Indeed, religious harmony was a unique feature of
Kerala, though Vivekananda had characterised the state a lunatic asylum
earlier for its religious and caste feuds.
 MY STORY 9

My parents had to make a crucial choice when I finished schooling with

a first class, one of the three to get more than 60 per cent marks in the
school. Many advised them to put me through a one-year course in teach-
ers’ training, which would find me a job very quickly. The more imagina-
tive ones said that a polytechnic meant for semi-skilled workers would be
more attractive. Spending four years in a university in pursuit of a degree
and then completing a degree in education to become a high school teacher
appeared too ambitious. But my father decided that I would go to a univer-
sity and that too in distant Thiruvananthapuram in a hostel rather than
commute to nearby Pandalam NSS College.
The decision was based on a dream my father had when he himself took
a sabbatical and went to Thiruvananthapuram in the fifties to take a BA
degree to better his prospects as a teacher. That adventure had widened his
horizon to such a degree that he was not content to see his son as a teacher.
He had come across the legendary story of Shankar Pillai, a teacher in the
University College who took the competitive examination of the Union
Public Service Commission (UPSC) and qualified for the IFS. He married
a rich man’s daughter, went on postings to foreign countries and became
famous in our village as the boy who made it good. My father was shattered
when a mad man, who was refused a visa by the consular clerk, shot Shankar
Pillai in his office in Canada. Apparently, the man walked into our High
Commission in Ottawa with a rifle in his hand to shoot the consular clerk,
but when he was told that the clerk was on leave, he decided to seek out the
officer concerned and shot him point blank. Pandit Nehru had announced
Shankar Pillai’s demise in the Indian Parliament. My father had nursed a
dream that I could replace Shankar Pillai one day in the foreign service, a
dream he could not share even with his close friends. Another legendary
figure he had met was a son of a schoolteacher, Venkataramani, who stood
first in the competitive examination and joined the IAS. My mother did not
bother about the details but agreed that my aim should be to join the IFS.
Neither of them knew much about the way there, but no sacrifice was con-
sidered too great to pursue that goal. And so, I went with my father, driven
in a car by the same Major Ramachandran who showed a new path for my
brother, to join the Intermediate College in Thiruvananthapuram. My
father’s dream had to come true, I thought, not knowing how.
10 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

A new city, a new college with a new medium of instruction, new faces,
and a new style of living are not easy for a 15-year old to confront all at
once. The culture shock alone could shatter a young life. On top of it, the
one-year pre-university course was so vital for the future that there was an
immense pressure to do well. Without a period of adjustment, I found it
hard to cope with the ‘big city’. Managing myself in a private lodge (the col-
lege hostel was too far) on a shoestring budget was hard enough. Coping
with every subject being taught in English was harder. Peer pressure to do
the done things in the city like going to movies and wandering on the beach
had its own impact.
The Intermediate College, previously the Arts College, was located in
Thycaud, away from the bustle of the city of Thiruvananthapuram, in the
same campus as the Model School and the Teachers’ Training College.
Only pre-university and pre-professional courses were held there, while
the degree courses were held in the main University College in the heart
of the city. Most students moved from the Model School to the Intermedi-
ate College without any problem of readjustment. But for those who came
from outside, even the attitude of the local boys was a challenge. The city
was itself conservative, considered a preserve of the ancient Nair families
who lived there from the days of the maharajahs, and there was a certain
reluctance to accommodate outsiders. Moreover, the students were mostly
children of government officials who had their own sense of self-impor-
tance. My outsider status continued for three years till I came to notice
with my high grades in the second-year examination of my BA course.
On the very first day at the college, I walked into my English class,
recalling how much I enjoyed my English classes in my school. I was in
for a surprise. Joshua, a young lecturer clad in spotless white Kerala attire,
began to teach us To the Cuckoo by William Wordsworth. I was impressed
by his style, how he paced up and down, explaining the intricacies of
Wordsworth’s poetry, but I did not understand a word. Except my ‘second
language’, Malayalam, everything was taught in English, and I did not have
anyone to share my predicament. Perseverance was the only option. By the
time I got used to the class, the teachers and the lessons, the final exami-
nation was announced, and it was hard to emerge unscathed.
 MY STORY 11

Most of the best students went for medical or engineering courses as

they guaranteed a profession for young graduates. My father had already
decided that I should join the BA course in English language and litera-
ture at the University College, though the distant dream of the foreign
service had not brightened at that time. I myself was tempted to switch to
a science course and made an expensive and time-consuming telephone
call to my father (I had to wait at a post office till he reached the Kayamku-
lam post office to take the call) to ask whether I should switch. That call
made all the difference as he told me without any hesitation that I should
stick to my destined path to the foreign service. His confidence shook me,
but it also inspired me to pursue the goal relentlessly.
In the ‘Rajaram Lodge’ where I lived for a year, my neighbours were
mostly schoolteachers, whom my father got to know during his visits. They
treated me kindly and also reported on my good behaviour to my father. My
father used to inspect my room thoroughly to look for any telltale evidence
of misconduct. Once he discovered a bidi butt left behind by a neighbour.
He knew I did not smoke it, but he objected to the fact that I entertained
such guests in my room. I welcomed my father’s occasional visits even
though he used to audit my accounts and find fault with my alleged
extravagance. Of course, there was no scope for much extravagance as my
monthly allowance was a princely sum of one hundred rupees minus a tip
that the postman extracted from me for delivering the money order. If my
father approved of the accounts, he would leave half a rupee as a bonus.
Considering that my monthly expenditure was half the amount my parents
earned together in a month, I had no reason to be aggrieved. The money
could be spared only because most of the food came from the field and the
yard, and there was very little cash expenditure for living in a village.
I had a narrow escape from a criminal case when I was in the lodge.
One day, I saw that someone had thrown the cardboard box of a watch
into my room. I quickly recognised it as one belonging to Varghese, a
teacher who lived in the next room. I kept the box aside to take it to him
on his return. When I came back from college that evening, there was great
commotion near my room and there were a few policemen. I quickly pro-
duced the box and told them that someone had thrown it into my room. I
did not think that there would be a needle of suspicion on me, but later I
realised that the policemen had their eye on me and they had asked to
12 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

take me in for questioning. It was only because Varghese was adamant that
a teacher’s son would never do such a thing that I was spared the ordeal.
I shudder to think what would have happened to me if I were taken to the
police station even for questioning. There are many stories of innocent
people who turned into criminals because of the methods of interrogation.
They confess to crimes they never committed to escape torture and end
up in jails. There they come into contact with other criminals and, when
they feel ostracised, they become criminals themselves. My father felt
indebted to Varghese, thanked him profusely and kept telling me that I
should buy him a watch out of my first salary. If I could trace him, I would
have done exactly that. For a poor schoolteacher, it was a prized posses-
sion and it must have been hard for him to restrain the police from ques-
tioning a suspect.
My father too lost a watch, but in comic circumstances. He used to help
a friend to promote his photographic establishment at special fairs. He was
at such a fair in Changanacherry organised by the Nair Service Society. He
was persuading visitors to get themselves photographed at concessional
prices. A man emerged from the crowd, got himself registered, paid the
money, and as he was about to enter the studio, asked my father whether
he could wear his watch in the picture. My father gladly gave him the watch
and continued to deal with others. When he did not see his watch after a
while, he sent someone inside to look for the client. He had probably left
Changanacherry by then as even the police could not trace him inside the
fair grounds.
The move to the University College for my BA course was less trau-
matic than the move to the city. The acquaintance of the city and some
familiarity with English as a medium of instruction put me at ease. The col-
lege hostel was more student-friendly, and I had fewer chores to do for my
own upkeep. The fact that science and mathematics were out of the way
for good was another welcome relief. Moreover, the class was small and we
received individual attention. It was an interesting group of people from
diverse backgrounds. I was still an outsider to the group from Thiruvanan-
thapuram, but there were other outsiders and it did not take long to work
out an equation.
One minor incident in the hostel contributed to a decision that my
mother should shift to Thiruvananthapuram with the children, while my
 MY STORY 13

father continued back home on his own. My father received a copy of a

note issued to me by the warden of the hostel that I was fined three rupees
for indiscipline. By the next mail, he also received a letter from a senior
student, whom he knew, saying that he should ignore the note as I was
completely innocent. What worried him was not the first note, but the sec-
ond one as he knew that student to be a troublemaker himself. My father
landed up the next day and I told him what actually happened. There were
two groups of students in the hostel, always at loggerheads with each other,
and the warden, Professor A. S. Narayana Pillai, accepted the invitation of
one group to join in a photograph. We, who belonged to the opposite camp,
made known our protest by shouting loudly. The warden fined all those
who were in that group. It was not serious enough to warrant any action,
but my father saw danger signals in the whole episode and decided that I
needed to have a home to protect myself.
I did not realise then what it meant to uproot the family from Kayamkulam
and move it to the state capital. My parents had never lived in any other
place and it must have been traumatic for them to make the shift and that
too with my father staying back alone in our ancestral home. But their
determination to do what is good for the children made them sail into
unchartered waters. It also made good economic sense as my younger broth-
ers too needed to get a good education. Both of them, Madhu and
Seetharam, did well in school. Madhu joined the Armed Forces Medical Col-
lege with a scholarship and chose a career in the Army. He married Jayashree,
a distant relative of my father, and moved around the country as a specialist
in anaesthesia. He was also a member of the UN peacekeeping mission in
Kampuchea. His son Vineeth, a computer wizard, married his colleague Mon-
isha and moved to Seattle to serve Microsoft, and his younger son, Aswin, has
chosen a legal career.
Seetharam, being younger to me by 13 years, is more like a son than a
brother. I remember taking him to a kindergarten on a bicycle before he
moved to my brother’s home in Avadi to continue his schooling. We
dressed him up as Lord Krishna in a costume show, and he won a prize even
though it was a Christian school. He joined the foreign service; married
Deepa, the elder daughter of Nirmalan Thampi; and served in different
capitals with distinction. His children, Navneeth and Devi, are blossoming
into adulthood.
14 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

My improved performance in the second year may have been a coinci-

dence, but it was attributed to the direct supervision of my mother and the
consequent curtailment of my freedom. My stellar results in the English
examination made me a hero in the college overnight and, together with
it, my social stigma as an outsider disappeared. I did even better in the final
year. I won the M. P. Paul Prize for the best student of English language
and literature in the university. For an essay I wrote on ‘Long-term and
short-term measures to meet the Chinese aggression’, I got the Harvey
Memorial Prize. The country was reeling under the Chinese aggression of
1962 and my imagination went wild as I sat down to think of remedial
measures. Being ignorant of international law and diplomatic practice, I
had no difficulty in enumerating any number of measures. I recall suggesting
manufacture of nuclear weapons and recognition of the Dalai Lama as the
head of an independent Tibet as some of the measures we should take. If
India had heeded my advice and manufactured a nuclear weapon at that
time, we would have become a nuclear weapon state so recognised under
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for having tested before the treaty
came into being. But my essay did not go beyond the professor who evalu-
ated it for the prize.
Pursuing a course for master’s in English was the logical thing to do, with
an eye on the competitive examination for the foreign service. The method
of teaching for the master’s degree was not very different from that of the
bachelor’s degree. Teachers came and explained the meaning of passages or
gave notes on literary criticism copied from standard works. Very little was
expected of students except to attend classes and reproduce notes during
examinations. But the University College had a good library and those who
were interested could discover a different world. I enjoyed my master’s
course as I took the opportunity to delve deep into the mysteries of English
literature. I had to squeeze in many years of reading into two years, but read-
ing had its immediate rewards. After the first year’s examination, I was
acknowledged as the best student of English literature in the university. But
my ambition had a rude shock when I found myself with hepatitis just three
days before the final examination. I was in the general ward of the Medical
College Hospital with a bout of jaundice, with glucose running through my
veins when my classmates took the examination. That trauma made me
learn much in life and prepared me for the frustrations of adulthood. I took
 MY STORY 15

the examination the next year and stood first in the university, but the
wound of the missed examination remained sore for a long time.
The five years in the University College in Thiruvananthapuram
were the formative years of my life. The red-brick building in the centre
of the city looked like an oasis of learning in a sea of traffic and com-
merce. Every college has corners that bear the stamp of history and the
University College was no exception. The long, drab building at the far end
of the compound came to be known as the ‘cowshed’. Our favourite haunts
were the cycle shed and the India Coffee House just across the street.
Learning English literature was one thing, but learning about life was quite
another. Many faces and many events come to life as I contemplate those
years. They may have played a part in moulding my personality as I emerged
from the university.
Among my teachers, G. Kumara Pillai, Ayyappa Paniker, Sudhakaran
Nair, Hridayakumari, Santhakumari, Chellamma Philip, K. K. Neelakantan,
K. Srinivasan, Sankara Iyer, John and Vaidyanathan are the ones I can
recall vividly. Ayyappa Paniker is the only one among them who kept in
touch with me for years since I left college. Their personal traits, to the
extent I observed them, remained afresh. Kumara Pillai, a Gandhian with
a permanent sparkle in his eyes, was a poet and a writer. He inspired awe
and respect. It took time for me to discover the intellectual brilliance and
sense of humour of Ayyappa Paniker. His poems in Malayalam ushered in
modernism in the language. His Kurukshetram was hailed as a masterpiece.
Both his admirers and detractors compared the poem to T. S. Eliot’s The
Waste Land, the former to show how he used the new genre of poetry to cre-
ate his own unique style, the latter to argue that it was nothing but plagiarism.
Sudhakaran Nair stood out as the one teacher who moved freely among the
students like one of them. Hridayakumari, a khadi-clad spinster, was brilliant
and distant. Shantakumari was only a few years senior to us and, therefore,
we took liberties with her and she tolerated it in good humour. Chellamma
Philip was a gentle housewife who meant well. K. K. Neelakantan was an
ornithologist who wrote extensively on birds. K. Srinivasan was easy-going
and friendly. Iyer was a ready victim of all the jokes and Vidyanathan looked
more like a soldier than a teacher. John, who had taught my father in the
Sanskrit College, found it amusing that he was already teaching the second
generation of his students.
16 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

As for classmates and other students I met, the number is too large to
recollect. One among them, who remained in constant touch, is John
(Sunny) Wycliffe, a popular Indian American leader in Washington. Those
who joined the IAS in 1967, C. N. S. Nair, P. M. Nair, G. Krishnan, and
Harikrishna Babu, interacted with me off and on. Vimala Menon, a good
friend, joined the postal service and rose to its highest level. I was close to
William Daniel, Joseph Eapen, Surapalan Nair, Ramakrishnan Nair, and
Hemachandran. A mercurial person, Vijayasree, was in and out of my circle.
G. Ramachandran Nair, who was known for his physical prowess and ath-
letic skills, gave me the muscle power necessary to survive in student politics.
Many years later, as a Brigadier in the Indian Army, he and his wife Jayashree
lent support to my mother during my father’s illness and death in Pune.
My closest friend was George Thomas who was my neighbour, and we
spent considerable time together, walking to the college and back. His
mother gave me a handsome loan for the trip when I was chosen to par-
ticipate in a leadership-training course in Darjeeling. He remained my only
friend from college days, whom I met every time I came to Kerala. His
greatest gift is his ability to laugh at his own habits in food and clothing,
about which I tease him constantly, much to the delight and approval of
his wife, Betty. Rajendran, son of the famous novelist Lalithambika
Antharjanam, a close friend who joined the Indian Police Service (IPS),
remained in touch for many years. I became close to another alumnus of
the college, Babu Suseelan, when we were together in the United States.
Among my friends who became celebrities in the film world were Bichu
Thirumala, Padmarajan and Mohanachandran. Mohanachandran and
Sankaran Iyer joined the foreign service as my seniors and retired as am-
bassadors. Another friend, C. Divakaran, became a minister in a Marxist
government in Kerala.
I developed my debating skills in the college and became quite profi-
cient in English and Malayalam oratory. It was simply by trial and error that
I began winning prizes in the college itself and in inter-collegiate debates.
The others in the debating team C. K. Koshy, C. N. S. Nair and P. M. Nair
joined the IAS. We beat each other by turns and beat other colleges. The
high point of my debating career was the winning of the Udarasiromani
Prize by securing the first position in a highly contested inter-collegiate
debate on the medium of instruction. I argued that the mother tongue
 MY STORY 17

should be the medium of instruction to bring out the best in students. An

amusing incident took place when we debated a motion moved by me that
‘A Woman’s Place is in the Home’. My opponents were mainly girls, but
one girl had agreed to speak in support of the motion. But when she heard
my presentation, which argued not only that women were needed at home
but also that women were not good enough for things outside the home, she
defected to the opposition and tore up my arguments. The girl, Lalitham-
bika, later joined the IAS and made a name for herself as an able adminis-
trator and a writer.
Student politics attracted me and I was active in the Students Congress,
an offshoot of the Indian National Congress. The fact that my father was a
Congress sympathiser may have played a role in my choice. I was elected to
different positions in the college, but when the time came for me to reach the
pinnacle of my political career, my father decided that I should concentrate
on my studies and I had to concede the position of the collegeunion speaker
to my nominee Bhaskara Prasad. Professor N. S. Warrier, the principal, had
a hand in that decision because he told my father that my bright future would
be adversely affected by my political activities. Professor Warrier sincerely
believed that it was his timely intervention that landed me in the top serv-
ice of the country.

My first employment ever was by invitation. Rev. Fr. C. A. Abraham, who

had seen me at university debating contests, had known that I had not
taken the final MA examination. But he felt that I could teach in the junior
classes at the Mar Ivanios College in the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram,
where he was the vice-principal. I gladly accepted and I was appointed a
tutor for a princely sum of Rs 125 a month. The work and the money were
both welcome as I could start contributing to the meagre family budget. I
spent only a few months as a teacher, as my father felt that I was getting dis-
tracted from my studies. Later, after I passed my MA examination, I was ap-
pointed at the same college with double the salary.
The Mar Ivanios College was known more for its discipline rather than
for its academic excellence. The college had a lovely campus on a hill with
18 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

plenty of trees around. The drive from the city to the campus took nearly
half an hour in the college bus. The Principal, Rev. Fr. Geevarghese Pan-
icker, was a terror not only to the students but also to the teachers. He
was blunt and rough with all of us, but a kind and God-fearing man out-
side the college. Years later, I recounted in his presence in New York to
an audience of his former wards how we dreaded every encounter with
the principal. He summoned me once to chastise me for giving private tu-
ition at home.
A little more than a year that I spent at the college was a turning point
in my life in many ways. The transition from a student to a teacher was
smooth, and I enjoyed giving lectures to large groups of students. Fresh
from being a student myself, I related to them better than seasoned teach-
ers, who tended to remain in their own grooves. Initially, I was given jun-
ior classes, but later I was also given master’s classes, which I enjoyed even
more as I could see that the students absorbed things better.
Among the classes I enjoyed teaching was the special B.Sc. course,
where talented students were admitted for a bachelor’s degree in one of
the sciences. The idea was that they would prepare themselves to become
scientists and researchers, and not get distracted to become administrators
or medical doctors. Their English course was designed to give them the
barest essentials of the language rather than to teach them Shakespeare or
other masters. I was asked to teach them a collection of essays to give them
grounding in good prose. My brother, Madhusudanan, happened to be in
the same class, doing a course in zoology. The class had quite a few girl stu-
dents, some of them quite attractive. I noticed one of them, Chandralekha,
and began taking an interest in her. She was totally unaware of my fascina-
tion for her, but some of my casual remarks about her made some of my
colleagues suspicious. She was quite a keen student and did fairly well in
class, but she was surprised that I singled her out for a special mention when
she did well in the examination or when she danced at a function in the
college. My brother told me once that the students were noticing that I
was giving her too much attention.
I was preoccupied with my foreign service examination even as I was
teaching in the college, and I had to take days off to take the examination.
I had thought that I would not make it in the first attempt and was quite
prepared to work intensely for the next examination. Having finished my
 MY STORY 19

master’s examination only in March 1966, it appeared difficult to do justice

to the competitive examination in October 1966. But I did the written
papers fairly well except for Indian history in which I had little grounding.
The call for the interview in Delhi did not come as a surprise, but I saw the
interview as a rehearsal for the real one next year.
Preparing for the civil services interview, or the personality test as it was
called, and the interview itself was an experience. I got my first western suit
made in Thiruvananthapuram and travelled to New Delhi by train for the
interview. I stayed with P. M. Raju, a friend in the Central Secretariat, who
taught me how to wear a tie. I turned up at Dholpur House in the heat of
May in a woollen suit in the mistaken notion that a suit was a must. I was
quite surprised that Prabhakar Menon, who had already qualified for the
IAS in the previous year, but chose to try for the IFS again, was in a bush
shirt without even a tie. Having heard many legends about the UPSC per-
sonality test, I was expecting extraordinary questions. I was deeply disap-
pointed as the questions were quite ordinary and even mundane like why I
wanted to join the foreign service. The questions on English literature were
the easiest of all. I do not remember having to admit not knowing the an-
swer to any question. I did not know how I fared in their eyes, but I came
out with a feeling that I would be selected for one of the services, may be the
police, as many of the questions related to my preference to the foreign serv-
ice as against the police service. The results were known by the time I
returned home, and it was a pleasant surprise that I was ranked high and
had qualified for the foreign service. My option was clear and I felt elated
by the realisation of my father’s dream.
I discovered the charms of being a bachelor at the threshold of a foreign
service career. Relatives popped out of the woodwork and friends were redis-
covered. Proposals for marriage poured in from all of them and I somehow
came to believe that the next step was marriage, even though I had not
thought seriously about it. Chandralekha’s father, M. V. Ramankutty Nair,
was the chief executive of Marikar Motors, a prominent agency for Hindus-
tan Motors in the city, and I happened to know one of the executives in his
firm, Kunjumohammed. In a casual conversation about the many propos-
als I was receiving, I mentioned to him that I liked his boss’s daughter.
Within minutes, he was on phone with Nair and fixed for me to go and see
her at her home. He even volunteered to go with me to introduce me to the
20 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

family. Her mother had heard from Rani Ramachandran, an old classmate
of mine whom I saw in Delhi at the time of my interview, that I was fond
of Chandralekha. Vanaja Nair, the one in the family who took all the im-
portant decisions, was excited about the prospect, but she was fully pre-
occupied with the wedding of her elder daughter. My opportunity to
mention Lekha to my father came when he came to attend her sister’s
wedding. He came back from the wedding, very impressed with Lekha
and the pomp and show of the wedding between Geetha and Captain G.
Gopalakrishnan Nair, who hailed from an aristocratic family in Kayamku-
lam. The legendary wedding of the younger brother of the Maharaja to
Gopalkrishnan’s aunt was a great event in the town several years before.
In my father’s eyes, the fact that Lekha’s sister was married to Gopalakr-
ishnan was reason enough to fix mine with Lekha. Events moved at light-
ning speed and I was engaged to Lekha within months when I was hardly
22. In later years, Geetha and Gopalakrishnan became our local guardians
in Thiruvananthapuram. Their elder daughter, Gopika, married Prince
Marthanda Varma of the Travancore royal family and settled down in
Chennai as a highly acclaimed Mohiniyattam dancer. Her sister Radhika
chose her own bridegroom Sreehari, an Ayurveda practitioner, and settled
in Kerala. Gopalakrishnan and Geetha passed away in a period of three
days in October 2006, leaving a void in our lives.
The period between my results and my joining the Academy of Admin-
istration in Mussoorie was spent profitably by working on a production of
Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan with Savitrikutty, a professor of English, who
had settled down in Canada. I had the role of Dunois, a French commander,
who was enchanted by Joan of Arc. I appeared only in two scenes in the
play, but I was involved in its production and publicity. Finding a suitable
cast for such an ambitious production in Thiruvananthapuram was a chal-
lenge, but the play turned out to be a rare treat.

My first journey ever in an aircraft was from Thiruvananthapuram to Delhi

in the company of Dr K. Rajandran Nair, the first veterinary surgeon to
qualify for the IAS. Like others in the Lal Bahadur Shastri National
 MY STORY 21

Academy of Administration in Mussorie, I was on top of the world when I

arrived there. All of us had a sense of achievement and expectation over
having made it to the coveted services. Bright young men had very few
avenues in 1967 when the country did not have a private sector to provide
attractive employment. The civil service examination was a gamble that
many of them took and the successful ones were the chosen ones to run the
country for a quarter of a century or more. They had a sense of destiny.
Wealth was not a part of the dream at that time, but power and influence
were. Corruption had not crept into the top services yet. They felt that
they had taken the mother of all examinations and had come out with
flying colours. But Mussoorie had its surprises.
The director of the academy M. G. Pimputkar, a strict disciplinarian
who took pride in having been transferred 20 times in as many years, had
a fancy for disciplining the new recruits. Pimputkar imposed a reign of ter-
ror by setting up a tight schedule, including physical training in the morn-
ing and formal dinners at night. He prescribed severe penalties for being
absent or arriving late at any of these events. Doors to the lecture rooms
were locked after the appointed time, and those who could not enter had
to apply for leave. He listened to the lectures given by others and observed
the conduct of the probationers, as we were called. There were other haz-
ards also. Nawal Singh, the riding instructor, began with the premise that
horses were more valuable than probationers. ‘Why did you get off the
horse without my order?’ he would bark if someone fell off the horse. ‘If
you cannot control a simple horse, how are you going to control your wife
or your district?’ he would ask. Equestrian lessons were compulsory for us,
but the foreign service officers did not have to take a riding test. Our agony,
therefore, was less poignant than that of the other officers. The only time
I rode a horse after I left Nawal Singh’s classes was when I was asked to
travel along the India Bhutan border to demarcate the boundary.
We also discovered our worth in the marriage market. Agents and par-
ents of eligible women swarmed to Mussoorie with fat wallets. The highest
known bid was Rs 12 lakh for a probationer from Bihar. He was strutting
about like a peacock till he was allotted not to his parent cadre, but to the
distant Tamil Nadu cadre. The offer was drastically cut to Rs 6 lakh as his
influence in Tamil Nadu was less valuable to his prospective father-in-law.
The picture I had at my desk of Lekha drove the agents away from my
22 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

room. Another discovery we made was about our creditworthiness. The

seasoned shopkeepers in Mussoorie were ready to give us credit worth many
times our salary. The owner of ‘Hari’s Canteen’ gave this facility so skillfully
that his three daughters ended up marrying IAS officers in exchange of
writing off their credit.
We were given basic lessons in history, economics, law and constitution
even though many had high qualifications in these subjects. The standard
of the teachers was low, but some of them were even worse than the oth-
ers. Our history teacher claimed that all the information he gave us was
original. ‘Was he creating history?’ someone asked. Our constitution
expert was full of humour, most of it unconscious. He held forth on the en-
emies of man poverty, hunger and squalor. Someone asked him what
squalor meant and he confessed that he did not know. Our economics
teacher claimed that he could play the guitar. We thought he was tuning
the guitar when he bowed and left, ending the concert. Such were the real
stories about the faculty. With Pimputkar at the head and a faculty of sorts,
there was much fun, but the IAS probationers had to take the academy se-
riously as their seniority in the civil list depended on their performance there.
For the IFS officers, it was a paid holiday plagued only by Pimputkar’s pranks.
The next destination was the School for International Studies at Sapru
House in New Delhi. I did not realise when I was given a room in the
external affairs hostel on Kasturba Gandhi Marg that regardless of promo-
tions, the hostel would be our refuge for years. Every officer who returns to
India on transfer or on duty is allotted accommodation in the hostel, not
on the basis of rank but on the basis of the size of the family. A couple of
rooms are earmarked for visiting ambassadors, but others get more or less
identical rooms. The hostel was in its golden era when we first stayed there,
as the manager was Mohini Singh who was believed to be close to a min-
ister. The hostel was in good shape because of her clout, though she was
accused of all kinds of crimes when the Congress went out of power. The
colour scheme, the fixtures and the furniture were good, compared to its
present state of thoughtless maintenance and shabby appearance. As the
concerned official in the ministry during the early days of the Janata gov-
ernment, I was asked to investigate Mohini Singh’s misdeeds. It was only
because of the sense of fairness of Akbar Khaleeli, the concerned joint sec-
retary, that she did not come to much harm. He took the view that it was
 MY STORY 23

not her fault that she was given additional facilities by the government of
the time. She was not found guilty except for having secured undue bene-
fits through her high-level contacts.
The course at Sapru House was nothing but a series of lectures by the
faculty and visiting professors from other institutions and the diplomatic
corps. Many senior ambassadors like Chester Bowles of the United States
came to speak, but we were more impressed by the young African diplomats
who appeared idealistic and enthusiastic about the emerging world order.
Each of us had to prepare a longish paper under the guidance of one of the
professors and I chose the commonwealth as my subject and worked under
Professor M. S. Rajan. As an exposure to the academic world in Delhi, the
stint at Sapru House was useful, but there was no effort to train us system-
atically for the days ahead.
The choice of a foreign language by the foreign service officers is cru-
cial not only in determining their first posting, but also in shaping their ca-
reers. I decided to choose Japanese as I was keen on learning a tough
language when I was still young. I thought that I could learn French or
Spanish on my own subsequently. A posting to Tokyo was also an attrac-
tion. As it happened, the Japanese I learnt was not put to good use as I was
never posted to Tokyo after my initial posting. It would have been more
useful to learn French or Spanish, which could be used in several countries
and at the United Nations. I was quite delighted when I was allotted Japan-
ese and posted to Tokyo.
I had looked at the possibility of going to Kerala for district training as
an opportunity to get married and get ready for a posting to Tokyo. But the
ministry decided to send me to Tamil Nadu, even though there was no bar
in sending probationers to their home states. I was advised that a change
was possible only if the additional secretary (administration) agreed. I
sought a meeting with Vincent Coelho, a former member of the Indian
Audit and Accounts Service, who was deputed to the foreign service and
was the additional secretary concerned. I sent in my visiting card, but the
first thing he did as he called me in was to return the card, saying that I
should not waste it on him. He listened to me patiently and said that he was
quite willing to make a change for the sake of my wedding, but wanted me
to know that I was using up a trump card that could have been used at a
later stage in life, if I ever wanted to get posted back to Delhi. I was using
24 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

up a lifetime opportunity, he said. I said to myself that as there would be

only one marriage, the time to use the trump card would not come up again.
The stint in Kerala for district training turned out to be my honeymoon
days as I got married soon after arriving there. C. P. Nair, who was in charge
of my programme, helpfully allowed me to stay in the capital, Thiru-
vanathapuram, till the wedding was over. We got married at the famed
Kanakakkunnu Palace on a hill in the middle of the city. The wedding it-
self was unique as my parents-in-law decided to try out a new formula for
Nair weddings prepared by a retired judge, Justice Madhavan Nair. Unlike
at normal Nair weddings, we had a priest who was supposed to recite pas-
sages from the Vedas. He made a mess of the readings as he missed out pages
and later returned to them. There was much fun and laughter, in which
the bride and bridegroom participated, when the two sets of parents were
brought on to the dais. An otherwise solemn ceremony turned out to be a
hilarious affair. The formula did not become very popular after our exper-
iment. Nairs, who are proud of their simple wedding ceremonies, did not
want to complicate matters. We drove straight to my ancestral home to
spend the first nuptial night.
When we returned, it was time to go on an official visit to government
establishments along the Kerala coast, which was nothing but a honey-
moon trip. It also gave us an opportunity to see quite a bit of our state. It
was a voyage of discovery, not only of the abundant natural beauty of the
state but also its wealth of scientific and educational institutions, which
gave the people of Kerala an edge over job seekers from other parts of India.
Our trip was long before the Gulf boom, the period of huge remittances of
Kerala migrant workers, which transformed the countryside. Glittering bun-
galows sprouted everywhere as property prizes skyrocketed. A particular
village, from where the largest number of workers had gone to the Gulf,
boasted of land prices there being higher than in New York.
My district training itself was in Kozhikode, which had a legendary Dis-
trict Collector, M. Kaleeswaran, who had made a name for himself as an ef-
ficient, upright and brilliant officer. I spent only a few weeks with him as he
moved out on transfer and K. Joseph, a perfect gentleman, took his place.
He had very little time to devote to my training, but he did everything pos-
sible to make our stay pleasant. He found a house for us at the medical col-
lege campus some distance away from the city, and we made friends with
 MY STORY 25

several doctors. Our first home was set up there with the help of my
mother-in-law. The house was basic and sparsely furnished, but we made a
paradise of it and the training period ended all too soon.
As we moved into the external affairs hostel and I joined South Block
for training, there was a sense of elation, but I also discovered that I was at
the lowest rung of a sprawling bureaucratic hierarchy. But the sense of phys-
ically belonging to the government was exhilarating. The present obses-
sion with security had not yet gripped the government. We walked in and
out of the area occupied by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her office,
and even a ride with the prime minister up or down the elevator was not
unthinkable. The East Asia Division, to which I was assigned, as I had
opted for Japanese as my language, was just above the prime minister’s room
and we were not overawed by our location. Several under secretaries occu-
pied the room in which I spent several months, generally reading files.
Y. R. Dhawan, the under secretary for Japan, was a civilised man who took
some interest in my training, and I occasionally accompanied him to the
rooms of senior officers like C. V. Ranganathan. All of them were polite to
me, but none of them had the time or the inclination to take the training
of a younger colleague seriously.
The East Asia Division was preoccupied with the preparations for the
visit of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to Japan, and there was talk of
strengthening the embassy in Tokyo for the visit. At one of the preparatory
meetings, where I happened to be present, Foreign Secretary T. N. Kaul was
told that I was preparing to join the mission later in the year. He decided
then and there that I should reach Tokyo well before the visit. My plans to
go on leave and possibly travel by sea to Tokyo were scuttled. I felt proud
that I had become indispensable at such an early stage of my career and set
off to Tokyo in the expectation that I would play a major role in the visit.

The first thing that Ambassador S. K. Banerji told me on arrival in Tokyo

was that I should take it easy and enjoy my extended honeymoon till the
prime minister’s visit was over. He said that he would have no time to de-
vote to me till then, and any effort to integrate me in the team at that stage
26 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

would be counterproductive. It may well have happened that I was sent to

Tokyo to complete the quota of officers, the ambassador had asked for, and
this had irritated him. I was disappointed that I had no role in the visit, but
was quite happy to explore the charms of Tokyo.
Our first disillusionment had come on the day of our arrival in Tokyo it-
self. The Air India 707 brought us to Haneda Airport in the middle of the
night, and we were impressed that there was a Sikh gentleman to receive
us and he had brought a huge limousine to take us. Sasikumar and Aswin,
two students who were known to us through family connections, had also
come to receive us. When we offered them a ride back to the city in the lim-
ousine, the embassy official told us that his primary duty was to pick up the
diplomatic bags and that there would be no space for any additional pas-
sengers. Receiving the new third secretary and his wife was only a second-
ary duty he was performing. Moreover, he was going to take us to the cargo
area, where we had to wait to take delivery of the bags. It took us two hours
more to leave the airport. We learnt later that our ‘reception committee’
had to spend the night at the airport as the public transport had stopped
plying by the time they came out of the airport. In later years, in my other
missions, I ensured that junior officers were properly received and not
clubbed with diplomatic bags.
We found a home in the outskirts of Tokyo at Suginami Ku near a rail-
way station called Iogi on the Seibu Shinjuku line. It was a small new cot-
tage built in the compound of a large Japanese home with a lovely garden.
Living there was an education in Japanese life at first hand. We were intro-
duced to the landlady, an elderly, fragile woman who moved around with
agility. She ran the entire household though her husband and son lived
there. They would leave in the morning for work and come late in the
evening, after having been to a couple of bars to entertain clients. After
coming home, they would not lift a little finger to help in the house. They
would sit in front of the television and gulp down some more sake served
ceremoniously by the old lady. Japanese women are confined to the home
once they are married and live a life of dedicated work for the family. We
were astonished how hard the lady worked to make the men in her life happy.
In the midst of her preoccupations, she also found time to make sure that we
were comfortable. Whenever she visited us, she brought a little present,
nicely packed in the traditional Japanese style. We practiced our smattering
 MY STORY 27

of Japanese with her, and she complimented us constantly on the ‘excellent

Japanese’ we spoke in such a short time.
We went for Japanese lessons to an old institution in Tokyo called the
Naganuma Gakko in the Shibuya district. Most of the students there were
Americans, who could not pronounce the nasal twang in Japanese for love
or for money. The effortless way in which we pronounced them and grasped
the syntax, which is similar to Indian languages, astonished the teachers.
The Japanese language reflects Japanese life in many ways. Men and women
speak differently; the men use short and curt expressions and the women
speak long and polite phrases. The superiority of men is apparent in their
conversational style. The word for ‘my wife’ is characteristically humble
and the word for ‘your wife’ is grand. There are set expressions to be used
on various occasions such as when one leaves home or when one returns.
While inviting her guests to a sumptuous meal, the hostess would say that
she has not cooked anything and that the fare being offered is poor. Ritual
is part of Japanese life and the language is equally ritualistic. The Japanese
language, if learnt from women, is a matter of embarrassment to foreigners
and, therefore, they get their language masculinised by taking a couple of
courses from male teachers.
Spoken Japanese turned out to be easier than I had imagined, and the
writing of Kanji or Chinese characters was more difficult. But mercifully,
one could spell the words in the two alphabets available, one of them specif-
ically for foreign words. I wondered why the Japanese had to borrow Chi-
nese characters and attribute pronunciation to them arbitrarily, when they
already had two alphabets. But when I got the hang of the characters I re-
alised that it was more logical for every language to adopt Chinese charac-
ters, as they convey the meaning of words even before they are pronounced.
Instead of writing ‘mouth’ or ‘entrance’, it should be possible to draw a small
square and read it as mouth or entrance depending on the context. Mas-
tering the writing of the characters is another matter. I learnt the 1,500
essential characters or ‘Toyo Kanji’ as a part of our curriculum for the
Advanced Japanese Examination, but this merely brought me to the lit-
eracy level. I passed the examination with distinction fairly easily, but I
was acutely conscious of the inadequacy of my language.
Ambassador Vincent Coelho, who succeeded Ambassador Banerji, was
particularly attentive to my training. He encouraged me to interpret his
28 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

conversations and even asked me to teach basic Japanese to the other

officers and staff. At a Davis Cup match, in which India’s Ramanathan
Krishnan and Jaideep Mukherji played veteran Japanese tennis players, I
was asked to interpret the ambassador’s speech live on television. That was
truly daring of me, but I managed to convey the gist of the speech in my
own way to the Japanese audience. I continued my Japanese learning to
reach the interpreters’ level.
Having a baby in Japan was an adventure, essentially because of the
problems of communication. But Lekha received excellent medical atten-
tion ever since she began expecting our first baby. We regularly visited the
Shimo-ochiai hospital in a suburb of Tokyo. Sreenath was born in October
1970. By then, Lekha’s mother had arrived to take care of the mother and
the child. Japan, it appeared, was a paradise for babies. Products ranging
from toiletries to toys were in plenty at reasonable prices, and people every-
where were solicitous about the needs of the baby. The baby whom we
called ‘Kiku’, or the chrysanthemum, the national crest of Japan, was barely
nine months old when we left Tokyo for the capital of Bhutan. Ambassador
Coelho and the Deputy Chief of Mission, Arjun Asrani, tried to retain me
in Tokyo so that I could complete my language education, but the ministry
was insistent that I should proceed to Thimphu. As it was in the early days
in the service, I believed the ministry’s claim that ‘it was after a lot of
searching and screening’ that the choice fell on me. The ministry even said
that I would be sent back to Tokyo at a later stage to perfect my Japanese
and to make use of it, a promise that was never kept.
Before leaving, I worked briefly in the commercial wing under the guid-
ance of Bhupat Oza, who worked with me later in Moscow also. I person-
ally handled India’s participation in the ‘Good Living Show’ in Tokyo. The
bigger show in Osaka, ‘Expo 70’, attracted a large number of visitors from
India. It marked the coming of age of Japan as a modern, technologically
advanced nation and the beginning of its international role. India main-
tained its traditional image in the Indian pavilion; the main attractions were
a white tiger and a sari-clad woman serving Darjeeling tea. Among the vis-
itors who stayed with us at the time of the Expo were Princess Gouri Lak-
shmi Bayi of Travancore and her husband, Raja Raja Varma, who became
good friends for life.
 MY STORY 29

Towards the end of our stay, we moved to a home near the Tokyo Uni-
versity, next to the home of the famed ‘Nairsan’, A. M. Nair, who was an
associate of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Having been disillusioned with
the new leaders of India, who did not offer him any position after the dis-
appearance of Netaji, Nair returned to Tokyo and opened a restaurant and
started a flourishing ‘Indira’ curry powder business. His restaurant, situated
across the street from the Kabuki Theatre on Ginza, was his public relations
window, where he narrated his extraordinary experiences to Indian visi-
tors. He took us under his wings and looked after us, even though he had
his reservations about the government of India and the Indian Embassy.
His Japanese wife, renamed Janaki Amma, and two sons lived like Malay-
alees in Tokyo. He also insisted that his sons should marry Malayalees, but
they did not accede to his wishes in this matter. He did not fulfil his dream
to spend the evening of his life in Kerala.
I was asked to assist the G. D. Khosla Commission, which investigated
the circumstances of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s disappearance, and I
travelled with the commission to places in Japan, which were associated
with Netaji. Several Japanese veterans of the Second World War testified
before the commission that Netaji indeed died in an air crash in Taipei,
even though a Bengali lawyer who accompanied Justice Khosla tried to dis-
credit the theory of his death. The commission came to the inevitable con-
clusion that Netaji died in the air crash, but the public opinion in India
still did not accept the conclusion and the ashes preserved in the Ronkoji
Shrine in Tokyo could not be brought back to India.

The travel from Tokyo to Thimphu was a journey backwards in time, by at

least half a century. The first motorcar entered Bhutan only in 1968 and we
were there in 1971 with our Volkswagen 411. We flew to Bagdogra near
Siliguri, and drove by road to Phuntsholing on the India Bhutan border.
From the border, it was a five-hour drive through picturesque but perilous
roads built not long ago by ‘Dantak’, a unit of the Indian Border Roads Or-
ganisation. The standard vehicle of the privileged in Bhutan, both military
30 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

and civilian, was the sturdy Jonga, a combination of jeep and tonga, made
in Japan. With a nine-month-old baby in the lap and without seat belts, we
wound our way up the mountains and down the valleys. Border Roads per-
sonnel were there all along the route, particularly at the midway point
Chukha, where a major hydroelectric project was under construction. India
was building the project for Bhutan with an agreement to purchase the
power generated there. The proverbial teashop of a Nair from Kerala served
us hot tea and snacks at 6,000 feet.
The Thimphu valley, the capital, which came to view without warning
as we drove around a bald mountain, looked like a remote village in the
northeast of India. The capital consisted of two rows of houses and shops
on two sides of the Thimphu river. The riverbed served as a playground as
well as a helipad. At one end of the valley stood the dzong, the temporal
and spiritual headquarters of Bhutan. On one side of the river were a few
houses that belonged to the office of the representative of India. The Rep-
resentative B. S. Das was designated as special officer till a few months be-
fore we arrived, but he became a representative with the rank of an
ambassador on the eve of Bhutan’s entry into the United Nations. As his
deputy, I had a house on top of the hill with a newly blacktopped road lead-
ing to it. I was told that I was lucky to have this road as it was built
overnight to enable the father-in-law of my predecessor, Amar Nath Ram,
to have breakfast with his family. V. V. Giri, the father-in-law, happened to
be the president of India and he was on a state visit to Bhutan. The house
itself was modest, built with mud and plastered over, with just two bed-
rooms. It had a commanding view of the town including the river. It was
very uncomfortable in winter, as it was impossible to heat up the rooms
with the primitive bukhari, or the woodburning stove, when the cold breeze
blew through the crevices in the wall. In summer, mosquitoes came through
the same crevices to keep us awake. With a little baby waking up in the
middle of the night and no electricity to keep us warm, we lived like soldiers
on the frontline and not like diplomats in a foreign capital.
But compensation came in the form of interesting work, a pleasant boss
and a friendly group of officers, particularly of the Indian Army, who were
serving in the Indian Military Training Team (IMTRAT). General Jagan-
nathan, the charismatic commandant of IMTRAT, dominated the scene with
his varied interests, ranging from golfing to hunting. In fact, people used to
 MY STORY 31

say that there were two kings in Bhutan, ‘Jigme’ (Jigme Dorji Wangchuk, the
King) and ‘Jaggi’ (the General). The arrival of a representative of India un-
dermined Jaggi’s status, but he continued to enjoy the confidence of the king
and overshadowed the diplomatic representative. The general was an avid
collector of driftwood pieces, which he turned into abstract art by highlight-
ing their contours. He held several exhibitions of his driftwood abroad. After
he left Bhutan, he was asked to design and build a National Defence Mu-
seum, and he visited us in Moscow in this connection.
Bhutan celebrated its admission to the United Nations with great gusto,
as it was symbolic of its rise to full nationhood. With a treaty relationship
that entrusted its foreign affairs to India, Bhutan really did not have a case
to seek membership of the United Nations, but India generously agreed
when Bhutan aspired to secure a certain international standing. Some said
that it was like Ukraine and Byelorussia being members of the United Na-
tions together with the USSR. But very soon Bhutan began to insist that
it should have the freedom to decide on its own position, at least on issues
that were not of direct concern to India. A case in point was the vote on
Kampuchea at the United Nations. India abstained on a resolution that
criticised foreign intervention in Kampuchea, while Bhutan voted for it.
On issues of crucial importance to India, Bhutan pledged to vote with
India. Bhutan always voted with India on South Asian issues and on nu-
clear non-proliferation. It was inevitable for Bhutan to operate independ-
ently when problems of small developing countries or landlocked countries
came up. Bhutan’s membership of the United Nations also opened up new
avenues for bilateral and multilateral assistance for Bhutan.
A dramatic move by Bhutan in support of India took place within
months of my arrival there. Das’s successor, Ambassador Ashok Gokhale,
had arrived in Bhutan, but he was away on consultations when India an-
nounced its recognition of a new Bangladesh government, just before the
Bangladesh war broke out. Lyonpo Dawa Tsering, the Bhutanese Foreign
Minister called me and told me, within hours of the government having
been sworn in a mangrove, that Bhutan wished to extend recognition to the
new Bangladesh government. This was seen in Delhi as a great act of soli-
darity and the news broke all over the world that Bhutan was the second
country in the world to recognise Bangladesh. But did Bhutan have an
obligation to await India’s advice before taking this step? No one bothered
32 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

to ask this question and the king went up in the eyes of the Indian public.
This was typical of King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk who was adept in making
clever moves with a sense of perfect timing.
Palace intrigues were part of life in Bhutan. The king’s family, the
Wangchuks, had an uneasy relationship with the Dorjis, the queen’s kins-
men. The queen’s brother and Prime Minister Jigme Dorji were assassi-
nated some years ago. His son, Tobgye Dorji, was with me in the National
Academy of Administration in Mussoorie as a trainee and by the time I
reached Bhutan, he was posted in the Bhutanese Embassy in New Delhi.
His brother Benji Dorji, a judge of the High Court of Bhutan and some
kind of a court jester, was the constant companion to the Crown Prince
Jigme Singhye Wangchuk. The situation was complicated by the existence
of the king’s Tibetan mistress Ashi Yankee who had a son of her own. But
Yankee kept away from Thimphu most of the time, and the succession issue
was settled when the king anointed Singhye as the Tongsa Penlop, or the
crown prince, with much pomp and show. The king’s younger brother, pop-
ularly known as the Tengyel Lyonpo, or the benevolent minister, was an-
other important figure in Thimphu.
King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk died during a safari in Nairobi in 1972 at
a relatively young age. Foreign Secretary T. N. Kaul, who was a close con-
fidant of the king, woke me up in the middle of the night as Ambassador
Gokhale did not answer the phone. The news stunned the nation when
we broke it to the king’s ministers, who were totally unaware that their
monarch was gone. They literally threw themselves on the ground and
started crying inconsolably. The news was not broadcast till the crown
prince returned from Nairobi. I noticed when I saw him on his return that
the boy of 17 had fully grown into his new role and he was every inch a
king. He graciously smiled as I first addressed him as ‘Your Majesty’.
The late king’s body was kept embalmed for 101 days in the Thimphu
dzong as determined by the lamas, who were fed by the state till the crema-
tion took place. The belief was that during this period the dead person
needed everything that he used when he was alive like food, clothing,
drinks and even cigarettes. No one was allowed to show grief either. The
embalming of the body was done by a pathologist from the All India Insti-
tute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, who turned out to be an interesting
 MY STORY 33

person to have during those gloomy days. I ran into him 25 years later in
the United States, and he still remembered his perilous journey to Thim-
phu to embalm the king’s body.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi flew by helicopter to a remote village in
Bhutan, Kurje, where the king’s funeral took place. All facilities had to be
specially built for the occasion, and I had to fly there several times to su-
pervise the arrangements for her stay. Gandhi spent three days there to par-
ticipate in the elaborate ceremonies. Most of the time was used to brief the
new king on the complex relationship between India and Bhutan and to
build bridges with him. The young king turned out to be as shrewd as his
father and managed to run the kingdom with the same dexterity as his fa-
ther. He inducted his sisters, Ashi Sonam and Ashi Dechen, into different
ministries to gain their support in the administration. He surprised the out-
side world some years later when he announced that he had married four
sisters and that he had fathered three children. The Bhutanese society ac-
cepted the royal marriages as legitimate.
The plans for the coronation for the young king began by the time I left
Bhutan. Modernisation of Bhutan began with the advent of the young king.
He also moved in the direction set by his father towards democracy, as he
realised that the days of absolute monarchy were over. He opened Bhutan
to the outside world and began receiving assistance from nations other than
India. In my time, Bhutan’s only independent source of foreign exchange
was its philatelic bureau. A private company used to produce exotic stamps
in the name of Bhutan and distribute it worldwide, making a killing for it-
self. Some stamps were three-dimensional, some were fragrant and some
others were gramophone records. Most stamps carried the pictures of the
flora and fauna of Bhutan.
Fishing for trout was a favourite hobby of the elite and we joined the
sport as my boss, Ambassador B. S. Das, had advised me to bring a fishing
tackle from Japan. Walking up and down the Thimphu and Paro rivers,
sometimes in deep water, was not only fun but also rewarding. We caught
enough trout to fry in butter on the banks of the river and to make pickles
to send home to Kerala. Golf and tennis were popular sports. If I had taken
up golf at that young and energetic age, I would have had a decent hand-
icap by the time I left Bhutan. The Indian military training team had a
34 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

number of able and interesting officers, with whom we used to spend our
evenings and weekends. Among them were Major K. J. Shetty, the king’s
cardiologist; Major Iyer, who succeeded him; Major Sircar, the pediatrician
who treated my son, and Captain T. D. S. Visakhan, a close friend with
whom we had many adventures. A couple of decades later, terrorists in
Assam killed Visakhan, who had become a brigadier. His wife, Ramani, and
her two daughters bring us happy memories of our days together.
I went on an expedition, reminiscent of the journeys of envoys of yore,
on the Indo-Bhutan border in the eastern sector to demarcate a stretch of
boundary that was shown as a straight line on the map. I travelled with the
survey chiefs of India and Bhutan, the representatives of the Arunachal
Pradesh government, and the Ministry of External Affairs along the border
at about 13,000 feet to ascertain which of the villages on the straight line
should be considered to belong to either of the two countries. We examined
land records and tax documents to confirm the de facto position before fi-
nalising the maps. The work was completed in record time as the villagers
were fairly certain as to which country they belonged. More energy was
spent on the arduous journey, mostly on foot and partly on mules and yaks,
than on the negotiations. Dasho Sonam Rabgye, the leader of the
Bhutanese delegation, was a friendly, pragmatic person who was resolved to
settle the issue expeditiously. Our supporting staff numbered more than a
hundred and we had every facility at every camp they established for us
each night. At sunset, which came fairly early, we settled down to play
cards, the favourite pastime of the Bhutanese. I was lucky throughout the
trip and was able to buy a small Tibetan carpet on the way back with my
winnings. Lekha and Sreenath stayed back in the Tawang valley when we
trekked on the mountains.
Among the civil servants, who were deputed to Bhutan during my time,
we became close to C. Ramachandran and his wife Shobha. We spent many
cold evenings in Thimphu around the fire, playing cards. We decided to
drive in our VW411 all the way from Thimphu to Thiruvananthapuram,
when we were transferred from Bhutan, but the trip ended too soon when
I drove the car into an overturned truck in the early hours of one morning,
not far from Kolkata. Fortunately, none of us was hurt and the car could be
driven back to Kolkata for repairs. Ramachandran and Shobha remained in
 MY STORY 35

touch all these years and visited us in Washington, where Pavit, their son,
was a student. V. Swaminathan, the financial adviser, and his wife Renu
brought the flavour of Tamil culture into Bhutan, including loyalty. The
Police Adviser D. S. Soman was a delight, with a keen sense of humour and
a clear mind.
A memorable visit to Bhutan was by the foreign service inspectors, now
an extinct species, who came to assess the cost of living in Bhutan. Although
the living conditions were primitive and the prices were higher than on the
Indian border, our foreign allowance was a paltry sum, and the inspectors
wanted to reduce it further as they were displeased with the amenities they
got in Thimphu. Surinder Singh Alirajpur, a small maharaja in his own right,
found Thimphu less developed than his own kingdom and complained about
the size of the bath towel in the guest house, which could not cover him.
Mercifully, the allowance was not reduced as we put up a fight by providing
satisfactory statistics. He even wrote to me that he was so pleased with my
performance that he had recommended me for a posting to New York. He
added in good measure that his recommendation did not always go through.
It did not and the orders I got were for Moscow and not New York.

In most foreign services, the average temperature of all the places, where I
was posted taken together, will work out to be temperate. However,
Moscow gave us enough degrees below zero to make up for the warmth of
the South Pacific and Africa. Our friends gave us an ice cream party prior
to our departure for Moscow without realising that we would be served ice
cream in below zero temperatures as a hot drink. A posting to Moscow was
considered essential to go higher in the IFS, considering that most officers
who did well in the service had lived in one of the diplomatic ‘ghettos’ of
the Soviet capital. We were in the Lomonosovsky complex, not far from the
Moscow State University and the Chinese Embassy. The street in front of
the Chinese Embassy changed its name to match the state of the relations
between the two countries. From the ‘street of friendship’, it had changed to
the ‘street of revisionism’. The complex had several Indian diplomats
36 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

and since it had only one row of apartments, it was not as crowded as the
others like the Kutusovsky complex.
With the responsibility for the administration of a large mission with
personnel from many departments of the government of India, I found
myself dealing with properties and personnel rather than with Kremlin
diplomacy. My battles were with the redoubtable Directorate for Servicing
the Diplomatic Corps (UPDK), an organisation for control of diplomats,
composed largely of Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) ‘So-
viet State Security Committee’ officials exposed in different capitals of the
world. No leaf could fall in the diplomatic community without the stamp
of approval of the UPDK, but, mercifully, the stamp was available for
various considerations. For any service of any kind, we needed to go to the
UPDK with a note, presenting the compliments of the embassy and assuring
it of our best consideration. All personnel for local employment also came
from the UPDK. We were free to dismiss any of them, but they came back
in another capacity in another section or another household in no time.
They had high ranks in the KGB with no connection to the jobs they per-
formed as cooks or drivers. A lady who was permanently assigned to the re-
ception of the embassy had such connections in the UPDK that she had
powers to help or harm anyone at her will.
Ambassador Kuznetsov, who figured in a well-known American book on
the KGB, was the head of the UPDK. During Ambassador Inder Kumar
Gujral’s time in Moscow, we undertook some landscaping in the ambas-
sador’s residence for an estimated amount for which we had the approval
of the government of India. But when the bill came from the UPDK, the
amount was 10 times the estimate. We were told that the scope of work
was increasing and the actual work done was 10 times more than the an-
ticipated. At every level, we were told that no reduction could be made.
Ambassador Gujral, who had developed a habit of remembering and wish-
ing people on their birthdays, found out when Kuznetsov’s birthday took
place and asked me to carry a case of whisky to him in his office. When I
reached his office, he was having an office party and invited me to join it.
He was overwhelmed by the ambassador’s gesture and thanked him pro-
fusely. He said that no other ambassador had bothered to find out when his
birthday was. He pledged eternal loyalty to India and told me that if I had
a problem with the UPDK, I should go directly to him. The next day I was
 MY STORY 37

at his office with the garden bill, which he personally corrected to the exact
amount of the original estimate. No wonder Johnnie Walker was considered
legal tender in Moscow those days.
Juggling with three currencies, the US dollar, the Soviet ruble and the
Indian rupee, was our preoccupation in Moscow. Without a judicious mix
of the three currencies, nobody could survive in the embassy. A small per
cent of our emoluments were drawn in ‘currency’, which meant foreign ex-
change, which could be used abroad or in dollar shops. A minimum amount
of rubles had to be drawn at the official rate to prevent the temptation to
convert dollars into rubles at a profit. And rupee withdrawals were for sav-
ings or import of food and other items from India. Many years of research
done by our predecessors had resulted in a fairly accurate data bank, but
each person had to develop his own mix that suited him best. Changing
money in the market was the easiest option, but the embassy rules were
meant to discourage such transactions in order to protect the foreign ex-
change laws of the Soviet Union. Other embassies did not seem to have any
such compunction, but we enforced respect for the law and even punished
those who were found using the market forces to stretch their purses. We
had a hard time using the rubles in the market, as it meant joining every
line in the shops in the hope that something useful would be found at the
other end when we reached there. Very often, the rare goods were sold by
the time the line reached the other end. Queues were the order of the day
and the rules of the queues were respected. We could move from line to line
after reserving our places and could always go back to our original position.
There was a popular joke in Moscow that someone got so fed up of the
lines that he decided to buy a gun and shoot the entire politburo. He ig-
nored the line at the Kremlin as he had an exceptional mission, but he was
stopped. When he announced that he was rushing to shoot the leadership,
those in the line said that he should wait at the end of the line as they were
all waiting patiently to do exactly that.
As converting hard currency to rubles was a losing proposition, most of
us were chronically short of rubles in the initial months. However, every-
one would have plenty of rubles towards the end when cars and other
household goods were sold in non-convertible rubles. Ideally, a ruble loan
at the beginning of the posting with the facility of repaying at the end would
be a solution. This used to happen in effect as it was possible to pre-sell
38 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

personal cars. Someone, often a Middle Eastern diplomat, would be willing

to pay the price of the car in rubles even before it was bought. He would
give his preferred model and colour and pay the price on condition that
the car would be shipped to a port in the Middle East after three years.
During my time, everyone in the embassy had yellow Volkswagon Passat,
which was favoured in the Middle East. They were appropriately, called,
‘Mustapha’s cars’.
In any closed society, information is most valuable. In Moscow those
days, valuable information included news of availability of basic things.
For instance, if someone found that basmati rice was available in a partic-
ular shop, the best favour he could do to a friend was to pass that infor-
mation to him. Price was the same everywhere and, therefore, it did not
matter which shop carried it, but it was important to know where it was
available. Shop assistants also would not part with such information eas-
ily unless you pleased them in some way. It was not difficult to please them.
Small gifts of chewing gum or chocolates or coke bottles would go a long
way, not to speak of Johnnie Walker. The best practical joke that people
played on 1 April was to spread word that something imported was being
sold in a ruble shop. The system led to hoarding and then to further short-
ages. Indians would buy in one day all the rice allotted to a shop for a
whole month. A kind of gram that Indians ate used to come to the shops
in small packets as bird feed. Indians would buy hundreds of packets as
soon as it came to the pet shops, leaving the Muscovites wondering how
many birds the Indians kept. We had an Assistant Naval Attaché Lt Com-
mander S. Shekhar, who specialised in locating mutton in the market. An
Iyengar, who should normally be a vegetarian, supplied ‘Iyengar mutton’
regularly to us.
Security was a strong point in Moscow. The diplomatic ghettos were
well protected, and all movements to and from the apartments were closely
watched and recorded by the guard at the gate. If any one was unduly
delayed or strayed from his intended path, a search would be mounted im-
mediately. Any time we drove out of Moscow, if we went out of the prescribed
route, a militia man would appear from nowhere to guide us back to the right
route. The militia even knew which party we were supposed to attend a par-
ticular evening and did not allow us to go to the wrong apartment. The
 MY STORY 39

Soviet militia was such a living presence that it was believed that a militia
man was born, each time there was a stint of silence in a gathering. People
kept talking, lest they should add to the militia population.
Foreigners in general and diplomats in particular were treated with
equal suspicion, regardless of the state of bilateral relations. But Indian
diplomats were generally in favour, and we had greater accessibility. The
state of Indo-Soviet relations was such that there was continuous interac-
tion, and we had opportunities to deal with Soviet officials at different
levels. Accompanying VIPs was the best way to see the country. I trav-
elled with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to Georgia and Armenia, and
with parliamentary delegations to several other Republics. Life outside
Moscow, particularly in the Baltic Republics and Central Asia, appeared
less regimented.
Ambassador K. S. Shelvankar, a journalist-turned-diplomat, ran the
embassy from a small room in the basement of his residence, while his Scot-
tish wife Mary occupied the ambassador’s room. The ambassador had the
habit of escorting me to her room whenever ticklish administrative issues
had to be resolved. Mary was one of those British intellectuals, who sup-
ported the India League in London, in which Krishna Menon and Shel-
vankar were members. She was known to be close to the Nehru family. But
as the Indian ambassador’s wife in Moscow, she was quite a disaster as she
was intolerant of Indian politicians and officials. She interfered in the ad-
ministration of the embassy, which was my business. I had to take cover
behind the Deputy Chief of Mission Peter Sinai, a true Christian, who
would not harm even his enemy. His great qualities did not help in run-
ning the administration as he always wanted to see the opposite point of
view and was influenced by it. He had a fund of stories to illustrate his
point, but he repeated them so often that it became a part of the Moscow
folklore. For example, whenever he was faced with intractable problems, he
used to say that ‘the turban is six yards long and the twist comes only at the
end’. When discussions came up about the use of the right phraseology for
a particular occasion, he would tell us the story of an Egyptian fishmonger
who put up a board saying, ‘Fresh fish sold here’. His friends pointed out
that each of the words was redundant and finally he realised that no board
was necessary. Sinai had jokes about baldness, though he did not have
40 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

much hair himself. Shekhar and I produced a skit at his farewell party fea-
turing his stories. Shekhar acted as the deputy chief of mission and I acted
as myself, the Head of Chancery. Looking back at the skit, I think we came
close to offending him. He wrote to me that he was able to see himself
better after the skit, but he confessed that some of it was ‘close to the bone’.
Rowena Sinai, a gutsy lady, defied the Soviet police when they accused her
of trying to enter the Lenin Mausoleum in ‘immodest clothes’. She was ac-
tually wearing a sari in a perfectly modest manner. She did not leave till
the chief of the guards apologised and allowed her to enter the Mausoleum.
She taught them a lesson on sartorial propriety.
One story should suffice to illustrate the kind of trivialities that occu-
pied us. When the time came for Shelvankar and Mary to move to Oslo,
the ambassador told us at a meeting that he would not have time to go to
each officer’s house for farewell parties. He would, therefore, prefer if offi-
cers of each wing of the embassy got together and organised some parties.
This was appreciated, and the different wings competed with each other to
give the ambassador and Mary a fitting farewell. Once the round was over,
the ambassador suddenly asked when his formal farewell would be. A sur-
prised Sinai said that since we had him and his wife come to so many din-
ners, we did not want to bother them again with another farewell. The
ambassador said that he was expecting an official farewell like the one given
to the former Deputy Ambassador Ambadi Damodaran. Sinai said that he
would consult the officers and let him know. He then dispatched me to go
around the various wings and ascertain the wishes of the officers. Everyone
felt that we should give another dinner if that was the ambassador’s wish.
As we were finalising the plans, the ambassador called another meeting to
announce that he was displeased with the ‘vote taking’ and that he would
not accept any more parties. He stopped us all from protesting and said
that we should approach Mary if we had anything to say. Mary told Sinai
and myself that the ambassador was upset and that the only way out for us
was to apologise in writing. I did not see any reason to apologise, but Sinai,
the eternal peacemaker, wrote a note and gave it to Mary, expressing regret
over the turn of events. Nikhil Chakravarty, the distinguished journalist
who happened to be there, helped in the negotiations with Mary, and even-
tually we gave the Shelvankars a grand farewell. The whole crisis took more
than two weeks to blow over.
 MY STORY 41

D. P. Dhar was Shelvankar’s predecessor and successor. He came to

Moscow as a minister after his first tenure, and the Shelvankars hosted a
reception for him. The Shelvankars were at the door to receive Dhar, and
Mary was in a resplendent Kancheepuram sari. Dhar could not resist mak-
ing a comment that Mary looked grand. Mary put on some modesty and
asked, ‘Am I alright, DP? Do I look like the ambassador’s wife?’ Dhar’s
repartee amused everyone who knew about her place in the Shelvankar
household, ‘What do you mean, Mary? You look like the ambassador’s hus-
band!’ he said.
D. P. Dhar’s second assignment to Moscow was short, but splendid. He
opened the doors of the residence to all and entertained like a Maharajah.
His wife was a great contrast to Mary as she confined herself to the role of
the housewife. Fotedar, his private secretary, ran the household in her name.
The guest rooms were always full. The joke was that he did not recognise his
own house guests and some of them did not recognise him either. This gave
rise to amusing situations like when a guest asked Dhar at the breakfast table
as to how long he would be staying with the ambassador.
Dhar felt that I should not waste time on administration and moved
me to his office to assist him with political work, and the administration was
entrusted to a police officer, D. R. Karthikeyan. But before long, Dhar
passed away in India when his pacemaker gave way and caused cardiac
complications. I then moved to the public relations wing of the embassy.
The arrival of Inder Kumar Gujral as ambassador in 1975 opened a new
chapter in the embassy. Sanjay Gandhi had, in fact, eased Gujral out of the
cabinet for his liberal views, but Gujral was enthusiastic about his first diplo-
matic assignment and was determined to make a success of it. He came
with his own staff and had requisitioned the services of a public relations
officer from outside the Ministry of External Affairs. The ministry decided
to post him against me and transferred me prematurely to Zanzibar as the
consul general. Gujral had thought that the new man would come against
a new post. Even though he did not know me from before, Gujral said that
he would rather not have a new officer, if it meant that I would have to be
transferred. This was the first in a series of acts of kindness he did to me in
Moscow and even several years after he and I left Moscow. Whether it was
my son’s school admission in Delhi, allotment of a house or any other mat-
ter, he readily interceded on my behalf and later as external affairs minister
42 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

and prime minister, he was always kind and generous. My long associa-
tion with him began in Moscow. He moved me back to administration as
he attached importance to the upkeep of the mission and personnel man-
agement. With him, as ambassador, and Jaskaran Teja, who joined as
deputy chief of mission, I had a splendid time in Moscow. The arrival of
the celebrated bureaucrat, Gopi Arora and his wife Indu, was also a wel-
come development.
Indo-Soviet relations in the Leonid Brezhnev days were multi-faceted
and defence coperation was particularly intense. Half the embassy con-
sisted of defence officers and visiting military delegations were legion. The
embassy had to stock hundreds of heavy coats and caps to be used by vis-
iting delegations. Some of them who came for longer periods acclimatised
well and even learnt some Russian. One of them volunteered to interpret
a toast I made. Later, I learnt that I shocked my audience, except one per-
son who understood English. He told me that my interpreter said that I ex-
pressed appreciation for Russian supplies and that I hoped that ‘the supplies
would be good at least in the future’. When I said the cream of the Indian
Army came for training to the Soviet Union, he said that I promised them
‘the best Indian cream’.
Gujral travelled the length and breadth of the Soviet Union. He was so
impressed with his visit to Siberia that he came back fully convinced that
the twenty-first century would belong to the Soviet Union. The sheer di-
mensions of the resources available in Siberia astounded him. His predic-
tions about Siberia were conveyed to Delhi in a personal cable addressed
to Y. B. Chavan, the Minister of External Affairs. Because the cable was
marked ‘Most Immediate’, it was delivered to him in the middle of the
night. Chavan did not see the point of waking him up at night when there
was some more time before the twenty-first century dawned. He said so in
a cryptic letter to Gujral.
Sheila Gujral, a highly cultured and sensitive lady, a poetess in her own
right, pursued her interests in Moscow. She did not interfere in the affairs
of the embassy except to give a motherly healing touch, when required. I
remember how she dealt with an explosive situation on a trip to Siberia.
Shekhar was helping the ambassador with all the arrangements for the visit.
The whole group came to depend on Shekhar, as he was the only Russian-
speaking member of the delegation. He was polite and kind to everybody
 MY STORY 43

till a pompous counsellor asked him to arrange to get his shoes polished.
Shekhar lost his temper and showered some of the choicest abuses in Tamil
on the counsellor. Sheila Gujral, who was watching the situation with
amusement, disarmed Shekhar immediately when she said softly, ‘Look, my
son, don’t you know that you should not be the eldest in a Muslim family
and the youngest in a Hindu family? If you are the eldest in a Muslim fam-
ily, every one will toss all his or her problems to you. If you are the youngest
in a Hindu family, like we are now, the youngest will have to do all the dirty
work’. Shekhar was so moved by Sheila Gujral’s soothing comment that he
promptly went on looking for a shoeshine facility for his elder brother.
Gujral began sporting his Lenin-style beard after a holiday in Sochi.
When the ambassador returned with his beard, none of the senior officers
at the airport said anything, but I remember complimenting him on his new
look. He explained to me that a lady barber in Sochi was struck by his sim-
ilarity to Lenin when she saw him with a beard and suggested that he
should keep it. He kept it even as the prime minister of India.
Some of the friendships we made in Moscow lasted long, perhaps be-
cause of the dependence we developed on each other to manage the harsh
life in Moscow. Apart from Shekhar and his wife Malati, D. R. Karthikeyan,
who later handled the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case with distinction and
became the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and his
wife Kala remained our close friends over the years. I had the privilege of
driving Kala and her newborn baby Kanchana from a Soviet hospital to
their Lomonosovsky apartment. We also greeted the first child of R. L.
Narayan and Rani on his arrival in a Moscow hospital. Rajiv and Veena
Sikri became close friends and served with us again in New York. Many
others like Prasanna Hegde and Natarajan kept in touch with us. The
Moscow ‘mafia’ in the IFS remained strong and most members found them-
selves ambassadors to the former Soviet Republics when they became in-
dependent states. The Air Attache O. P. Mehra became the Chief of Air
Staff in later years.
Our first son Sreenath was barely three when we arrived in Moscow.
He became proficient in Russian in the ‘detskisaad’ and memorised Lenin’s
speeches that he delivered with gusto. He was also our Russian interpreter.
Our second son Sreekanth is a Moscow product, whom we called ‘Misha’,
the mascot of the Moscow Olympics. We came back to Delhi in time for his
44 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

arrival, as we did not want to face the hazards of having a baby behind the
iron curtain.
Four significant events took place during my time in Moscow. The
Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE) of 1974 shook the Soviet Union as
much as it did others, but Moscow refrained from harsh criticism of the ex-
periment. ‘Aryabhatta’, the first Indian experimental satellite was launched
from the Soviet Union in April 1975. While our envoys around the world
had a hard time convincing their hosts of the need for Indira Gandhi’s
emergency rule (1975), there was a perfect understanding in Moscow of
its rationale and timeliness. Indira Gandhi’s electoral defeat in 1977
stunned the Soviet leadership to such an extent that Pravda and Izvestia did
not carry the election results for two days. Then a small news item appeared
that Indira Gandhi failed ‘to get the required number of votes to become
the prime minister’. The next day, the newspapers carried a brief biodata of
Morarji Desai, who was described as a Gandhian. It took the Soviet
people one whole week to realise that Indira Gandhi had lost the election
to Morarji Desai. After the initial shock, the leadership realised that it
should salvage Indo-Soviet relations and decided to send the veteran For-
eign Minister Andrei Gromyko to Delhi.
The retention of Gujral as ambassador by the Janata government helped
matters greatly. I was at the airport to see off Gromyko. He looked visibly
worried about the kind of reception he might get from the new leadership.
But Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as foreign minister, more than anyone else, put
him at ease. Vajpayee said in his first toast that Gromyko might find new
faces in the government of India, but Indo-Soviet relations would continue
to flourish. Janata Party had disowned the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friend-
ship and Cooperation, signed by Indira Gandhi in 1971, in the context of
the crisis in East Pakistan, but the government did not ask for its abolition.
Gromyko returned a much relieved man and Gujral gave continuity to
India’s policy to the Soviet Union.
Parayil Unnikrishnan, a stalwart journalist, who represented the Press
Trust of India in Moscow for many years, was close to all the ambassadors,
particularly D. P. Dhar. He and his wife were our guides and guardians too and
travelled with us to Finland when we went to pick up our ‘Mustapha’s car’. He
enjoyed international prominence for several days when he filed a story that
‘Brezhnev took leave of his responsibilities tonight’ in 1975, when Brezhnev
 MY STORY 45

was still very much in power. The story caused a sensation as Brezhnev was in
control, but was out of sight for sometime. The Kremlin denied the story and
said that Comrade Brezhnev just had some cold and cough. Unnikrishnan
tried to explain that his story only talked about leave, but it was obvious that
it was planted on him by some important source in the Kremlin. Even expe-
rienced journalists can fall prey to the temptation to get sensational scoops.
In January 1977, Lekha and Sreenath flew to Chennai to attend the
wedding of Lekha’s brother Mohan to Latha, daughter of the legendary
music director, M. S. Viswanathan. I could not make it as I had reached the
end of my tenure in Moscow and was under orders of transfer to New Delhi.
The wedding itself was a grand affair, with many film personalities, includ-
ing M. G. Ramachandran, in attendance. K. J. Jesudas, the famous play-
back singer gave a classical concert. Lekha happened to tell her American
neighbour on the flight that she was travelling to India to attend her
brother’s wedding. ‘Only in India will a sister travel so far to attend a
brother’s wedding’, he said. As a chief engineer in the merchant navy,
Mohan travelled around the globe and also visited us at some of our posts.
Mohan and Latha have made Chennai their home. Latha has a chain of
beauty parlours in Chennai and Bangalore. Their son, Vikram, is also in
the beauty industry and their daughter, Prarthana, is a budding film maker.
My successor in Moscow, Murali Menon, had arrived in Moscow, but I
was expected to stay on for a couple of months more, as desired by the am-
bassador. But even as my family was planning to precede me to India, I was
asked to return immediately to the ministry and we managed to leave
Moscow together at short notice.

We returned from Moscow to Delhi in September 1977 and I was hand-

picked by the Foreign Secretary Jagat Mehta to be his special assistant after
I worked for a while in the administration under Ambassador Thomas
Abraham and in the East Europe Division under Aravind Deo. I had met
Mehta briefly in Moscow, but my appointment in his office came as a sur-
prise. Mehta told me at the end of my two eventful years with him that my
choice was ‘a shot in the dark’, but he was more than satisfied by the choice.
46 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

My new assignment brought me back to Moscow in 1979 with Morarji

Desai during his last visit abroad as prime minister. That was when I stayed
in the Kremlin for the first time. It was a most unusual visit, Desai’s only
visit to Moscow. Desai had anti-Soviet orientation for many years, and he
had declared that he would scrap the Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty if his
party came to power. But as prime minister, he realised the depth of India’s
involvement with the Soviet Union, particularly in the economic and de-
fence areas and readjusted his view of Moscow. But deep inside, he dis-
trusted the Soviets and took a long time to agree to visit Moscow. As it
happened, his visit to Moscow took place on the eve of his fall from power.
Jagat Mehta, Aravind Deo, the Joint Secretary for East Europe, and I
constituted the official team formed to interact with the Soviet side on
substantive matters regarding the visit, including the joint communiqué.
We had strict instructions from the prime minister that the communiqué
should have no reference to the Indo-Soviet Treaty. Sure enough, the So-
viet draft stated that the relations between the two countries were based
on the treaty. It was a tough negotiating situation. Added to it was the
strong Soviet suspicion that Jagat Mehta was too pro-West. After the first
round of negotiations, which went into the middle of the night, there was
no meeting point and the Soviets made it clear that there would be no
communiqué without a reference to the treaty. When we presented the sit-
uation to the prime minister as he was working on the ‘spinning wheel’
(followers of Gandhiji spin their own yarn to make their clothes), he sim-
ply said that there was no need for a communiqué in that case. We were
stunned as there was never a prime ministerial visit from India without a
communiqué and the world would know that all was not well with the
visit. We tried some weak formulations on the treaty, but the prime min-
ister rejected them. We had another round, but even when the return ban-
quet on the eve of the departure of the delegation took place, there was
no sign of a communiqué. Brezhnev himself spoke to Desai and said that
it would be a pity if there was no communiqué and we got word that we
should leave the banquet and work again to find a way out. By early morn-
ing the next day, we were able to get a weak formulation that the spirit of
the treaty prevailed in the relationship and the prime minister agreed,
thanks to the intervention of Vajpayee. The Soviets were greatly relieved
and so were we.
 MY STORY 47

Desai gave the Soviets another shock at a lunch hosted earlier by Brezh-
nev. The Soviet foreign office had warned Vajpayee that Brezhnev would
make an offer to Desai to send an Indian into space in a Soviet rocket. The
Soviet Union had already sent up cosmonauts from the Warsaw Pact coun-
tries and Vietnam, and now it was the turn of India in their order of prior-
ity. Vajpayee thought that it was a good idea, but did not alert Desai to the
offer. When the appointed time came at the lunch, Brezhnev made the offer
in a grand manner, making it as a great gesture of friendship to the
Indian brothers. Desai appeared unimpressed and said off the cuff that it
was not a particularly good idea. Brezhnev was so shocked that his unlit
cigarette fell off his lips. He turned to Kosygin and asked whether he had
heard Desai right. Kosygin made an effort to present the proposal in more
palatable terms and even Vajpayee sent Desai a slip suggesting that he
should agree to consider the offer. Desai ignored it and went on to give his
own reasons why the offer was not acceptable. He said that India did not
have anything to gain from a space flight like that. Moreover, several peo-
ple would have to be trained and eventually only one would be able to fly.
Everyone thought it prudent to change the subject and the lunch ended
rather abruptly. It was only after the return of the Indira Gandhi govern-
ment in 1980 that the proposal was revived and Rakesh Sharma flew in a
Soyuz rocket to space and returned safely to a hero’s welcome.
The final meeting between Desai and Brezhnev was not without inter-
esting moments. As the two leaders walked into the reception hall of the
Kremlin after the signing ceremony, Brezhnev said in an expansive way,
‘Mr Prime Minister, we normally drink vodka on such happy occasions, but
because of your well-known views on drinking, we have decided to drink
tea with you’. Desai was not impressed. ‘I have not had tea for 70 years!’ he
said. The number 70 reminded Brezhnev of the recent celebrations of the
70th anniversary of the Great October Revolution. He said smartly, ‘Oh,
you must have stopped drinking tea in honour of the Great October Rev-
olution!’ Desai was as insensitive as ever. ‘I had not even heard about
the October Revolution then!’ he said. Brezhnev gave up for a while, but,
as the host, he had to keep the conversation going. As they came closer to
the table, decked with caviar, choicest meat cuts and a barbecued piglet
with an apple in its mouth, Brezhnev turned to Desai again and said, ‘Mr
Prime Minister, I believe you are a vegetarian’. He then pointed to some
48 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

tomatoes and cucumber and urged him to eat some of it. At this point,
Desai came up with a profound observation, ‘Isn’t it interesting that you
non-vegetarians eat only vegetarian animals?’ Brezhnev did not follow the
logic. He asked Desai what he meant. Desai would not bother to explain.
But his ebullient interpreter, M. V. Oak, stepped in to explain that what his
prime minister meant was that non-vegetarians did not eat tigers and lions,
but only vegetarian animals like cows and sheep. Brezhnev nodded in agree-
ment. The party did not last much longer.
Desai had his first taste of ‘Kathakali’ on the same trip. A Kerala Kala
Mandalam troupe had come to Poland to perform at the time of the visit
of the prime minister. The scene chosen for the evening was the killing of
Dusshasana by Bhima, one of the most gruesome scenes in Kathakali.
Bhima pulls out the entrails of his enemy and drinks his blood. The scene
completely shocked Desai and Vajpayee more than their polish hosts. I
believe, on an earlier occasion, Khrushchev, after witnessing the same
scene, had turned to Ambassador K. P. S. Menon and asked, ‘Mr Ambas-
sador, you still call yourself a non-violent nation?’ The Poles made no such
remark, but later at the ambassador’s residence, where there were no for-
eigners, Desai criticised the show as in bad taste. Vajpayee and others
seemed to agree. As the only one from Kerala in the group, I thought that
it was my duty to defend ‘Kathakali’. I whispered something about the
context of the scene and the grave crime, which Bhima was avenging.
Dusshasana had tried to disrobe Draupadi in public and she had vowed
that she would tie her hair only with Dusshasana’s blood on it. Desai asked
me what I was saying. I talked a little about the highly stylistic nature of
Kathakali and the traditional way in which just punishment was high-
lighted in the dance form. Of course, the words of a mere deputy secretary
did not carry much weight, and I gave up when Desai said that they could
have chosen a gentler episode.
My days as the Special Assistant to Foreign Secretary Jagat Mehta were
some of the most interesting years I spent in the service. To be entrusted
at such a young age with the secrets of the government, particularly post-
ings and promotions of my seniors, was exciting enough. But it was hard
work indeed. Computers were not in use then and Mehta revised, many
times everything he wrote. I had an army of stenographers to put in
writing whatever they thought he dictated. My job was to correct the
 MY STORY 49

spelling and the grammar before showing his own writings to him. He to-
tally disowned most of it and rewrote everything, and the process went on.
I had learnt from Peter Sinai in Moscow that ‘perfect is the enemy of the
good’, but Mehta tried for perfection till the speech was delivered or the
note became overdue. The joke was that when someone went to him and
said that he should look at a speech that was to be delivered that day, he
said, ‘What do you mean? I need to finish yesterday’s speech first’.
I could be described best as the shuffler of papers for the foreign secre-
tary. Mounds of paper landed on my desk in a room carved out of the cor-
ridor leading to the foreign secretary’s room. I had to make sure that he
did not miss anything that was urgent and important and that he did not
have to look through junk mail. I needed, therefore, to read the junk too
like I do now with my electronic mail because some gems could be lost
among the advertisements on elimination of debt and improvement of the
anatomy. Mehta never explained to me what my work was and he expected
me to know by intuition what he needed for his work from moment to mo-
ment. If he called and asked for ‘that paper’, I could determine, by a quick
calculation of the time, the kind of visitor who was with him and the tone
of his demand, which paper he was asking for. I was right most of the time,
and when I was not, he merely had to say ‘not this one, the other one’ and
I could produce it. Shyam Saran, who became foreign secretary later, found
this arrangement exasperating when he stood in for me occasionally, when
I was away. I was often reminded of Aravind Vellodi’s story about Krishna
Menon, when Vellodi did a similar job with Menon. At the UN Security
Council, when Menon was making one of his marathon speeches on
Kashmir, he kept asking Vellodi for documents each time he elaborated a
point. Vellodi could easily guess what Menon wanted. But on a particular
occasion, Vellodi was totally lost when Menon extended his hand. Vellodi
had to ask in Malayalam what he was looking for. Menon shouted at him
in Malayalam, ‘I want a pencil to scratch my ear!’
Jagat Mehta was more sinned against than sinning. His hyperactive
mind was looking far ahead, while those around him were looking for im-
mediate gains and quick fixes. Mehta anticipated much of India’s foreign
policy of later years. He was considered anti-Soviet because he did not ap-
pear to be working for Indo-Soviet relations as he did to improve relations
with the United States, China and Pakistan. He told me on several
50 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

occasions that he did not have to do much for Indo-Soviet relations as

those relations were already flourishing. Imagination and hard work were
required to build new bridges. But the pro-Soviet lobby never forgave him
and hunted him out of the foreign office. Mehta had close friends in the
United States and the United Kingdom, and he was not ashamed of being
seen with them in public. Much of the distrust of Mehta by the pro-Soviet
lobby arose from those friendships.
Mehta, in his enthusiasm to build new bridges with the United States,
underestimated the extreme nature of India’s suspicion about the non-pro-
liferation efforts of the United States. Successive Indian governments had
portrayed the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) as a devise to deprive India
of nuclear technology. Mehta persuaded Foreign Minister Vajpayee and
Prime Minister Morarji Desai that India could make some moves in the
nuclear field to please the United States. For instance, India, which used
to oppose a Pakistani resolution on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in South
Asia, abstained on it at the United Nations. A joint scientific group with
the United States to study the implications of Indian nuclear policy was
contemplated. Mehta was in the United States with the prime minister
when Rama Mehta, his wife, suddenly passed away after a heart attack.
Mehta returned to India, but left for the United States soon after the fu-
neral because of the importance he attached to the discussions there. The
press criticised him for his travel back to the United States and speculated
that a nuclear deal was in the offing. Soon enough, the political leadership
sensed the mood of the nation and pulled out of the nuclear negotiations.
That explains the deep disappointment that Jimmy Carter felt when Desai
did some plain speaking to him when he came with the expectation that
India was just about to change its nuclear policy. Carter’s comment that the
United States should send the old man a ‘cold and blunt’ letter was caught
on camera and the visit itself became a disaster. Desai’s comment was char-
acteristic, ‘That comment was not meant for my ears. Why should I care
about it?’ he asked.
Foreign Minister Vajpayee’s China visit in 1978 was also largely Mehta’s
handiwork. I counted more than 50 drafts of Vajpayee’s toast churned out
in my office. Many more versions may have been prepared on the way
before it was delivered. There was nothing common between the first draft
and the final version except the first sentence, ‘Thank you for your
 MY STORY 51

generous hospitality’. Mehta first heard the news of the Chinese invasion
of Vietnam that took place when Vajpayee was still in China on his short-
wave national radio, which was his constant companion before the advent
of CNN. The sudden return of the Vajpayee delegation saved the reputa-
tion of the government of India. The Indian public saw a parallel between
the invasion of Vietnam and the aggression against India in 1962. It as-
sumed particular poignancy as the Indian foreign minister was on Chinese
soil when the invasion took place. The result was a reversal in the relation-
ship between the two countries on the heels of a historic visit. Mehta was,
particularly, disappointed that his vision of an improved relationship with
China lay shattered.
In the foreign secretary’s office, I came close to policy making at the
highest levels for the first time. By making a correction here or adding a
phrase there, I was able to contribute in my own way to policy, but more
important was the ringside seat I had, to observe senior colleagues and
political leaders from close quarters. The position also enabled me to get
to know many of those who later became my bosses in the service. It gave
me an exposure to the media, the intelligentsia, and the diplomatic corps
in Delhi. I could not match Mehta’s energy that enabled him to go to two
parties after a grueling day and then sit till late to clear the remaining pa-
pers. I worked from nine to nine, but needed the rest of the day to recharge
the batteries.
Posting and personnel policies were the most interesting to watch in
the Ministry of External Affairs. While there was some system in the post-
ings at junior levels, the postings of heads of mission had always been sub-
jective and ad hoc. Mehta would give me a sheet of paper on which he
would have scribbled some names and some stations. He had his own rea-
sons for his assignments or he might have been told to give some assign-
ments, but those reasons and compulsions were shrouded in mystery. My
job was to draft out letters to the affected officers, giving logical explana-
tions for each posting, particularly when they were being assigned to diffi-
cult stations. For this, I needed to study the history of services carefully and
then improvise. If the officer was an Arabist and was being posted to an-
other Arab country, I would wax eloquent on the virtues of specialisation
and take the credit for careful career planning. On the other hand, if an
Arabist were going to Francophone Africa, I would dwell at length on the
52 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

need to diversify his career to equip him for higher responsibilities. What
often worked was the impression created that each person was chosen for
the new post after much searching and screening. I realised later that some
of the drafts I had prepared were used by my successors at the time of my
postings to Fiji and Kenya.
Postings done by the foreign secretary did not always go through as
many officers had direct access to the political masters, who were willing to
manipulate postings for them. The foreign secretary was then compelled
to review the postings made by him. According to one story, the foreign
secretary rhetorically told an officer that he could go to the prime minister
if he wanted his posting changed. He promptly got it changed by the prime
minister. When the foreign secretary chided him, he said, feigning inno-
cence, that he went to the prime minister as instructed by the foreign sec-
retary. The jigsaw puzzle remained with pieces missing at any given time.
Several efforts were made to bring some system into the posting methods,
but it never suited those in power to have any rigid formula. The chaotic
system was conducive to patronage and nepotism.
Mehta managed to get all the ladies in the foreign service against him
by the stroke of a pen. His wife Rama Mehta was herself a foreign serv-
ice officer, but she had to resign on marriage in accordance with the rules
at that time. He felt that, compared to that situation, the ladies were
being treated generously by the government. Not only were they able to
retain their jobs after marriage but also were given postings together with
their husbands, to the extent possible. At one time, he received several
requests for soft postings from lady officers and felt that they should also
have a share of hard postings. If he had simply posted some of the ladies
to difficult stations, it would have been accepted, but he chose to address
a letter to all the lady officers, exhorting them not to expect preferential
treatment in the future. The letter caused such a flutter that Mehta was
accused of being a misogynist, among other things. He realised that hell
had no fury like women offended. One of them even went to court to
protest. The court upheld the government’s discretion with regard to
postings, but mildly rebuked the foreign secretary for alleged prejudices
against women.
My preparations to move to New York in January 1980 were interrupted
by the commotion relating to the removal of Jagat Mehta from the post of
 MY STORY 53

foreign secretary. The mystery was that it was a caretaker government that
took such an important decision just a few weeks before the general elec-
tions in the country. Unknown to Jagat Mehta, the minister was correspon-
ding with Ram Sathe, our ambassador in Beijing, who was asked to take
over from Mehta by the middle of December 1979. Just a few days before
Sathe was to arrive in New Delhi, the news was broken to him by the min-
ister and the prime minister himself. He was told that he was guilty of mis-
leading the government on issues such as Bhutan, the United States, and
the Commonwealth. Jagat Mehta was credited with a vision and that was
what had weighed in his favour when Indira Gandhi appointed him as for-
eign secretary in 1974. Mehta served the Janata government as loyally as
he served the Congress government, but Indira Gandhi obviously did not
like the Janata foreign policy that Mehta helped to shape. The saying at
that time was that Desai made foreign policy, Jagat Mehta implemented it,
and Vajpayee translated it into Hindi. But that very vision worked against
him. He was convinced that India needed to improve its relations with the
United States and China, and establish a working relationship with
Pakistan. But the Soviet lobby saw him as a threat, particularly as he was
not in favour of recognising the regime in Cambodia. He was dubbed as
strongly pro-United States. He was partly at fault because he had many
friends in the United States, who visited him frequently. He considered
himself beyond suspicion, but he aroused all kinds of suspicion. He con-
tinued to work in the ministry even after he was relieved of his responsibil-
ities as foreign secretary and was posted to Bonn, but Indira Gandhi, who
originally appointed him as foreign secretary, refused to rehabilitate him. No
one defended him, not even Vajpayee, but many years later, Vajpayee as
prime minister honoured him with a ‘Padma Vibhushan’, a high civilian
award, in acknowledgement of Mehta’s visionary ideas.
I worked briefly with Ram Sathe till he settled down as foreign secretary.
He offered to keep me on, but I told him that I had exhausted my savings
and was keen on going on a posting as soon as possible. He agreed to relieve
me if I found a suitable person to succeed me. I persuaded my batchmate
and friend Prabhakar Menon, a brilliant officer, whom Sathe found emi-
nently suitable for the job.
I remember escorting Sathe to his apartment in the old external affairs
hostel on Kasturba Gandhi Marg, the day he returned from Beijing. He had
54 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

stayed in the hostel many times and knew the conditions very well. He was
absolutely dumbfounded that his apartment had been done up and even a
carpet and a pedestal lamp had been added. I told him that he should re-
member that he had just become the foreign secretary. He said that he
would take some time to digest it.
A historic development that took place in December 1979 compelled
Sathe to receive the Soviet ambassador in his hostel apartment. I got a call
in the middle of the night from Yuli Vorontsov, the veteran Soviet
Ambassador, to say that he had an urgent message to convey to the for-
eign secretary. I called the foreign secretary who readily agreed to receive
him, but suggested that I bring him to the hostel in my car rather than in
the Soviet Embassy car. I met the Soviet ambassador in a hotel and took
him in my small Fiat Millicento to the hostel. As we stepped into the apart-
ment, Sathe said that he heard the news on the BBC. Vorontsov pretended
not to hear it and proceeded to deliver his message from the Soviet lead-
ership. He said that a limited contingent of Soviet troops had entered
Afghanistan at the invitation of the government of Afghanistan and that
the troops had no intention to stay beyond the minimum period necessary.
He sought the understanding of the government of India on the situation
and also asked for an opportunity to meet Prime Minister Charan Singh to
convey a similar message. Having said his piece, he asked Sathe what he
had heard on the BBC. Obviously, he did not want to hear that the person
who invited the Soviet troops into Afghanistan had already been killed!
Sathe took note of the demarche that stated our position of principle
against stationing of foreign troops in any country, and promised to convey
the message to his authorities at daybreak.
Sathe was in a dilemma, as, though Charan Singh was still prime min-
ister, Indira Gandhi had already won a majority and she was about to be
sworn in within the next few days. He went to Charan Singh in the morn-
ing to report on his conversation with the Soviet Ambassador, and Charan
Singh decided to call in the ambassador immediately to convey India’s con-
cern. Charan Singh was reasonably tough in his approach, and sensing this
fact Vorontsov revealed to him that he had already seen Indira Gandhi that
morning and that she showed considerable understanding of the situation.
Charan Singh knew that the carpet had been pulled from right under
his feet.
 MY STORY 55

The next few days were very difficult for Sathe. The Afghanistan issue
had already come before the UN General Assembly under the Uniting for
Peace resolution as the Soviet veto had paralysed the Security Council.
Sathe had a draft speech from our Permanent Representative in New York,
Brajesh Mishra, which contained some criticism of the Soviet action as
violative of the territorial integrity of Afghanistan. Sathe sent it to Indira
Gandhi for clearance. T. N. Kaul, the former foreign secretary, had already
assumed an advisory role in foreign affairs for the incoming government
and he drastically changed the speech with the approval of Gandhi and
sent it back to Sathe. Sathe was surprised, as the new speech virtually en-
dorsed the Soviet action. The speech would give the impression that we
would vote against the anti-Soviet resolution rather than abstain from it.
Sathe pointed this out to Kaul, but the changes he made further did not
alter the situation much. Outside the Soviet camp, India gave the strongest
possible support to the Soviet Union, and there was considerable disap-
pointment in the West that India took that position. Though we abstained
from the resolution, our position became a sore point in India US relations
for a long time.

As the special assistant to the foreign secretary, I had the privilege of choos-
ing where to go from New Delhi. The choice was basically between Tokyo
and New York. In Tokyo, I could put my Japanese to good use but the ad-
vice I got from everyone was that postings to the United States were the
most difficult to get and that I should not miss the opportunity to go to
New York. I was also inquisitive about multilateral diplomacy in which I
had no previous experience. I did not realise then that I would be assigned
multifaced work to such an extent, for which I would spend the next
20 years dealing with the UN specialised agencies.
Living in Manhattan was an experience in itself. New York and the
United Nations embellish each other. We were dazzled by both and enjoyed
both. My work at the United Nations is covered elsewhere. As for
New York, we explored its charms by taking in the sounds and sights and
tastes. We lived in one of the richest parts of New York, the Upper East
56 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Side and that too on Madison Avenue and 89th street. Jackie Kennedy
lived nearby, and the famed Guggenheim Museum was literally at our front
door. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was not far either. Our building
had many multi-millionaires. My little Volkswagen Golf was parked along
with Rolls Royces and Jaguars, but New Yorkers never bothered as to how
rich or how poor their neighbours were. They were too busy living their life
to bother about others. With two boys of age 10 and 2 years, respectively,
we had our own preoccupations. The joy of New York was precisely the fa-
cility to live our own lives with no interference from others.
Sreenath went to PS 6, one of the best public schools in Manhattan, and
Sreekanth began his nursery school next door. Towards the end of our stay,
Sreenath moved to a Catholic school and it was only there that he had to
face colour prejudices from his classmates. His early exposure to life in Man-
hattan equipped him for his later career at Columbia. Sreekanth, my sec-
ond son, began his education in a nursery school in Manhattan and much
later on went to the Bronx High School and Maryland University.
The glitter of Manhattan captivated us. Our exploration of the most
diverse city in the world was frequently interrupted by my visits abroad and
our preoccupation with the children. The deputy permanent representative
at the time, S. V. Purushottam, who died suddenly of a heart attack to-
wards the end of our stay in New York, had made it a point to organise day
picnics outside Manhattan, which delighted the children. Purushottam was
highly regarded both in India and the international circles, and his sudden
demise was a great shock to all of us.
New York afforded many opportunities to interact with senior colleagues
from the ministry who frequented the city for the United Nations and other
meetings. Cuba, as the chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM),
used to invite people from different walks of life to Havana, and for the
visitors to Havana, New York was an attractive transit point. I remember
travelling from New York to Latin America with M. K. Rasgotra, Shankar
Bajpai and S. K. Singh, who were senior officers back in the ministry.
Bajpai had the reputation of being not only a connoisseur of food, but also
a cook. Wherever he went, he located the best local restaurant and dined
there in the evening. This was indeed a treat. It was during one of my trav-
els with him that I landed in Curacao, a Dutch colony near Venezuela. It
appeared as though we suddenly found ourselves in the heart of Europe.
 MY STORY 57

And sure enough, we located a wealthy local Indian there, who had been
appointed many years earlier as India’s honorary consul in Curacao.
Outside the professional circles, our social circle consisted essentially of
some US residents from Kerala, most of whom remained friends of ours for
long. Lilykutty and Mathew Illickal, Vijayan and Radhika, Somasundaran
and Usha, Pitchumony and Prema, and Rita and Thomas were among
them. The Illickals were the doyens of this group. Mathew Illickal had a
great reputation as a thoracic surgeon, while Lilykutty became a commu-
nity leader. Vijayan, one of the first immigrants from Kerala, had many firsts
to his credit. He was the first to start a Malayalam newspaper, a Malayalam
radio programme and screening of Malayalam movies. He was the first to
bring stars from Kerala to entertain the community. He graduated to
produce films in our time and actually shot a feature film called ‘America,
America’, part of it in our apartment, with our doorman as one of the local
actors. It was a hotch-potch crime thriller, which revolved around a report
that an Indian ship was lost in the high seas without leaving a trace.
Mammootty, who later became a mega star on the Malayalam screen, had
only a small role in the movie. I. V. Sasi directed the film with his wife Seema,
the sex symbol of the day, as the leading star. The movie was a success as it
depicted scenes from the United States, including Disney World and other
attractions. Vijayan moved on to other film ventures and television serials,
even while being an executive in a telephone company. Radhika became a
skillful pediatrician and lent support to Vijayan’s ventures.
Somasundaran, a professor of metallurgy at the Columbia University,
won so many awards for his scientific accomplishments that I told him we
would congratulate him next only if he won the Nobel Prize. Pitchumony
reached dizzy heights in gastroenterology in the United States and became
a world authority on the subject. Thomas left the field of medicine to be-
come a leading dealer of furniture in the New York area. Each one of them
is a living example of the flourishing of talent in the right environment.
Basic education in India and the right opportunities in the United States
combine to create many success stories.
After riding high on multilateral work, culminating in the historic Non-
Aligned Summit in New Delhi, a posting to Rangoon as the deputy chief
of mission came as a rude shock. Foreign Secretary Rasgotra had repeatedly
spoken highly of my good work in New York and, therefore, I had expected
58 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

a challenging assignment. But he felt that I should go to Rangoon to

strengthen that mission which had a politician as the ambassador. I had an
offer from Brajesh Mishra to join him as his special assistant when he be-
came the UN Commissioner for Namibia, but Rasgotra absolutely insisted
that it should be Rangoon next, and Rangoon it was.

10

Burma (now Myanmar), which was self-sufficient at one time in food and
fuel, became one of the poorest countries during the lifetime of a single
dictator U Ne Win. One of the early democracies in our neighbourhood,
with which India had fraternal relations, became the laboratory of a
pseudo-socialist megalomaniac who isolated Burma into poverty and back-
wardness. Ne Win’s writ did not run in much of the country, which was
under various insurgent groups. The most flourishing market in Southeast
Asia in the early part of the twentieth century became a haven of smugglers
and drug peddlers. The famed city of the golden pagodas and green parks
became an urban slum, polluted by vintage buses that emitted fumes. Ne
Win’s whims and fancies eliminated English from schools and colleges,
changed driving from the left to the right, and created a military bureaucracy
with a vested interest in his style of socialism. In the Havana Non-Aligned
Summit, Burma severed the last link with the new world by walking out
of the NAM, which it had helped to found. Ne Win developed a thesis
that Burma would have links only with ‘third countries’, those which are
neither its neighbours nor superpowers. According to this policy, he could
deal with Germany, Japan, and Korea, but not with India, the United
States or the USSR.
It was in this strange land that we landed after a delightful journey that
took us from New York to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Tokyo
and Bangkok. Leela Ponnappa in San Francisco, my own brother
Seetharam in Hong Kong, and Sankaran Iyer in Tokyo were our kind hosts
en route. The central bungalow in the Budd Road complex, the traditional
home of the deputy chief of mission, was a far cry from our Madison Av-
enue apartment. But we had our own coconut and fruit trees including a
durian, the fruits of which ‘tasted like heaven, but smelled like hell’. The
 MY STORY 59

other colleagues lived around us and we had a little India in the heart of
Rangoon. The sprawling mansion of the ambassador, just opposite the for-
eign office, had a dozen rooms, a huge compound and a tennis court. The
manager of the State Bank of India occupied it in the golden days of
India Burma relations.
The reputation of the Ambassador G. G. Swell, a tribal politician from
Meghalaya, had reached me long before I was posted to Rangoon. Indira
Gandhi had sent him to Norway to get him out of parliament, where he was
known as a trouble maker. He had served earlier as the deputy speaker of the
Lok Sabha. But he took his job as the ambassador to Norway so seriously
that Gandhi developed some regard for him. He reported extensively on
Norway, which nobody cared to read, but the sheer volume of the reporting
impressed everyone. I was one of the few officers at the ministry who read
them because they were addressed to the foreign secretary, when they were
not addressed to the prime minister, and I had to put up draft replies to the
foreign secretary. Much of what he wrote was from Western publications,
but the very fact that a political appointee was so prolific was in itself a
distinction. After Norway, Swell aspired to go to the United Kingdom or
Canada, but he was given Rangoon, primarily because of his northeast
background. He was not the first Indian ambassador from the northeast and
this was a matter of adverse comment by the Burmese occasionally. Those
from neighbouring states brought their prejudices about Burma to their post,
some of them observed. In fact, when I arrived, the only two diplomatic
officers in the embassy, Swell and Tsewang Topden (an officer from Sikkim),
looked more like Burmese than like Indians. Topden introduced himself as
an Indian diplomat to a diplomat from the Philippines, who thought it was
a joke and replied that he himself was from Germany.
My predecessor Sudhir Devare, a bright and upright officer, had a hard
time with Swell and left without waiting for my arrival. In fact, Swell wrote
to the ministry that he did not need a deputy, as he was capable enough to
manage just with his private secretary and Topden. When I told the Foreign
Secretary Rasgotra that we should respect his wishes in this regard, he told
me that it was not for the ambassador to decide who should assist him and
insisted that I should go there. I learnt from him that Swell was running a
poultry farm in the compound of the residence. He told me that Swell
would be leaving in a few months and that he would make sure that I would
60 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

be left in charge of the embassy after he left. The only brief he gave me was
that I should persuade the ambassador to close down the poultry farm.
Swell accepted me grudgingly but gave me a warm welcome on arrival.
He was quite taken aback when I told him that the foreign secretary had
asked me to get his poultry farm closed. His response was that he was clos-
ing it anyway as he was leaving soon. But he told me that I would not have
much work to do as he would be doing everything himself. He issued an
order giving me the responsibility only for political reporting. I did not
protest but began doing everything insisting that I would exercise my re-
sponsibilities as the deputy. Topden, Col. (now retired General) Prem Puri,
and Counsellor (now retired Director General of Police) Vijay Jain fully co-
operated as they had enough of the quixotic ways of the ambassador.
Swell would wake up at four in the morning each day and after practis-
ing karate (he was a black belt) on the tennis court, which was closed for
tennis, he would come to office at six and dictate a long cable, addressed
either to the prime minister or to the minister for external Affairs on what
he heard on the cocktails circuit the previous day or what he read in the
International Herald Tribune. He also replied to the official mail without con-
sulting anyone. He would read out the cables, written in flowery but faulty
English, to Topden and later to me, and would leave the office before lunch.
I began parallel reporting to the ministry in letters, established contacts in
the foreign office and elsewhere, and began to introduce reforms in the of-
fice. It did not take long for Swell to realise that I could be of some use and
that I was not hostile to him as he believed the rest of the foreign service
to be. In a few months, he began trusting me and entrusted all the work to
me and decided that all papers for him should be routed through me. More-
over, he began praising me in his cables, which astonished those who
thought that his hatred of the foreign service was universal. He sought my
advice when different posts were offered to him. I urged him to accept
Madrid, among all the stations offered, and he was all set to go when the
elections were announced and decided to return to politics rather than go
to Spain. He later contested for the post of President of India, but lost and
returned to Meghalaya, where he died some years later.
I. P. Singh, a scholar diplomat whom I had known during my days in
the ministry, was posted to Rangoon, but he did not come for a full
15 months after the departure of Swell. Even after he came, he told me
 MY STORY 61

that he saw no reason why he should interrupt the good work I was doing
and spent his time writing books. Apart from ceremonies and essential
diplomatic responsibilities, he left me to run the embassy till I myself left for
my first ambassadorial assignment to Fiji in 1986. As for India Burma re-
lations, there was nothing that one could do on the political side, given Ne
Win’s policy of distancing Burma from its neighbours. Trade went on across
the border and through Indian traders, but a visit by the commerce secre-
tary which I organised and a return visit by the trade minister of Burma
yielded only the usual communiqués. We fully exploited the scope for cul-
tural work, which existed because of the Burmese thirst for some diversion
from their drab existence. There were only two newspapers issued by the
government with identical content, with the news and views dished out by
officials. The television concentrated on ideology and Burmese culture.
Thousands of Burmese thronged our cultural evenings and film shows. Vis-
iting artistes from India were a big draw.
The Rangoon Theatre Club, organised essentially by the British Em-
bassy, provided the only stage for English theatre in Burma, and we became
thespians by circumstances. What began as a play-reading experience
turned into full productions under the supervision of Ambassador Nick
Fenn and Sue Fenn, a delightful couple, and I was given important roles in
Charlie’s Aunt and The Thwarting of Baron Bollygrew. The plays took me to
the British residence every day for rehearsals, and it was all fun and frolic
throughout the year. It was an international cast with a few Burmese
thrown in. Only around 30 Burmese families were seen to be mixing so-
cially with the diplomatic corps, but they were everywhere. They did not
seem part of the establishment, but their freedom to mingle with the diplo-
mats caused some suspicion that they were the eyes and ears of the regime.
The plays were staged for several days in a year in the British garden, and
the Burmese came in large numbers to witness the performances. The
British dossier on me obviously had a reference to my acting talents as
British envoys in every capital I went afterwards invited us to play readings
or performances. Nick Fenn was eventually posted to India at the same
time when we were back in India, but Delhi was not the venue for either
of us to indulge in theatrical activities.
The most important legacy of my posting to Burma was the golf game I
acquired there. I had bought a golf set in New York with the help of a
62 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Korean colleague. I remember how confused I was when I found that each
club was of a different size and I was asked to take a hundred balls along. I
also did not know that I would be a lifetime student of the game and never
a master. I brought the set with me to Rangoon, but it took me time to get
initiated into the mysteries of the game. There it lay in a corner of the
house, prompting Lekha to ask each time she saw it why I was not making
use of it. She regretted those exhortations as once I began to play, I got
addicted to the game fairly quickly and I have spent substantial time and
money on the game ever since. With postings such as Fiji, Kenya and the
United States, opportunities to play golf were plentiful and I missed none
of them. My first lessons were with an Indian coach who did not know
much about the game except that he stood with me and made me hit the
ball towards a pagoda at the distance. He instilled in me an interest in the
game and taught me some basics such as the need to keep the head down
while hitting a ball and the importance of a straight left hand and a loose
right. Even today, when I hit a long iron, his words ring in my ears: ‘Strong
grip for long irons!’ I took some more lessons from the Rangoon Golf Club
pro before actually playing on the course. The Burmese pro asked me to for-
get all that I had learnt so far, but my earlier training came in handy on the
course. Rangoon had three golf courses, but one was reserved exclusively for
the armed forces and Ne Win himself played there. The heads of mission
were invited once a year to play there with the Burmese bureaucracy, and
I had two occasions to play there in my capacity as the acting chief of the
embassy. The Burmese officials welcomed opportunities to play with the
diplomats and the best way to meet them was to invite them for a game.
They opened up easily on the course as they did not have to report the
conversation to their superiors. They burst into laughter over golf jokes,
even simple ones like ‘my wife is my handicap!’ One can play golf in many
places, but in Rangoon it was necessary for professional survival. In a closed
society with little opportunity for diplomatic activities, golf provided a wel-
come and absorbing activity.
A small Indian community left behind after the exodus of the Indians
in Burma was a miserable group, which led a hand-to-mouth existence.
Legend has it that Ne Win had requested Nehru to let the rice farmers stay
back to help the farming sector, but today they are some of the most
 MY STORY 63

impoverished people in Burma. Their villages are two of the poorest habi-
tations in Burma. They still grow plenty of paddy, but it is taken away at
nominal prices by the government and they are left with only the broken
rice to eat. They still consider India their home and dream of the day they
will be able to return. Our visits to these villages were nostalgic events for
them. They would save up good quality rice for us and organise a feast with
it. But they never complained about their fate or sought anything from
Mother India. They just wanted to spend time with the representatives of
their homeland, pretending that they were happy and prosperous. It was
like the people of Kerala celebrating the Onam festival to convince their
legendary king Mahabali on his annual visits that they are as happy today
as they were in his time.
The Burma posting was frustrating as we made no headway with the host
government on any of the issues that interested us. The insurgent activities
on the borders affected both India and Burma, but joint operations against
insurgency were not acceptable to Burma. Nor was Burma interested in de-
veloping border trade. The isolationist policies of Burma were not conducive
to the development of relations. The only time that Ne Win showed any
warmth towards India was at the time of the assassination of Indira Gandhi.
The sudden departure of Ne Win from Rangoon on hearing of the news of
the death of Gandhi led to speculation that he had left for India. The em-
bassy had no information that he had left for India, but All India Radio re-
ported the arrival of Ne Win in Delhi, obviously a case of mistaken identity.
It turned out later that Ne Win had left to an undisclosed destination in
Burma to meditate as he was grief-stricken by the news. Later, he made a
condolence visit to Delhi and had a warm meeting with Rajiv Gandhi. Ne
Win characterised himself as an uncle to Rajiv Gandhi, but there was no sign
of such sentiments spilling over to bilateral relations. When we bid for any
commercial deals, we found that we were outbid by Japan and SouthKorea.
We purchased some quantities of rice during my time in the expectation of
generating some goodwill, but even this had no impact on our relationship.
The only accomplishment for which I could claim credit was the fostering
of people-to-people contacts through cultural diplomacy. It should be said
to the credit of the Burmese authorities that they did not place any imped-
iments to cultural and sporting activities.
64 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

My tenure in Rangoon ended abruptly when I was asked to return at

short notice to Delhi to be the coordinator of a ministerial conference of
the NAM. I was posted as high commissioner to Fiji and was preparing to
leave in the middle of 1986, but the summons to Delhi came out of the
blue in January 1986 and that too to leave Rangoon within a couple of
days. I managed to go, but on the understanding that I would be allowed
to return to Rangoon after a few months to wind up and leave. Lekha and
the children stayed back in Rangoon, while I plunged into the task of or-
ganising a major meeting in Delhi.

11

The tradition in the NAM is that the outgoing chairman hosts a ministe-
rial meeting at the end of the three-year tenure to prepare for the next
summit. Since India had successfully organised two major international
conferences, the Non-Aligned Summit and the Commonwealth summit, a
ministerial meeting was considered easy to organise. In fact, I found that the
drill for a major conference was already established in Delhi, and difficul-
ties arose only when any change was sought. Many agencies in Delhi had
developed vested interests in the expenditure on the conferences and, con-
sequently, they resisted any effort to economise. The scales laid down for
accommodation, transport, entertainment, gifts and security were far in
excess of provisions made for such conferences in many countries includ-
ing developed countries. But the moment I tried to scale down these, I was
advised that it was not worth taking the risk of incurring the wrath of one
agency or another. Each of them had the capacity to destroy the impecca-
ble image of India as a conference destination.
The chief co-coordinator Peter Sinai, my old boss in Moscow, and
the Foreign Secretary A. P. Venkateswaran were extremely supportive.
Sinai remarked at the end of the conference that one of my achieve-
ments was that I had eliminated the need for him as chief coordinator.
The conference ran smoothly in terms of logistics as well as substance.
I had the support of an experienced officer Praveen Goel and a keen and
energetic youngster Aloke Sen on the logistics side, and Rajendra
Rathore on the conference side. Dilip Lahiri, as the head of the UN
 MY STORY 65

division, bore the brunt of the substantive responsibilities of the confer-

ence. The conference services, as usual, were provided by the re-
doubtable Mary Penny from Geneva, a veteran of many non-aligned
conferences, who had her own style of dealing with the Indian bureau-
cracy. We did hire some interpreters locally, but Mary Penny resented it
and did not give them responsibilities to commensurate with their qual-
ifications. I continued the practice of hiring foreign service wives to as-
sist in protocol and conference work, and their presence added some
colour and glamour to the conference.
Our strict regulations on yellow fever inoculations for delegates from
infested areas created a number of problems. Several delegates were held
up in other airports and some returned from Delhi when they heard that
they would be quarantined. One particular Francophone African delega-
tion, headed by a deputy minister, arrived without the inoculation, but
refused to return even when threatened with quarantine. I went to the air-
port to apologise to him personally, but he insisted that he had to attend the
conference even if he and his colleagues were quarantined for a few days.
Our health authorities painted a rather rosy picture of the quarantine fa-
cilities and promised them even French magazines to read. I was quite
sceptical, but as the deputy minister was adamant, arrangements were
made for their quarantine. We calculated that they would be able to attend
the meeting on the last day. So off they went in their pen-striped suits in
a guarded police van, and I hoped that I would not have to see them again.
On the last day of the conference, I was on the dias, assisting the chair-
man, when I saw the quarantined delegation walking in and I knew there
would be trouble. I could not disappear as I was required on the dias, but I
tried to hide myself behind an agenda document. The delegation asked for
the floor as soon as they sat down. I distracted the chairman’s attention
elsewhere, but I could not do so for long and the delegation was given the
floor. The deputy minister spoke in elegant French and in measured tones,
but his anger and frustration at being treated like an ordinary criminal be-
came quite evident. He described the room and the food in graphic terms
and he said that in his country even thugs and murderers were treated bet-
ter. I was hoping that he would not recognise me, but soon enough he said
that the gentleman sitting on the left of the chairman had promised him
French newspapers, but there was not even toilet paper in his cell.
66 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

I requested the chairman to apologise to him for the inconvenience and to

advise him to come to India next time with the necessary inoculation cer-
tificates. In a second intervention, the deputy minister said that he would
not come again with or without the certificate as he had already enjoyed
Indian hospitality to last a lifetime.
I left for Fiji as soon as the conference was over. My life and work in Fiji
are covered in the section on the Indian diaspora. My subsequent assignments
as the head of the UN division in the Ministry of External Affairs and as
ambassador and deputy permanent representative to the United Nations in
New York have been dealt with in the section on the United Nations.

12

As ambassador to Fiji, I had a huge parish, consisting mostly of water, with

seven countries in it Papua New Guinea (PNG), Vanuatu, Solomon Islands,
Nauru, Tonga, Kiribati and Tuvalu. New Caledonia, a French territory then,
was also under my charge. Accreditation visits had to be necessarily few and
far between because of the long distances and infrequent flight connections.
But I managed to make several trips to those countries to promote tradition-
ally good relations between them and India.
PNG merited special attention because of its population and natural
wealth. We also had a good number of Indian nationals working there.
Australia dominated the scene, but the country had ambitions to diversify
its external relations to include India and China. The country had tremen-
dous diversity, ranging from fairly developed regions near the seashore to
totally primitive areas with pitiful living conditions in the highlands. Crime
was very common because of this disparity. The political situation was also
unstable with frequent changes of government. Every time I visited the
capital, Port Moresby, there was a new prime minister. The governor gen-
eral, who remained the same throughout my assignment, was quite friendly.
He was insistent that he would not break protocol, but he was quite will-
ing to bend it to come to my suite in the hotel for informal dinners. One
incident we remember about Port Moresby is that the hotel sprinklers got
activated in the middle of the night, flooding the whole room. We had to
 MY STORY 67

run down the stairs carrying a little boy, son of a friend who had decided to
spend the night with us, and a sitar, we had brought in to entertain the
governor general. The visit of an Indian naval ship to Port Moresby gave us
a good opportunity to entertain the PNG elite. We opened a separate mis-
sion in PNG not long after I left.
Vanuatu was known as the maverick of the South Pacific because the
prime minister of the islands, Walter Lini, developed close relations with
the Soviet Union, thus challenging the traditional pro-Western position of
the South Pacific states. He had also given the Soviets fishing rights in
Vanuatu’s waters in return for a substantial sum. I met President Sokomanu
of Vanuatu at the hotel I stayed the night before the presentation of my
credentials. When he learnt that I played golf, he decided to advance the
credentials ceremony to early morning so that he could play a round of golf
with me after the ceremony. Protocol would not have allowed him to play
with an unaccredited high commissioner.
Sokomanu came to India on a state visit during my time. Lekha and I
accompanied the presidential couple to Delhi and Kerala. We gave them
enough opportunities to play golf, including at the Trivandrum golf club.
We heard much after we left that Sokomanu became active in politics, con-
tested elections and even went to prison for treason.
Solomon Islands was the poorest of the states in the South Pacific, but
it had many festivals and ceremonies to which we got invited occasionally.
It was there that they gifted me a pig, which was killed in front of us. I was
worried as to what I would do with it, but was relieved to learn that it would
be cooked and served to the guests as my contribution to the festivities.
Solomon Islands had a territorial dispute with Papua New Guinea, which
flared up occasionally to create some excitement.
Nauru is unique as it is just a single island right in the middle of the
South Pacific. It is supposed to have been formed with the droppings of mi-
gratory birds, making the soil rich in phosphate. The people of Nauru sim-
ply had to scoop up the phosphate and export it to become rich. After years
of mining, the island had become a wasteland, though there was some phos-
phate left for a few more years. The fun-loving Nauruans engaged the
Philippinos to mine the phosphate and the Indians to run the administra-
tion of the island, giving themselves time to enjoy their wealth. Nearly a
68 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

hundred Indian civil servants, some of them senior or retired IAS officers,
served in key positions in Nauru. They were instrumental in developing
good relations between India and Nauru. Among Nauru’s investments
abroad was a major share in the Paradeep Phosphates.
The foreign secretary of Nauru during my time was Professor V. S. Mony,
an expert on international law from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New
Delhi. Though there were no bilateral issues to deal with, I visited Nauru
several times basically to keep up the morale of the Indian community in
splendid isolation there. Nauru had its own airline, with convenient flights
from Suva.
Tonga was fascinating as the only surviving monarchy in the South
Pacific. King Taufahau Tupou IV dominated the scene both physically (he
was named ‘the heaviest monarch’ in the world) and politically. He had
great interest in world affairs and had visited many countries, including
India. He had interesting things to ask me about India every time I met
him as he followed developments over the BBC and VOA. The celebra-
tions of his seventieth birthday kept the country and the accredited diplo-
mats feasting for five days. He was a popular monarch. It was only after his
passing away that the people of Tonga began to challenge the monarchy
and to aspire for democracy.
Kiribati (pronounced kiri-baaz) and Tuvalu were the smallest coun-
tries in my parish, and visiting them meant long hours of flying in a small
aircraft. Each time I went there, I had to stay at least for three days of
because of infrequent flight connections to the rest of the world. The
airports were nothing more than grazing grounds, but the entire popu-
lation of the islands, including the highest officials, came to the airport
each time a flight touched down. President Tabai of Kiribati was a major
figure in the South Pacific Forum because of his personal attributes and
charisma. He received my credentials in shorts and bush shirt, and
explained to me that he was wearing leather shoes to match the formal
clothes that I was wearing.
I was a true travelling salesman for India in these islands, armed with
nothing more than the national flag and the national anthem. We had a
small technical cooperation programme to offer, but their needs were met
by the regional powers, Australia and New Zealand. Tourism from these
countries sustains the economy. The United States, the United Kingdom,
 MY STORY 69

Japan and South Korea also assist these islands in many ways. Taiwan’s
‘silver bullet diplomacy’ has made inroads into some of these countries, but
China is in the process of resisting it. I sensed considerable goodwill for
India in these islands, particularly because of our Commonwealth connec-
tions and democratic traditions. The small investments we are making in
these islands pay us rich dividends in the international community as most
of them are now members of the United Nations.

13

Kris Srinivasan had become the foreign secretary by the time I completed
my second stint in New York. Unlike his predecessor Mani Dixit,
Srinivasan did not play favourites. He had suggested my name for the
post of high commissioner to Mauritius to succeed Shyam Saran. I was
consulted by the prime minister’s office and I gladly accepted it. But I
learnt from Shyam Saran that he wanted to stay on for another year, and
then Nairobi was suggested to me. I was happy about Nairobi, as it was
also the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) and Habitat. With my experience of environment negotiations,
I thought that Nairobi would give me another chance to work on mul-
tilateral issues. I did not realise that Lekha and I would face a big phys-
ical challenge there. The attack we faced was such that we had to be
virtually reborn to survive it.
I arrived in Nairobi in July 1995 straight from New York after a stopover
in Johannesburg to be with my brother Seetharam and his wife Deepa. I
plunged straight into bilateral and multilateral work, and I liked the Nairobi
weather more than anything else. When Lekha arrived in September, I had
moved to the India House, a rather ancient building in a sprawling com-
pound. I was aware of the law and order problems in Nairobi, but the im-
pressive wall around the compound, the electric wire on top of it and the
Indian police guards gave us an illusion of security. My predecessor Kiran
Doshi too assured me that nothing would happen inside the compound
though there were dangers in driving around in Nairobi. We heard many
horror stories, but every one assured us that there would be no security risk
at all at the India House. We were warned that giving full access to workers
70 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

to the whole house would be risky, but we could not but order major
renovation as the house was in a bad shape.
I was all set to go to Accra to participate in a meeting of the heads of
mission, called by Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. Shyam Saran and
Cherry George, our envoys in Mauritius and Botswana, respectively, were
to arrive in Nairobi in the next two days to go with me to Accra. But on
the night of 4 November 1995, on the same night that Yitzhak Rabin was
assassinated, we were the victims of a vicious attack in our own bedroom
by three Africans, who gained access to the compound through a tunnel
under the wall. Some Kenyan women entertained our own guards at the
time of the attack. An hour past midnight, I woke up with someone flash-
ing a torch at my face and as soon as we got up, we heard shots being fired
into the air. I switched on the light and also pressed the ‘panic button’ on
the wall behind the bed. For the next 10 minutes or so, the intruders kept
beating me on the head with batons. Lekha also was hit. But neither of us
fell down. Finally, one of them hit me on the right leg, broke it and began
running. We kept pleading with them to take anything and spare us. My
son Sreekanth came into the room and picked up his mother and saw the
men running away. Lekha telephoned the guards, my deputy Gurjit Singh,
and Dr Heda, an orthopedist, whom we had met earlier. Within minutes
the police came in response to the alarm and others in the compound
arrived to take us to the hospital. A team of doctors had come to the
hospital to take care of us; both of us were in the operation theatre
within minutes of the attack.
Lekha had a few broken ribs and needed 20 stitches on her head. I
had a broken left arm, a fractured right leg and had to receive more than
100 stitches on my head. But we were declared out of danger and we were
stitched up and bandaged by the time the day broke and the news brought
hundreds of anxious people, particularly Indians, to the hospital. My
brother Seetharam came to Nairobi from Cape Town to take care of me.
Sreenath flew in from New York. With him was an old friend Atul
Panchal, who came for 24 hours to make sure that I was fine. The arrival
of a doctor from New York made some news till it came to be known that
he was an obstetrician. I took a conscious decision to project the attack
as attempted burglary to prevent any racial conflict. Gurjit Singh was also
 MY STORY 71

instructed to brief the press accordingly. But in actual fact, it was a political
move by the opposition to discredit the government of Daniel Arap Moi
and to scare the Indians into believing that Moi alone would not be able
to provide security to them. Some opposition leaders had sent me a mes-
sage that the Indian businessmen should provide fund to the opposition
also. My own contention that I would not interfere in internal politics in
Kenya and the lack of response from the Indians must have infuriated
some people.
Apart from this obvious theory, which was backed by the president,
several others were floated. The opposition claimed that the attack was
masterminded by the president to blame the opposition. One of the the-
ories was that the consular section of the high commission had got some-
one arrested for paying consular fees with counterfeit currency, and he
had threatened vengeance. I was unaware of this incident till the Saudi
ambassador told me about it when he came to see me in the hospital.
Lekha’s sister Geetha and her husband Gopalakrishnan came to Nairobi
to take care of us. It was Geetha, who first suspected that my leg was not
healing well and insisted on getting a second opinion. I flew to New York
and underwent another surgery at the hospital for special surgery in
Manhattan. The surgeon removed the old metal plates, which turned out
to be ineffective, and inserted a pin from my knee to the ankle inside the
bone. Before the surgery, I attended a preparatory conference for Habitat II
at the United Nations, and I was appointed its ‘wheel chairman’. The joke
in the United Nations was that I had attempted skiing in Nairobi.
All our friends, whom we had just left, came to spend time with us. My
hospital room had a party every evening as I was not in pain and there was
no risk to my life. The surgery was so efficient that I was able to discard
the wheel chair, which I had used for nearly three months in Nairobi, and
began moving around with the support of a walking stick. To receive me
on my return to Nairobi was my mother-in-law, who stayed for a while to
take care of us.
The government of India was rather impersonal about the whole
episode. Foreign Secretary Salman Haider conveyed the concern of the
prime minister to me, but the Prime Minister Narasimha Rao himself, who
knew me well, did not care to speak to me directly though he was informed
72 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

that I could not join him in Accra because of the attack. Secretary
K. Raghunath called me a few times to enquire about my health. Minis-
ter Pranab Mukherji met President Moi in New Zealand soon after the at-
tack, but did not express any concern about the incident. In fact, he
minimised the gravity of the incident by saying that I was fine. The Min-
ister of State for External Affairs Salman Khurshid, however, stopped in
Nairobi to see me and to wish me well. A security officer, who came to
look into the security requirements of the mission at my request, was
keener to find alibis for the failure of the security guards than to prevent
further mishaps. No harm was done to the guards except that they were
returned to their parent departments. But my suggestions for strengthen-
ing the security of the mission were approved, like locking the barn after
the horse had bolted. By the time I left, the Indian high commission be-
came the most secure place in the whole of Nairobi. I took the whole
episode in my stride, and did not even ask for a transfer out of Nairobi. I
said that only three out of the 30 million Kenyans had attacked me and
I would not run away. Since I had pledged to do everything necessary to
promote India Kenya relations, I should not mind spilling some blood for
it, I said.
In a way, the attack on us endeared us to the Kenyan leaders, includ-
ing President Moi. They appreciated the fact that I did not complain in
any way or run away. When I was going to attend a Habitat conference
in Istanbul, where some countries were about to move that Habitat
should be shifted out of Nairobi for security reasons, the Kenyan foreign
minister told me that I should be the best person to defend Kenya. I
joked with him that I should tell them that it did not pain me at all when
I was attacked! The president, who never attended diplomatic functions,
made an exception in my case and inaugurated the ‘Made in India
Show’, which was staged in Nairobi by the Confederation of Indian In-
dustry (CII). Many Indians, who came to the hospital instinctively, be-
came our friends later. The sympathy turned into goodwill and friendship
in many cases.
The cult of violence in Nairobi was so widespread that a couple of mur-
ders a week did not make any news. An average of 50 Asians got killed
every year, but still there was no Asian exodus from the country. Even the
government could deal with the opposition with violence and attribute it
 MY STORY 73

to normal life in Nairobi. When a leader of the opposition was badly beaten,
I expressed some concern to one of Kenya’s political leaders and his
response was, ‘We will kill him one of these days!’ Elimination of political
rivals was nothing unusual in Kenyan democracy.
A visit by Sonia Gandhi in 1997, a few months before she entered
active politics, was a memorable event in Nairobi. She came to attend the
board meeting of an association of public schools, including the Doon
School. Apart from her, the board had on it Nelson Mandela, King
Constantine of Greece and the Duke of York, but the others, except King
Constantine, were represented by their nominees. Sonia Gandhi took her
conference very seriously and spent time at the meetings. She attended a
large reception in my house and also went to a ladies’ meeting organised by
Lekha. She declined to answer political questions, including those about
the possibility of her joining politics. But she addressed the ladies and
briefed them about the activities of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. One
amusing incident was when someone asked her whether she would con-
sider heading an international school. She just smiled, but my friend Kishen
Gehlot remarked that she was refusing to accept even the post of the prime
minister. Why should she accept any other post?

14

Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral ordered my posting to Washington as

the deputy chief of mission in the Indian Embassy when the post became
available unexpectedly. When we left Nairobi at the end of 1997, we had
a fund of goodwill, a large number of friends, both Africans and Indians,
and an improved relationship with Kenya.
My life and work in Washington are covered in Chapter three, ‘Nuclear
Winter, Kargil Spring’. It was when I was in Washington that my father
passed away in Pune, where my brother Madhusudanan was a colonel in
the Army Medical Corps. I went to see him in the hospital and spent a few
days with him. I knew when I left him in a coma that I would not see him
again. A few days after I returned to Washington, I received word that he
was no more. I spent a few minutes praying for him and resumed my work
as he would have wished me to do. He must have been pleased to see his
74 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

sons rise in their respective careers without giving him any reason for con-
cern. My mother took her husband’s death bravely and continued to inspire
us and pray for us constantly.
In 2000, we moved to Vienna, my final posting before retirement.
Chapter five, ‘Quest for Balance’, deals with my experience with the In-
ternational Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Austria. One of the joys
of my posting to Vienna was that my mother came to stay with us there.
My elder brother’s daughter Sangeetha died at the age of 25 when I was
in India for a short visit from Vienna. She was diagnosed with lupus earlier,
but we were assured that she could live a full life if she remained on med-
ication. But unexpected complications arose and she succumbed to her ill-
ness. A mysterious factor in her story was an uncanny link between her
illness and that of my brother’s father-in-law Nirmalan Thampi. Thampi,
who made all arrangements for Sangeetha’s engagement, suffered a stroke
on the day she got engaged. Sangeetha’s illness came to light within weeks
of her wedding and both of them deteriorated simultaneously. They died
within hours of each other, leaving us wondering whether it was a mere co-
incidence or whether there was something about their lives, which is be-
yond comprehension.
My accreditation visits to Slovenia were productive and pleasant. As
part of Yugoslavia, Slovenia had developed interest in India, and the con-
tacts remained even after Slovenia became independent. I found that I al-
ready had two friends in high places in Slovenia when I arrived in Ljubljana
in early 2001. The Yugoslav Permanent Representative Ignac Glob, who
hosted a farewell lunch for me at the United Nations, when I left New York
for Yangon, was a permanent secretary for foreign affairs. We walked the
memory lane together every time we met in Ljubljana and also caught up
with our changed worldviews. Having been a champion of the NAM for
many years, Golob had become a devout European Unionist. We were both
greatly looking forward to visit India, together with his president, but the
visit was postponed at the last minute because of the illness of President
K. R. Narayanan.
Golob was of great help to me in handling the postponement of the
visit. Everything was set for the visit and I had gone to Ljubljana for a
final briefing. Iwas just about to leave the hotel for my audience with
 MY STORY 75

President Kucan when a message came that the visit should be post-
poned. I was in a dilemma as to whether I should go to break the news
to the president. Fortunately, I got Golob on the phone to share my
predicament. He was his usual confident self and asked me to relax while
he contacted the president. In a few minutes, he called me to say that
the president would still receive me to wish the president of India a
speedy recovery. The disappointment of the president was obvious, but
I was glad that I did not have to break the news to the president. We
had a good conversation, but the visit could not be organised before
President Kucan left office.
Golob helped me out on another occasion when I had to secure the
support of Slovenia on a vote on self-determination in the United Nations.
The vote was called for by India because Pakistan injected the Kashmir
issue into a consensus resolution in the Third Committee. Slovenia, a great
champion of self-determination, would normally have voted for the reso-
lution, regardless of the India Pakistan angle. But at my insistence, Golob
intervened and pressed for an abstention. Finally, the Slovene representa-
tive was asked to stay out of the room when the vote took place, and thus
he did not participate in the vote, which was the best that could be done
in the circumstances. Golob was considered a potential candidate for the
presidency, but he died unexpectedly a few months before I went to Slove-
nia for my farewell visit.
Another Slovene friend Danilo Turk was the permanent representative
of Slovenia to the United Nations during my second stint in New York. He
later became an assistant secretary general in the United Nations and was
responsible for India. We had differed on some issues when we were col-
leagues in the United Nations, but we kept a good relationship when I was
accredited to Slovenia.
With a population of three million, Slovenia made rapid strides after
independence and became a member of the European Union and North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The disappearing signs of a socialist econ-
omy were visible as we drove from Vienna to Ljubljana, but the standard of
living was much higher than that of neighbouring Croatia. Unlike Croatia,
Slovenia had a peaceful transition to independence and a good leadership.
Koper, a very good port, and several industrial units, inherited from
76 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Yugoslavia were put to good use and Italian tourists contributed to the
growth of the economy. Slovenia opened a mission in New Delhi as a part
of the diversification of its foreign policy, and India appointed an honorary
consul in Ljubljana in recognition of the growing trade relationship
between the two countries. During my time, we managed to negotiate all
the basic agreements and treaties to promote trade and economic relations.
Slovenia has also an interest in mystic India, which we encouraged with
cultural events and personal contacts.
The Alps Mountains, which extend into Slovenia from Austria, give
Slovenia its mountainous landscape and its magnificent lakes. The Bled
lake on the outskirts of Ljubljana is glorious in summer and winter.
Marshall Tito’s villa is now a hotel, where we stayed on occasions. A
walk around the lake, which took more than an hour, was always an
exhilarating experience.
India and Slovenia collaborated in the International Centre for the Pro-
motion of Enterprises (ICPE), a relic of the active involvement of Yugoslavia
in the NAM. India continued to bear much of the costs of the ICPE even
after the break up of Yugoslavia though most of the other non-aligned
countries lost interest. In recognition of this involvement, India was asked to
provide a director for many years, but by mutual agreement, a senior Slovene
diplomat was appointed director during my time. An Indian deputy director
was also appointed. We chose to remain engaged in the centre, as it would
have some value in the changed context of Slovenia as a member of the
European Union.

15

Pandit Nehru said in the parliament once that in the IFS, the govern-
ment gets two people to work for one salary. The spouses play an impor-
tant role in diplomacy, not just as hostesses and ‘glorified cooks’ as some
of them characterise themselves, but as visible symbols of their nation.
Many wives have sacrificed their professional careers to cope with their
diplomatic responsibilities. In the old days, lady officers had to leave the
service if they got married, but now foreign service couples are posted to-
gether to the extent possible. The spouses have to remain intellectually
 MY STORY 77

alive and knowledgeable in order to be able to have intelligent conversa-

tions and to correct impressions about their culture. This was part of the
reason for the government to discourage foreign service officers from mar-
rying foreigners. The recent liberalisation of this policy has only enriched
the corps of foreign service wives. Diplomatic life plays havoc with the fam-
ily life and education of children, but many wives like mine have seen life
abroad as an opportunity to develop their talents, acquire new skills and
give their children the best possible education. Considering the stresses
and strains of their lives, it is truly creditable that there are many success
stories of spouses as professionals, musicians, dances, painters and writers.
I had seen Lekha dancing in the college and friends commented that
she danced her way into my heart. I encouraged her to continue her danc-
ing, which blossomed as she learnt newer forms of Indian classical dances
and even foreign dance forms and began performing abroad. Her dancing
career extended from Tokyo to Vienna, and she was invited to perform even
outside my jurisdiction. A dancing ambassadorial wife is rare in any diplo-
matic service. On many occasions, we were both asked to perform; she
would give a dance recital after I delivered my address. She won much ac-
claim as a Bharatanatyam dancer and was in great demand at every place
of my posting.
Encounters with various cultures and venues inspired Lekha to learn
oil painting also. She mixed various styles in her creations and held exhi-
bitions in different capitals alone and together with other artists. The tran-
sition from art to charity was a natural evolution for Lekha. She hit upon
the idea that she could raise resources from her paintings and dance per-
formances for charity work back home in India, and she established ‘Karuna
Charities’ for the purpose. ‘Karuna’ grew into a multi-national, multi-
purpose charity organisation and helped the needy in different parts of
India and also in countries like Kenya. Her work helped establish various
groups around her, some of whom proved more durable and intimate than
the official and personal circles I had cultivated. Some of our best friends
around the globe, Mathew and Lily Illickal, Jayant and Amrit Kalotra,
Charlie and Mary Kannankeril, Kishen and Rita Gehlot, and Dinu and
Sheelu Bhattessa, were Karuna activists.
Our farewell to Vienna and the foreign service and my sixtieth birth-
day were celebrated together on 17 June 2004 at a reception in the rose
78 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

garden of our Vienna home. Mohamed ElBaradei, who celebrated his own
birthday on the same day, and our other friends from all walks of life came
to the event. From India, we had Lekha’s brother Mohan and his wife
Latha. We were deeply touched by the warmth of the affection we received
from each of them. We left Vienna on 1 July 2004 with a sense of gratitude
and elation.
 Chapter Two
Magic of Multilateralism

United in name, but divided in reality: the United Nations hides differ-
ences, disputes and disparities behind words. Themes and issues may vary,
ranging from the mundane to the exotic, but a good wordsmith can find
consensual conclusions to the most contentious debates. The magic of
words is as much at play in the United Nations as in literature. I witnessed
this reality at every multilateral forum I was in, from the Commonwealth
Summit in Lusaka in 1979 to the meeting of the board of governors of the
IAEA in Vienna in 2004.
The first multilateral conference I ever attended was a fiasco for India.
Mercifully, my contribution to it was nearly zero. The venue was Lusaka, the
capital of Zambia, where a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
(CHOGM) was held in the summer of 1979. Extraordinary events had taken
place in India just before the conference. Prime Minister Morarji Desai had
just come back from a tour to the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia and Ger-
many, when he found that the prime ministerial rug had just been pulled
from under his feet. I was a member of the entourage of the prime minister and
saw for myself how his son Kanti Desai came back, loaded with tonnes of gifts
from these countries. Desai was supposed to go to Lusaka for the meeting
and his sudden fall left a vacuum not only in the country but also at the meet-
ing. As the nation awaited developments with bated breath, the Ministry of
External Affairs was gearing up for a new prime minister and external affairs
minister. As the special assistant to the foreign secretary, I had collected a
80 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

bundle of notes from the senior officers in the ministry to be submitted to

the new external affairs minister. This was in addition to a fat volume, which
was already prepared for Vajpayee and Desai for the Lusaka meeting. By the
time Charan Singh emerged as prime minister and Shyam Nandan Mishra as
external affairs minister, it was already time for the Foreign Secretary Jagat
Mehta and other senior officials (A. Madhavan, Alfred Gonsalves and I. P.
Singh) to leave for Lusaka for the senior officials meeting.
I was given the responsibility of briefing the new external affairs min-
ister, preparing him for the trip and accompanying him to Lusaka. Mehta
and I reached the residence of the external affairs minister minutes after
the swearing-in ceremony. Mehta introduced me to Mishra and said that
I would take care of everything till he reached Lusaka and that he would
take care of Mishra from there. I was asked to sit in the minister’s bed-
room with my bundle of papers, waiting for the minister to return from
the crowd outside that had come to felicitate the son of Bihar, who had
realised his dream. Once a parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister
Nehru, Mishra brought the Desai government down and helped Charan
Singh to become the prime minister so that he could become the exter-
nal affairs minister of India. He would come in occasionally into the
bedroom, and as soon as I began with the organisational chart of the
Ministry of External Affairs, he would be called away by another group of
admirers, who had come with garlands. Three days passed by and I did not
make much headway into the policy briefs, not even the ones required for
the Lusaka meeting.
The election of the next secretary general of the Commonwealth was
on the agenda of the Lusaka meeting and the serving Secretary General
Sridath Ramphal had offered to serve another term. According to cus-
tom, most governments including India had agreed to another term for
Ramphal, a few months ahead of the meeting. But just about two months
before the meeting, Prime Minister Desai decided to put forward Jagat
Mehta’s candidature for the post and asked the missions concerned to as-
certain his chances. Most missions promptly replied that their hosts had
already committed to Ramphal and that India had no chance to get the
post. I believe that the British and the Australians had encouraged
Mehta to stay in the race for a final decision to be taken in Lusaka.
Mehta had expected that he would be made the chief executive of the
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 81

Commonwealth Fund as a compromise. Desai agreed that Mehta’s can-

didature should be kept alive till the retreat of the leaders in Zambia.
He was expected to strike a compromise, personally, on the issue among
the leaders.
Mehta did speak to Mishra about the matter of the secretary general
before he left. Mishra, when he heard that Desai was to discuss this per-
sonally at Lusaka, felt confident that he could do the same and assured
Mehta that he would look into it. He also said that he would read the
brief on the way. My briefing did not go far because of Mishra’s other pre-
occupations. But I got the impression that he was attentive and serious.
In between, I had to take him to the navy clinic to get him inoculated
against yellow fever, arrange for his passport and other formalities. Pack-
ing seemed simple as he just put one achkan set and a shaving set into a
suitcase provided by the ministry. In the plane, I sat next to him and went
through the briefs. He hardly asked any questions, and I did not have
even an inkling of his temper, about which I learnt later. In London, we
were at the high commissioner’s grand residence and Mishra appeared
comfortable enough.
When we landed in Lusaka, the foreign secretary and other officers re-
ceived him. President Kenneth Kaunda also happened to be at the airport
to receive a head of state. When he saw Mishra, he took him aside for a few
minutes, welcomed him and said that they should have an early opportu-
nity to discuss the question of the secretary general. Mishra wisely said that
he needed a little more time, but imagined that Kaunda would raise the
matter with him again. My senior colleagues were anxious to know what
kind of external affairs minister we had, and I gave them glowing accounts
of his receptiveness and politeness.
Once we were at the guest house and the minister started asking ques-
tions, my senior colleagues grew suspicious of my judgement of the man.
They thought that either I was being polite or sycophantic because he re-
vealed a quarrelsome, suspicious and assertive personality. His ego was such
that he was not amenable to advice and exuded overconfidence. They
sensed that we had a recipe for disaster on our hands. I defended myself by
saying that he was perfect till he reached Lusaka, but they did not seem to
believe it. Briefing him was painful, as he seemed to know all the answers
and that made the officials doubly worried.
82 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

The main theme of the CHOGM was Rhodesia, as its liberation was
just around the corner and Jagat Mehta himself was heavily involved in
the negotiations for a framework for the birth of Zimbabwe, and the of-
ficials had done a considerable work on the declaration. We were not sure
how the question of the secretary general would be handled, but the min-
ister appeared very clear as to how he would handle it. He kept his plans
to himself in the expectation that there was time to think about the al-
ternatives. The summit began the next day, and the leaders discussed
much of the agenda by the evening. To our surprise, Kaunda suddenly
announced that he would like the heads of delegations to stay back while
the others and the secretariat officials withdrew. We frantically enquired
what the subject for the heads was and we were told that Nauru’s appli-
cation for membership of the Commonwealth would be discussed. We ad-
vised the minister to support Nauru and all of us left, leaving our minister
to deal with his colleagues.
We waited for the minister with bated breath for more than an hour, won-
dering why Nauru should take so long. At this point, Madhavan and I went
for a walk just outside the guest house, and we ran into S. S. Nair, a reporter
for The Statesman, who had come from London to cover the summit. He
greeted us by saying that our minister had made a fool of himself and told us
his version of what happened at the meeting. According to him, Kaunda told
the leaders that he would like to dispose off the question of the election of the
secretary general quickly, as there was near consensus on another term for
Ramphal. India had a candidate and Malawi had not indicated its position.
At this point, the Indian foreign minister took the floor and asked a number
of questions about the procedure adopted for the election. He said that his
own candidate was not important, but he wanted to know how Kaunda had
arrived at his judgement and demanded transparency in such matters.
Kaunda and others were polite to him initially, but that angered Mishra even
more and he challenged the whole procedure as though he was arguing
before a district magistrate. Kaunda lost his patience and told him that his
officers were misguiding him. This was the last straw for Mishra, as he prided
himself as his own man. He castigated Kaunda for that remark and said how
he had long experience in foreign policy under Nehru and that he was sure
of what he was talking about. The atmosphere became bad and Kaunda sug-
gested that he was being insulted in his own country! Ziau-ur-Rehman of
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 83

Bangladesh saved the situation by suggesting that, for the present occa-
sion, Ramphal should be elected. But India would be requested to sub-
mit a paper on how elections should be conducted in the
Commonwealth. This satisfied both sides as the decision on Ramphal
was taken and Mishra felt vindicated by the invitation to submit his ideas
in writing. Nair said that he had filed a story on this fiasco on the basis
of a briefing by the Secretariat. Apparently, an Indian official in the Sec-
retariat, who had close links with Ramphal, had put out the gory details
of the incident.
Madhavan and I rushed back to the guest house, where Mishra was tri-
umphantly narrating how he stood up to the presidents and prime minis-
ters to stress our case for proper procedure. Jagat Mehta and others realised
that the whole thing was a disaster, and instructed that the incident should
be kept totally confidential from the media. We then broke the news that
Nair had already filed a story and that it would hit the headlines in India
the very next day. The hunt for damage control began immediately and the
minister decided, with the concurrence of all of us present, that he should
brief the Indian media immediately about our version of the incident, par-
ticularly to stress that our concern was about proper procedure and not the
candidature of Mehta. I contacted Nair and two other Indian journalists at
a dinner party and invited them for a briefing by the minister, and Mishra
told them the whole story as it happened. Nair informed the minister that
he had heard the same story and that he had filed it. To his question as to
whether the minister would write to Kaunda, the minister replied that he
would do that very firmly and gave an idea of what the letter would con-
tain. This added spice to the story that Nair had already written, and he
must have filed another story the same night.
By the time the briefing was over, we knew that serious damage had
been done. After the minister retired for the night, we started wondering
what to do with the promised letter. Madhavan strongly argued that no
such letter should be sent. But the others felt that since the minister had
promised a letter and had also told the press about it, some kind of a
letter should be sent. High Commissioner Natwar Singh, who had no love
lost for either the minister or for Jagat Mehta, volunteered to take the letter
personally to Kaunda. The rest of the night was spent writing the letter,
and it was dispatched after the minister had added his own barbs to it.
84 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

I must confess that all of us misread the possible reaction in India

totally. We felt that public opinion in India would be outraged if we did
not stand up to Kaunda, and all our efforts were to prove that India
stood firm in its position. But the reaction in India was that Jagat Mehta
had used the innocent minister to get a top job for himself and having
failed in it, he had wrought vengeance. So the public sympathy in India
was for Kaunda and not for us. We discovered this only when we got
the press clippings and received a call from Secretary Eric Gonsalves,
conveying the displeasure of Prime Minister Charan Singh about the
conduct of the Indian delegation. The conference went on for three
more days and we were involved in other issues, but Nair kept a steady
stream of reporting that the Indian delegation was doing nothing except
abusing Kaunda and Ramphal. By the time the conference ended, we
had a collection of stories, editorials and commentaries, portraying
Mishra as a pawn in the hands of an ambitious Mehta. Kaunda and
Ramphal were portrayed as old and loyal friends of India, who were
betrayed by the Charan Singh government.
Mishra, Mehta and I travelled back via London, while the others took
some other route. Halfway through the flight to London, Mehta gave me
a letter addressed to the minister and asked me to read it and hand it over
to the minister. It was a letter of resignation. Mehta said in the letter that
he took the full responsibility for the events in Lusaka, and that he wanted
to be relieved of the post of foreign secretary on return to India. I briefly dis-
cussed the letter with Mehta and agreed that this would be a good strategy
to contain the situation. But Mishra just refused to announce that Mehta
had submitted his resignation. On arrival in London, he maintained the
old line that we had stood up against British and Zambian machinations
and taught them a lesson or two.
The atmosphere at the Delhi airport, when we reached there, was
somber. Gonsalves told Mehta that the prime minister was very upset and
the public opinion was strongly against him. The minister declined to speak
to the waiting journalists and announced a press conference the next day
in South Block. In our briefings next day, we suggested the minister that he
should use the resignation letter of the foreign secretary to appease public
opinion, but he was adamant that he would handle it in his own way. The
press was very hostile and the minister tried to take the credit for putting
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 85

Kaunda in his place. The press conference was a bigger fiasco than the
conference in Lusaka. I remember The Statesman carrying a cartoon the
next day showing Shyam Nandan Mishra at the customs at Delhi airport
and saying, ‘I have nothing to declare except my genius!’
Jagat Mehta paid a heavy price for the events in Lusaka, even though
he was not entirely responsible for them. He was interested in the job of the
secretary general, but he had realised early enough that he had no chance
to get it. He had advised the minister that his candidature should be with-
drawn at the appropriate moment, and he had expected that the subject
would come up only at the retreat of the heads of delegations at the end of
the summit. No strategy could be worked out, as Kaunda decided to raise
the issue on the first day itself. At any rate, he had never suggested that the
election should be challenged on procedural grounds. Any experienced
person in multilateral diplomacy would have extended support to Ram-
phal, the moment Kaunda announced that he had the support of 46 of the
48 member states. Mishra’s electoral reform was seen as a ploy planted on
Mishra by Mehta, and there was no one to tell the story. The foreign
service itself put the blame on the foreign secretary, as he had no dearth of
enemies. My feeble efforts to defend him were dismissed as a pure syco-
phancy. The irony of the whole sequence of events was that the Charan
Singh government used the Lusaka fiasco as an excuse to dismiss Mehta as
a foreign secretary and told him that he had resigned in any case. That was
the ‘most unkindest cut of all!’
Lusaka was a real shock, as I had not imagined that a minor mishandling
of an election issue at a multilateral forum would be so traumatic. Though
the minister was solely to blame for the mishap, the entire Ministry of Exter-
nal Affairs and the foreign secretary, in particular, had to take the blame.
Lusaka remained a blot on the ministry for quite some time though most
people did not know the details. Our own colleagues were the worst critics.
I remember trying to clear the air about the incident to a senior colleague at
her dinner table. She totally distrusted my version and threatened to deny
me dinner if I persisted with my arguments. She knew Jagat Mehta too well
to believe my story, she said. The lesson I learnt from Lusaka was that expe-
rience is very important in multilateral diplomacy. The art of retreat and sav-
ing face, when faced with certain defeat, is as important as winning. Every
nation pursues its own interests and only coincidence of interests can bring
86 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

countries together. Identifying such instances of coincidence and exploiting

them is at the heart of multilateral work.

My second experience of multilateral diplomacy in the company of the same

minister, Shyam Nandan Mishra, at the Sixth Non-Aligned Summit in
Havana in 1979 was comic, as my task was to take care of the minister’s
programme. His queer habits and bad temper became evident in Havana,
but the impact of his presence was confined largely to the Indian delega-
tion. The minister had nothing to do with the substance of the summit, as
our officials, under the leadership of Brajesh Mishra, who was the permanent
representative in New York, took care of the negotiations. The Havana
summit was historic in many ways. First of all, Cuba, as a Soviet satellite,
was bent upon establishing the status of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)
as the ‘natural ally’ of the Soviet Union. Countries like Yugoslavia and
Singapore were equally determined to pull the movement towards the
Western block. India, Algeria, Zambia and Sri Lanka had to work hard to keep
the NAM to its original moorings. But I was busy with the task of containing
the quixotic activities of the minister and of keeping him in good humour.
The minister’s troubles started right from Bombay itself when we
boarded the plane to New York early in the morning. As we settled down for
takeoff, the airhostess handed over copies of the day’s Times of India to both
of us. I could not believe my eyes. It carried a cartoon by R. K. Laxman on
the front page, showing the minister and a bureaucrat sitting in an Air India
plane. The minister’s mouth was sealed with tape and the bureaucrat was
saying to the airhostess, ‘This time the minister is properly briefed.’ This was
an obvious reference to the Lusaka fiasco and the obvious risk of the min-
ister repeating his performance in Havana. I pretended that I did not see the
cartoon, but with a corner of my eye I was watching the minister’s reaction.
He did not look amused at all, but I did not want to start a conversation on
the subject. In fact, the press had started carrying stories of the minister’s
misadventures, real or imaginary, after the Lusaka episode. According to
one newspaper, someone asked the minister whether he would be going to
Havana. He replied ‘No, I am going to Cuba!’
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 87

I had a flavour of the minister’s sense of geography when the plane was
about to land in New York. He was surprised to see so much water around
New York, and when I said that the city is on the coast, he was even more
surprised. When we were about to land in Havana, he asked me whether
Havana was also on the coast and when I said that Cuba is an island, he
looked totally astonished. He surprised me in between when we were at a
luxury hotel in New York. He called me post-haste to his room in the morn-
ing to ask me to open the sealed window so that he could have fresh air for
his morning calisthenics.
In Havana, Mishra was introduced to the members of the Indian dele-
gation, some of whom he had not met. Apart from the foreign secretary
and Brajesh Mishra, there were Ramesh Bhandari, Sushil Dubey, Ramesh
Mulye and Vijay Nambiar, the last three being the lieutenants of Brajesh
Mishra in the committees. The foreign secretary was involved in the nego-
tiations regarding Egypt, which was on the mat for signing the Camp David
Accords with Israel. That left Ramesh Bhandari and me to keep company
with the minister. The Ambassador to Cuba Preet Malik was also available
to the minister for advice and assistance.
The minister had meetings with the Indian delegation every morning
at which the officers recounted their victories in various negotiations. He
did not take much interest in the details, as his mind was focused on his
own speech in the plenary. Since he was only a foreign minister and the
priority for speaking slots went to kings, presidents and prime ministers, his
turn did not come for three full days. He was correcting his speech con-
stantly and reading out his corrections to the delegation every morning.
Most of what he added made no sense, but as long as it was not against the
trend of the speech, nobody questioned him. Some of them even praised
him for his drafting skills. After three days, the minister became restless
and started asking the ambassador to ensure that his turn would come
soon. But there was no news as heads of state were still speaking. The min-
ister lost his temper with the Indian delegation many times, but remained
silent in the plenary.
Fidel Castro himself had a taste of the minister’s anger at this point.
Castro had learnt about the Indian minister’s concern about not getting
his speaking slot, and so he decided to engage Mishra in a conversation. He
walked onto the plenary hall during a recess and asked the minister through
88 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

his interpreter how he was doing. Castro was surprised at the reply that
he was not happy at all, as he had been waiting for India’s turn to speak.
Castro explained the protocol to him and said that he could not change it.
Mishra then said that the problem was not protocol, but the fact that most
speakers were speaking too long. Again Castro said that he could not cur-
tail anybody’s speech, as they were leaders of their own countries. (Castro
himself had spoken for three hours at the inaugural session.) Mishra then
said that in that case, we did not require a chairman and any machine could
do the job. I do not know how the interpreter put it to Castro, but Castro
walked away without a word, leaving the Indian delegation dumbfounded.
Seething with anger, Mishra looked at Bhandari and said, ‘I am the foreign
minister of nearly one billion people. What does Cuba think of itself? What
is the population of Cuba?’ Bhandari promptly answered ‘Nothing, sir,
absolutely nothing.’
Before the end of the day, we received word that Castro would receive
the minister early next morning. Jagat Mehta and I accompanied the min-
ister, but we were told that it was a one-on-one meeting and Castro spent
about half an hour with the minister alone. Till today, no one knows what
happened at that meeting. We tried to get information from the minister,
but he was very evasive. He only told us that Castro asked him to chair
one of the sessions as India was a vice president of the conference and that
he declined the offer. For the rest, ‘Castro kept talking’, he said.
The Indian delegation worked diligently on the Havana declaration
and restored the balance of the document. On the issue of Egypt too,
India prevented the expulsion of the country and found an interim
formula that saw the movement through the crisis. India also had to fight
minor battles like the Yugoslav proposal for a mechanism to resolve dis-
putes within the NAM and the proposal for setting up a secretariat for
the NAM. But the chairmanship of Cuba inevitably gave the movement
a radical image at a crucial time in history. Significantly, Iraq was elected
the host of the next summit, primarily at the instance of the pro-
Western delegations.
My duties as the special assistant to the minister prevented me from
participating in the negotiations in Havana even though I was already des-
ignated as a counsellor in the permanent mission in New York in place of
Sushil Dubey. In fact, my entire term in New York coincided with Cuba’s
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 89

chairmanship of the movement, and it would have been very useful for me
to have a background of the negotiations in Havana.

The officers in the permanent mission to the United Nations in New York
are assigned to one or the other of the seven committees, the Disarmament
and International Security Committee (the first committee); the Economic
and Financial Committee (the second committee); the Social, Humanitar-
ian and Cultural Committee (the third committee); the Decolonisation
Committee (the fourth committee); the Administrative and Budgetary
Committee (the fifth committee); the Legal Committee (the sixth com-
mittee) and the special Political Committee. The permanent representative
and the deputy permanent representative are in the imaginary ‘Eighth
Committee’, that is, the corridors where most issues are sorted out, largely
through horse-trading. Known policies of the governments are one thing,
the possibility for diplomats to help or harm each other even while operat-
ing within the instructions is quite another. For this reason, the ‘Eighth
Committee’ is even more important than the other seven (The number of
committees was reduced to six in 1993.)
I was posted against Sushil Dubey, who looked after the political and
disarmament committee and related issues, but since I was totally new to
the game, I was given charge of the decolonisation committee, which was
considered the training ground for new multilateral diplomats. The
decolonisation committee was a very significant body in the early sixties
when many countries in Africa and Asia were still under colonial occupa-
tion. In the eighties, it had only a limited agenda confined mainly to
Namibia. South Africa, the other related issue, was dealt within the special
political committee. In addition to the decolonisation committee, my sub-
jects included Palestine and the Security Council, which were sufficient to
keep me busy and engaged.
The only major remaining item on the decolonisation agenda of the
United Nations was Namibia and even though there was general agree-
ment that Namibia should be independent, South Africa was in no hurry
to leave its stranglehold. Many Western countries favoured a gradual
transition rather than a sudden change. In the meantime, the General
90 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Assembly created various institutions to assist independent efforts and

to prepare Namibians for independence with the implicit acceptance of
the West the UN Council for Namibia, the legal administering author-
ity for Namibia, the UN Commissioner for Namibia, the UN Institute for
Namibia and the UN Fund for Namibia. India was a major player in all
these bodies in its capacity as the vice-president of the Council for
Namibia. Basically, these bodies were at the disposal of South West Africa
People’s Organisation (SWAPO), the militant freedom movement of
Namibia under Sam Nujoma. SWAPO’s resident observer in New York,
Ben Gurirab, was the link between SWAPO and the council. Three mod-
erate Western countries in the council were in a pitiable minority, and
we drowned them out with ideological arguments when they tried to
economise on programmes or travel. But they ensured, however, that
SWAPO did not use the UN funds to advance their military objectives.
My first experience of independent negotiations was in the Namibia
bodies, and I found that it was smooth sailing as there were really no major
differences among the members. The Cold War that raged in the other bod-
ies did not reach the council except when Belgium or Finland refused to en-
dorse the armed struggle in some pronouncement of the council, or they
made a point about SWAPO being the only legitimate representative of
the Namibian people. Since non-aligned countries insisted on these for-
mulations, they had no choice but to make reservations in the end. India’s
essential position of support to SWAPO was tempered by moderation on
issues like armed struggle. We, therefore, became automatic mediators be-
tween SWAPO and Western countries. I discovered soon that both sides
readily accepted India’s formulations to resolve tricky issues.
The Ambassador of Zambia, appropriately named Lusaka, chaired the
Council for Namibia. The Commissioner for Namibia, who was a highly
respected Marti Ahtisaari, later became the president of Finland. Lusaka
was a colourful personality, who was broadly acceptable to all as he took
the line of least resistance. He distanced himself, as president, from the
radical positions taken by the council, but defended those positions in the
name of the council. He was not particularly brilliant, but his flexible
approach earned him many positions in the United Nations, including
the president of the General Assembly. Ahtisaari was a very good inter-
locutor on behalf of Namibia and he had infinite capacity to raise funds,
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 91

particularly from Scandinavia, for Namibia. He rarely intervened in the

debate in the council, but applied correctives through Gurirab, who had
a good equation with him.
Within months of my arrival in New York, the council decided to
hold a series of plenary meetings in Panama, an exercise that the coun-
cil undertook from time to time to popularise the cause of Namibia. The
interesting point was that such meetings of the council and its missions
were to countries that were already committed to the cause of Namibia.
The Ambassador of Panama George Illueca, who later became the pres-
ident of his country, was influential enough to get Panama to host the
meetings. There, I took my first elected position in the UN system as
the rapporteur of the meeting. I took my assignment very seriously and
prepared my own report, only to find at the end that the Secretariat had
already prepared a report and that my role was limited to my lending my
name to the draft. That was a lesson for the future, as most documents
issued in the names of the office bearers of conferences are cooked up by
the respective secretariats. At best, the delegates make minor changes in
these documents.
‘Join the council for Namibia and see the world!’ was the joke about the
council those days. The council had a fairly large travel budget to enable its
members to use to propagate the cause of Namibia. Its work programme in-
cluded not only special meetings outside New York as the council deemed ap-
propriate, but also for visiting missions to capitals to appraise them of the
latest developments in Namibia and to enlist their support. These missions
were welcome more in countries that were already committed to Namibia
rather than in those where there was certain scepticism about the ability of
SWAPO to take on the reins of administration and to take care of the
entire Namibian people. In several countries, the South African propaganda
that SWAPO would oppress the minority, Turnhalle Alliance, if the former
came to power had made an impression. It was in those countries that the
council and SWAPO had to do some talking. In actual fact, the council
went wherever it was readily welcomed and its presentations were not
contradicted. I joined several of these missions, whenever the other work in
New York permitted it.
The ‘Nam tours’, as these missions came to be called, took me to Africa
several times, Europe a few times and even India, Sri Lanka and
92 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Bangladesh. The trip to South Asia turned out to be interesting, not be-
cause of Namibia but because of developments in Bangladesh. We were in
Sri Lanka, when news came of a military coup in Bangladesh by General Er-
shad. We decided to cancel the Bangladesh segment of our trip as we did
not want to land up in uncertain conditions. When General Ershad heard
that a UN delegation was cancelling its visit on account of his assumption
of power, he took it personally and decided to persuade us to visit as the first
UN delegation to visit him. All of us, including representatives of the USSR
and Cyprus, consulted our home governments and we received the green
signal to go. Ershad was so happy that he declared us state guests and put
us up in the luxurious Padma Guest House, which is normally reserved for
heads of state and government. As the deputy leader of the delegation, I
had the second best room, one of the most luxurious suites I ever stayed in.
I was one of the first Indians to call on Ershad after he took over power, and
he asked me to convey his special greetings to the Government of India.
We called on Indira Gandhi in Delhi. She thought that I was an Indian
official escorting the group rather than a delegate. On one of our Namibia
missions, we went to Paris once and went to Lido one evening with Ben
Gurirab. Sipping champagne and watching the blue belles, I thought to
myself what sacrifices we were willing to make for Namibia! I did not share
that thought with the SWAPO fighter, who became the prime minister of
Namibia later. He was busy watching the blue belles.
The Council for Namibia was more of a travel club than anything else,
and there were no tough negotiations. Even the budget of the council was
quite large and travel was just for the asking. The United States had not yet
hit upon the idea of imposing discipline on the United Nations by denying
its contribution to the United Nations. Perhaps, the habits of bodies like the
Council for Namibia prompted the United States to default their assessed
contributions, years later.
The Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People
was a politically sensitive body that I dealt with in my early years at the
United Nations. Like the council, the Palestine committee was also a
committed body, and its member states were all champions of Palestine.
But what made it interesting was the division among the Arabs them-
selves, following the signing of the Camp David Accords. The observer
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 93

of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), a colourful man named

Terzi, was bent upon embarrassing Egypt on every occasion and called for
condemnation of the accord in every document. Egypt was represented
on the committee by the formidable Amre Moussa, the DPR, who later
became the Egyptian foreign minister and the secretary of the Arab
League. My role became that of a peacemaker between the two as we
did not favour harsh formulations on Egypt. We maintained the Havana
compromise on the Camp David Accords as our guide in the difficult
negotiations between Egypt and the PLO. The Palestine committee was
also called upon to send its representatives to various conferences, and
it convened seminars on the question of Palestine in different parts of the
globe. The committee also provided plenty of opportunities to its
members for travel.
The Decolonisation Committee, or the Committee of 24 as it was
called, was also my responsibility. The committee had lost much of its rel-
evance as most colonies had become independent, but still there were po-
litically sensitive issues like Namibia, Puerto Rico, East Timor, Western
Sahara and New Caledonia. All the big powers had skeletons in their cup-
boards in the form of some small territories in the far-flung Caribbean or
the South Pacific, still under their administration. Many of them did not
desire independence as their small economies were dependent on their
‘administering powers’ for survival. But the United Nations had to make
sure that the will of the people of these territories was respected. Each of
these territories had a minority that nursed the dream of independence,
but the majority preferred to continue with the status quo. One of these
territories I visited was the Turks and Caicos Islands, in the middle of the
Caribbean, a good two-hour flight from Miami. A team was invited by the
administering power, the United Kingdom, to observe local elections on
the islands. The flight from Miami was more for goods rather than for pas-
sengers, but when we reached the islands we found that our baggage would
arrive only after three days, as there was a backlog. We decided to pick up
our bags on our way back from Miami rather than get it shipped to the is-
lands. We did not need any elaborate clothing in the islands. The British
governor general himself was in shorts and our suits would have looked in-
congruous there.
94 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

The chief minister of the islands, a young man with a record of drug
smuggling, sang the praise of British colonialism. Strangely, he had the com-
plete works of Mahatma Gandhi in the bookshelf behind him. He did not
forget to mention his admiration for Gandhi, but he added in good meas-
ure that the circumstances of his own island were different from Gandhi’s
India. Indeed, how could he compare his small group of islands with a pop-
ulation of 2,000 with India, particularly, when the islanders led a ‘plane-to-
mouth’ existence? They would not survive for a day without the goodies
from Miami, flown in by American airlines. We knew, without witnessing
the vote in favour of a government that stood for the status quo, that the
people of Turks and Caicos had no fancy for freedom, which would simply
toss them into the tornadoes without the anchor of colonial masters.
The only mode of transport between the islands of Turks and Caicos
was aircraft as the water was too shallow at the time of low tides to use
boats. Small planes flew around like birds all the time. I was assigned to
supervise polling in an island 20 minutes away by plane from the capital.
Sure enough, a young Bengalee from Miami piloted the two-seater plane,
which was assigned for my travel. He explained to me that he was flying
in the islands rather than in cities because here he could clock in more
flying hours to qualify for his advanced license. When the time came for
us to return to the capital, it was already dark, and I wondered whether
there were lights on the small landing strip we had used to land the little
aircraft. The pilot seemed confident, but what astonished me was that
he relied on candles to take off from the strip. We lit a dozen candles and
kept them on both sides of the strip and took off, while the candles blew
off one by one. The strip was dark as we rose to the sky. I wondered for a
moment as to what we would have done if there was an emergency and
we had to land again. Two Indians would have been sacrificed for the
cause of freedom of a people, who had no value for freedom.
Disarmament-related issues were added to my work after the depar-
ture of my colleague, Vijay Nambiar. Amitav Banerjee handled the de-
colonisation package. The ad hoc committee on the Indian Ocean, set up
on an initiative of Sri Lanka, was the most politically sensitive disarma-
ment body that was handled in New York. Other disarmament issues were
dealt with in Geneva and moved to New York only at the time of the
General Assembly. Although the initial initiative to move a resolution
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 95

declaring the Indian Ocean as a ‘zone of peace’ had the full support of
India; however, differences emerged in the perceptions of India and Sri
Lanka over a period of time. We interpreted the zone of peace as an area
free of foreign military presence. The most objectionable foreign pres-
ence, from our point of view, was the military bases, particularly Diego
Garcia. The Soviets were supposed to have bases in Somalia, but they
were never acknowledged. The United States and its allies were in the
committee only to sabotage it from within. Our neighbours in the com-
mittee opposed foreign military presence, but they also wanted to limit
the presence even of the regional powers. Pakistan introduced the con-
cept of denuclearisation on the basis of it wanting to establish a nuclear
weapon-free zone in South Asia. There was no meeting point and no con-
sensus, but the committee got its mandate extended from year to year on
the ground that a conference would be held in Colombo the next year.
The Sri Lankan PR, Ambassador Fonseka, chaired the committee dur-
ing my time and strove to bring about some agreement. The situation was
hopeless, but the committee was intensely political and it starkly reflected
the Cold War situation. Our policy was to prevent any conference, unless
it was exclusively on the presence of foreign forces in the Indian Ocean.
No one else saw it that way, and we blocked every other initiative. In a
way, we were as opposed to a conference on the Indian Ocean as the
United States was, but for entirely different reasons.

The NAM was very active under the chairmanship of Cuba. In 1981, we
also hosted a ministerial meeting in New Delhi to review its activities. As
chairman of the conference of foreign ministers, India played an important
role, but the Cubans were a dominant factor in the movement and called
the shots. Indira Gandhi was not directly involved, but her presence at the
inauguration and her meetings with the visiting foreign ministers made an
impact. N. Krishnan, who took over from Brajesh Mishra as the PR at the
United Nations, was the leading light of the conference, and the task as-
signed to me was the drafting of the political declaration, particularly the
philosophical part, which was the most controversial. Cuba, at one end of
96 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

the spectrum and Yugoslavia, at the other were engaged in a tug-of-war for
the soul of the movement. India and Algeria were in the middle, trying to
bring about a balance in the proceedings, and the movement remained
more or less in the middle path as a result of the parleys among the ‘Gang
of Four’. The rest of the membership went along once the four countries
reached an agreement of sorts. The second part of the declaration dealt
with specific situations, and the practice adopted was for the countries
directly concerned to produce texts that were generally endorsed by the
general membership. The Arabs, for example, drafted the section on the
Middle East, and it took on a blatant anti-Israeli position, regardless of
the views of the moderates. It was considered unacceptable to challenge the
Arab consensus. The same was the case with the African section. But there
were no defenders for the villain in the Africa section, South Africa, and
no language was considered too harsh to condemn the apartheid regime
for its racist policies and its illegal occupation of Namibia.
Bilateral disputes and stray colonial questions were another matter.
South Korea was not a member, but it assiduously cultivated member states
to ensure that North Korea did not put in any critical reference to South
Korea in the non-aligned declarations. Similarly, the former Portuguese
colonies lined up against Indonesia when East Timor came up, and the
Francophone Africans defended the French when New Caledonia was dis-
cussed. The consideration of these issues took a long time as every delega-
tion had to be heard before the chairman could give a consensus text that
every one could live with. The Delhi conference was successful in forging
compromises on the issues on the agenda, thanks, largely, to the skillful
drafting by the Indians. It was a good training ground for us as India hosted
a summit within two years because of the exceptional circumstances aris-
ing out of the Iraq-Iran war.
India had already announced its candidature for hosting the Non-Aligned
Summit in 1987 to assume the chairmanship of the movement after Iraq.
But it became clear as the time drew near that the Iran-Iraq war would not
end and that it would be impossible for Iraq to host the summit. Consulta-
tions began in New York in 1982 about an alternate venue, and most coun-
tries were reluctant to take on such a heavy responsibility at short notice.
India decided to offer itself as Indira Gandhi was at the height of her glory and
nobody was sure that the summit would come to India in 1987. The offer of
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 97

India came as a relief to those who felt that the summit would be postponed,
thus extending the chairmanship of Cuba. There were dissenting voices on
account of India’s known positions on Afghanistan and Kampuchea, but
there was no alternative venue available at that time. A decision in favour
of India was made just about eight months before the dates of the summit.
The Delhi summit was unprecedented in scale and attendance, and it
turned out to be a landmark event on account of Afghanistan, Kampuchea
and the Iran-Iraq war. India’s position on the first two issues was different
from the majority view in the movement, but no one doubted India’s
proverbial ability to play honest broker even in difficult circumstances.
India helped shape consensus on each of these issues, regardless of its own
position, and thus gained credibility during its term of office as the chair-
man of the movement.
I handled the political committee, together with Sushil Dubey and
Vijay Nambiar, both of whom had served with me in New York. My spe-
cial charge was the ideological sections of the final document, which in-
cluded disarmament issues. A large number of Indian ambassadors were
present in Delhi and each of them, whom we used to call ‘single paragraph
delegates’, tried to influence the outcome on the issues relevant to their
countries of accreditation. Foreign Secretary M. K. Rasgotra and PR in
New York N. Krishnan relied on their ‘PMI boys’ rather than on bilateral
ambassadors to find the right formulations. They gave us a free hand to
explain details of the negotiations at the meetings of the Indian delega-
tion chaired by Indira Gandhi every morning. She listened patiently to us
and gave general directions, while Natwar Singh, as the secretary gen-
eral of the summit, offered his own commentary to the proceedings. The
visiting ambassadors tried hard to have a say on some issues, but received
very little attention. Akbar Khaleeli from Iran and Peter Sinai from Iraq
had their own mini wars on the sides, much to the amusement of the rest
of the delegation.
The Delhi summit applied the necessary correctives to the NAM philos-
ophy and agenda, which were hijacked by the Cubans during their chair-
manship. We were also able to curb the enthusiasm of Yugoslavia and others
to set up a mechanism to resolve the disputes within the movement. Many
in the movement had a fascination for peacemaking, although it was an orig-
inal principle with NAM that it should focus on united action for the good
98 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

of its members rather than waste its resources to settle internal disputes. At
one unguarded moment at some earlier meeting, India had gone along with
a formulation that seemed to envisage the setting up of a mechanism for
settlement of disputes. Yugoslavia was enthusiastic about moving this pro-
posal forward, and India was equally adamant to block it for our own rea-
sons. Whenever Yugoslavia asked for a room to hold a meeting to discuss
the subject, it was told that no room was available. It took several days for
Yugoslavia to realise that the shortage of rooms was part of Indian policy.
The election of Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru as the secretary general
of the United Nations took place in 1981. Kurt Waldheim of Austria, a
favourite of the West, who had served two terms, sought an unprece-
dented third term. China was strongly opposed to this as it maintained
that it was now the turn of a developing country to head the UN Secre-
tariat. Salim of Tanzania emerged as the candidate of the developing
countries, but the United States made it quite clear that he would not be
acceptable. Salim’s cardinal sin was that he had danced in the aisle of the
UN General Assembly, when the People’s Republic of China was admit-
ted to the United Nations in place of Taiwan. The American PR, who
watched the scene helplessly at that time, was none other than future
President George Bush, and he was not willing to let Salim be the secre-
tary general. There were some 10 other candidates, and Perez de Cuellar’s
name was proposed by Peru as a possible compromise candidate. When
the voting began in the Security Council, it was clear that neither
Waldheim nor Salim could be elected as China vetoed Waldheim and the
United States vetoed Salim again and again. After several rounds of
voting, there was a total impasse, as no candidate had the required nine
votes, including the positive votes of the five permanent members. Olara
Otunnu, the PR of Uganda, a young Harvard educated diplomat, took
over the presidency of the Security Council in October (the presidency
rotates every month in the alphabetical order), and started his own con-
sultations with the members of the Security Council. After a few rounds
of futile voting, Otunnu called in the permanent members and gave them
all the names, including that of Perez de Cuellar and asked them to mark
those whom they would veto in any eventuality. After the ‘straw poll’,
Otunnu discovered that the only candidate who had no veto was Perez
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 99

de Cuellar. He was colourless enough as an under secretary general to

merit the position of the UN chief. Otunnu summoned the council dur-
ing the lunch break and got Perez de Cuellar elected unanimously. An
unsuspecting Perez de Cuellar was fishing in Peru when the news of his
election reached him.
One story that took the rounds in New York at that time was about a
mistake that the US PR, Jean Kirkpatrick, made during the elections. Sri-
dath Ramphal, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, was an aspi-
rant for the post of the UN chief. When the United States found that
Waldheim had no chance of getting elected, it decided to look for alterna-
tives and found some potential in Ramphal. Kirkpatrick was asked to con-
vey to Ramphal that the United States could support him if he offered his
candidature. Kirkpatrick asked her secretary to connect her to Ramphal.
The secretary, who looked up the directory, found the name of Ramphul, the
PR of Mauritius, a clownish character who was known in the United Nations
as ‘Ramfool’ because of his peculiar ways. It was music to Ramphul’s ears
when Kirkpatrick told him that he would have the support of the United
States. By the time the US Ambassador realised her mistake, Ramphul had
filed his nomination with the blessings of his government. Even the genuine
Ramphal could not make it as he was vetoed by the USSR.
Kirkpatrick, a conservative academic, was quite reclusive and did not
know many ambassadors or other diplomats. She made hard-hitting state-
ments against the USSR and the non-aligned countries, and made herself
very unpopular. She was reputed to have walked into a national day recep-
tion of North Korea, thinking that it was a South Korean reception. Since
she did not recognise either of the ambassadors, she did not realise her
mistake till a report appeared in the newspapers the next day about an
unexpected visitor at the North Korean reception.
Perez de Cuellar carried on for 10 years without having any major
accomplishments to his credit. He had an Indian Chef de Cabinet Virendra
Dayal who was equally low key. Dayal’s style was to distance himself as
much from India as possible in order to establish his own credibility as an
international civil servant. It was, therefore, a surprise that P. V. Narasimha
Rao rewarded him for his labours by appointing him a member of the
National Human Rights Commission. Many analysts think that if Perez de
100 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Cuellar had been more effective and imaginative, the Falklands war would
not have taken place. An agreement was close, but the secretary general
did not have the clout to carry it through. As a Latin American, he was
more anxious to establish his impartiality rather than to stop the war.
Many permanent representatives left a deep impression on me at that
time even though I saw them only at a distance. Among them was Ignac
Golob, the PR of Yugoslavia. The Indian delegation worked so closely with
the Yugoslavs that Golob decided to give me, a mere counsellor, a farewell
lunch when I left New York. In my reply to his toast, I referred to the ‘com-
bative co-operation’ between India and Yugoslavia within the NAM. I was,
doubtless, moved by this gesture, and I had an opportunity to acknowledge
it many years later when I was accredited to Slovenia as an ambassador.
He told me many times that he was aware that the money he spent on my
farewell lunch was well worth it.
Another PR I remember well is Raoul Roa Kouri of Cuba, a suave and
sophisticated diplomat. No one would suspect him to be a revolutionary
till he spoke and even when he was voicing communism, he spoke perfect
American English. He was one of the close associates of Fidel Castro and
remained in New York for many years. Amre Moussa, who became the for-
eign minister of Egypt and later the secretary general of the Arab League,
was the Egyptian DPR during my first stint in New York. Following the
Camp David Accords, he and the Palestinian representative, Terzi, were
on each other’s throat. I had the unenviable task of trying to reconcile their
differences for the sake of the unity of the NAM. Terzi looked more like a
rich Arab merchant rather than a Palestinian refugee. A Christian and a
seasoned diplomat, his tastes were very aristocratic. During our travels
together for the cause of Palestine, he pulled out the best scotch and cigars
to entertain us.

After Burma and Fiji, where I did purely bilateral work, I was keen to
return to multilateral work and asked for a posting to headquarters as the
head of the UN division in the ministry. The Foreign Secretary S. K.
Singh and Prakash Shah, who was holding the post, agreed to my request
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 101

even though the date of my return from Fiji was uncertain. I was glad to
be back in familiar territory, and with Chinmaya Gharekhan as the PR
in New York and Prakash Shah as the additional secretary, I plunged
back into the UN work. I also had access to Inder Kumar Gujral, the
external affairs minister. I continued with Muchkund Dubey, the
foreign secretary, Shekhar Dasgupta, the additional secretary, and, for a
short while, with Mani Dixit, the foreign secretary. I also worked with
Madhav Sinh Solanki, the surprise choice for minister of external affairs.
The rumour was that he was appointed instead of Madhav Rao Scindia
because of a mix-up in names.
I accompanied Solanki on his visit to Davos in 1992, primarily because
he was proceeding from there to Nicosia to attend a non-aligned confer-
ence. Davos was an interesting experience, with the possibility of informal
interaction with those who mattered in politics and business. Narasimha
Rao came to Davos that year to project a new India, but the world was pre-
occupied with the break up of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the
new states in Eastern Europe. It was the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) countries everywhere in Davos. I accompanied Solanki to all
his meetings, except the one with the Swiss president, which was covered
by our ambassador in Berne. It turned out that it was at this meeting that
he handed over a letter, requesting that the proceedings should be slowed
down in the Bofors investigations. When the news of the letter came to
light, Solanki had to own up responsibility and resign as a minister.
My tenure in the UN division coincided with the worst foreign ex-
change crisis in history, when the government had only enough foreign ex-
change to pay for the imports for just six months. Foreign travel was
severely restricted and, consequently, I became the least-travelled head of
the UN division in memory. I had to resort to travel funded by the United
Nations itself to visit New York for essential consultations. The Commit-
tee on Programme and Coordination (CPC), though not the powerful body
that it was in the early days of the United Nations, used to pay for a repre-
sentative from headquarters, and I used this facility as travel at the expense
of the Government of India was virtually impossible.
The CPC reviews the programmes of the United Nations and recom-
mends an order of priorities among those programmes, and gives guidance
to the Secretariat on translating legislation into programmes. It also
102 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

considers the programmes and activities of the specialised agencies with a

view to provide coherence and coordination throughout the system.
Though the mandate is important and broad, demanding participation in
the CPC of high-level delegates and the secretariat, it has lost much of its
importance, while the Advisory Committeee on Budgetary Questions
(ACABQ), which deals with the budget, has assumed a crucial role. After
representing India on the CPC from New Delhi, I became its chairman
when I moved to New York. The CPC went through its heavy agenda
rather rapidly, but it gave me a comprehensive view of the operation of
the entire UN system. The UN controller at my time was none other than
Kofi Annan, who guided the CPC’s work. We were all praise for his wis-
dom and dedication, and we saw him as a rising star in the UN firmament.
My travel to Geneva for the UN Human Rights Commission in early
1990 was with Rajmohan Gandhi and the Mumbai lawyer, A. G. Noorani.
More than the deliberations of the commission, the personal chemistry
between the two of them kept me amused. As a senior lawyer, Noorani
seemed to resent the designation of Gandhi as the leader of the delegation.
The only initiative we were proposing to take at the commission was on
Fiji. Fiji Indians had gained the support of a leading NGO in Geneva, In-
ternational Commission of Jurists (ICJ), which had prepared a case for
democracy in Fiji. But the issue could come before the commission only if
a government was prepared to champion the case. India considered the
possibility, but our contacts revealed that the issue would have very little
support, particularly from Fiji’s neighbouring countries. Australia and New
Zealand had initially seen some danger for themselves in the Fiji crisis as
it highlighted the special rights of the indigenous people. But they soon re-
alised that the developments in Fiji would have no impact on them. The
other South Pacific island states were even less sympathetic. The big pow-
ers too had no interest in adding Fiji to the agenda of the commission. We
decided, therefore, to confine our action to making a reference to the Fiji
situation in our statement to the commission. We did not want to go out
on a limb on the Fiji situation, when Pakistan was already preparing to
drag us to the floor of the commission on the human rights situation in
Jammu & Kashmir. We played our traditional role in Geneva, moderating
harsh texts and promoting consensus. Our general opposition to country
specific resolutions, unless they enjoyed consensus, was also maintained.
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 103

We eventually developed it as a policy, and I articulated it in the United

Nations subsequently.
Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent dramatic developments
dominated international relations, and more particularly the United Na-
tions. As a member of the core group in the Ministry on the Gulf, I was
witness to the twists and turns in our policy during this crucial period. I
was at an Australian lunch, together with Minister Inder Gujral, when the
news came of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. I recall how the entire gather-
ing came to the conclusion that the annexation of Kuwait by Iraq was ir-
reversible and began to speculate about the increased importance of
Saddam Hussein. Gujral recalled his own meeting with Saddam Hussein
when he went to Iraq as a special envoy of Indira Gandhi and remembered
how warm and friendly he was to India. The possibility of liberation of
Kuwait was not in anybody’s mind when the first meeting of the core group
was held in the south block. The only concern we had was about the fate
of the Indians in Iraq and Kuwait. In fact, our vision was totally clouded
by this concern. For this reason, the government decided to send the ex-
ternal affairs minister to Baghdad to establish contact with Saddam Hus-
sein, and enlist his support for the repatriation of the Indians from the
Gulf. No one said that this was a shortsighted policy. The Gulf region, and
even the rest of the world, saw his trip and his celebrated hugging of Sad-
dam Hussein as an act of treachery. To compound matters, Gujral’s plane
brought back a few selected Indians. They were supposed to be sick and
aged, but the passengers, as they alighted from the plane, looked neither
sick nor too old.
The massive repatriation of Indians from the Gulf, supervised by Joint
Secretary K. P. Fabian, was an unprecedented success. It brought comfort
to many families and probably saved lives in the bargain, but the reactions
in the Gulf to the ‘fleeing Indians’ and the gathering clouds of war dimin-
ished the significance of that operation. Most people underestimated the
determination of the Bush administration to wage war to liberate Kuwait.
I recall a meeting of the Indian envoys to the Gulf in New Delhi, where
most envoys voiced the view that a war was unlikely. But the signals were
different at the United Nations. As a member of the Security Council, we
were briefed by the Americans about their determination to go to war
unless Saddam Hussein left Kuwait on his own. We were initially inclined
104 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

to advocate a peaceful solution, but as time passed, we too realised that an

international consensus was emerging for the use of force. The Americans
built that consensus very effectively and even managed to get others to pay
for the war. The Security Council witnessed unprecedented unanimity
among the permanent members, and the others also supported the use of
force in different degrees. We voted in favour of most of the Security Coun-
cil resolutions, except the one on humanitarian intervention, which appeared
to set a principle. But it was after the liberation of Kuwait that the United
States and its allies proceeded to rewrite international law to keep Iraq under
their thumb. The Security Council resolution 687 came to be known as ‘the
mother of all resolutions’ because of the far-reaching objectives that were set
for an independent nation. We found many of its provisions inimical to the
concept of sovereignty, and there was no justification to impose those con-
ditions on Iraq, once the liberation of Kuwait was accomplished. By fixing
restoration of international peace and security as the benchmark for nor-
malising Iraq’s status in the world, the United States relegated the Saddam
regime to pariah status. In the normal circumstances, we could not have
voted for many of the provisions of the resolution, but in the special circum-
stances of Iraq, we supported even the notion of forced disarmament of
sovereign states.
We still had six months left on the Security Council when I arrived in New
York as the DPR, with rank of ambassador as in the case of my predecessor,
Prabhakar Menon. I remember Menon writing to me that complimenting me
on my posting to New York was like complimenting an Englishman on his
English. We exchanged places about which Ambassador Gharekhan remarked
that his deputy had become his boss and his boss had become his deputy. For
me, it was basically a change of scenery only as I continued to deal with the
same subjects as I did in Delhi. But while I was tied to the desk in Delhi, I had
to move from meeting to meeting in New York.
Being on the Security Council was quite exciting, as it enabled me to see
the council at work and how the permanent members (P-5) operate. The
non-permanent members did not matter very much, as most decisions were
made by the P-5 in advance. The non-aligned caucus in the council was our
main constituency, but our opinions were not decisive. The P-5, of course,
wanted to carry the caucus on board and appeared to meet our concerns
on non-substantive issues, but the basic thrust of the action was based on
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 105

P-5 consensus. When it came to divisions among them, every effort was
made to achieve consensus, but the non-aligned was invited only to take
it or leave it. The way the Iraq sanctions committee operated was a case in
point. Every request was turned down by the United States even after elab-
orate guidelines were established. The basic purpose of the sanctions com-
mittee was to ensure that innocent civilians did not suffer on account of the
sanctions. But the way the committee operated, it was inconceivable that
any humanitarian supplies would get through the sanctions committee to
the Iraqi civilians.
An attempt we made to invoke Article 50 of the UN Charter in the con-
text of the sanctions against Iraq proved futile. The Charter specifically pro-
vides for consultations in the Security Council to alleviate the problems of
unintended victims of sanctions. But when we sought compensation for the
millions of dollars that we lost in terms of trade, projects and wages on ac-
count of the sanctions against Iraq, we faced a blank wall. I was appointed
chairman of a Security Council committee to discuss the issue, but the P-5
were not prepared to take any measure to compensate us. We could achieve
only a resolution that urged the international community to consider the
special needs of the affected states. This first test of the actual operation of
Article 50 was fruitless. Some members argued that the council was only
supposed to consult, but not to act.
Another Security Council committee I chaired was the Committee on
the Arms Embargo against South Africa, a rather tame committee that had
lost much of its relevance and had only one resource person, Abdul Minty,
a South African of Indian origin, who was active in the anti-apartheid
movement in Europe. Whenever he had something to tell the committee,
he would come to New York and the committee would hear him and if he
had new information about arms supplies to South Africa, we would ask the
concerned government to investigate. The government concerned denied
the charges most of the time and the matter rested there. The transition in
South Africa had already begun, and the committee had lost much of its
relevance by the time I chaired it.
Boutros Boutros Ghali of Egypt had begun to make his mark as the new
secretary general of the United Nations by the time I returned to New York.
In fact, he was elected when I was the head of the UN division, and I had the
opportunity to meet him when he had come to New Delhi to seek the support
106 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

of India. He had a fairly good equation with Prime Minister Narasimha Rao.
I had also sensed that Ghali’s late emergence as an African candidate, after
several others being already endorsed by the OAU, was at the behest of the
United States and others. I was clear in my mind that we should demonstrate
support to him. But I discovered that Muchkund Dubey, the foreign secre-
tary, had a different assessment. He was out of town when Ghali arrived and
I had sent a note to the prime minister’s office with a positive assessment of
Ghali’s chances. Dubey saw the note on the day Ghali was supposed to meet
Rao and was very upset that I had given an assessment different from his. He
told me that Ghali had no chance and that a black African was sure to make
it. But Rao did not need either his assessment or mine and virtually pledged
India’s support to Ghali. Ghali had to stay in Delhi for a few days to await
confirmation of acceptance of a visit to China and I took care of him, while
he met his old friends, journalists and others. One day he asked me whether
he could host a lunch in honour of the external affairs minister, in return for
the hospitality extended to him by the minister. I saw no harm in it, but Dubey
opposed it as he did not believe that Ghali had any chance of making it as the
secretary general of the United Nations.
Ghali’s flaw was an exaggerated perception of the role of the secretary
general. Many said that he thought he was a general and not a secretary.
This was not only because he visualised the formation of his own army, but
also because he saw himself as an independent authority as envisaged in the
Charter at the same level as the Security Council and the General Assem-
bly. He did not realise that, over the years, particularly at the time of Kurt
Waldheim and Perez the Cuellar, the post had become a weathercock, act-
ing strictly according to the winds that blew. Ghali’s independent style and
his general contempt of ambassadors and even foreign ministers, many of
whom were junior to him, made him appear like a dictator. Having started
as the darling of the P-5, he ended up just as a friend of the French, and the
United States made sure that he was denied a second term.
The truth of the matter is, he strode the United Nations like a colossus
and he had no great respect for all the hallowed conventions in the organ-
isation. The United Nations mounted more peacekeeping operations dur-
ing his tenure than ever before in its history. As against 8 peacekeeping
operations active in 1991, there were 18 by the middle of 1994. This was
on account of the circumstances arising out of the end of the Cold War, and
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 107

the United Nations had to step in where super power rivalries had kept the
peace. But the personality of Ghali had something to do with the enthusi-
astic deployment of peacekeeping forces in different areas. His ‘Agenda for
Peace’ was partly a codification of what was already done and partly his
view of the role of the United Nations. It had elements to displease every-
one, but was politely received and widely debated. The biggest noise was
made by the developing countries, which clamoured for a companion
volume of equal value on an agenda for development. His idea of dilution
of sovereignty was a cause for concern for even the big powers. No one
wanted an army for the United Nations. The General Assembly decided to
set up a committee under the chairmanship of the Egyptian Ambassador
Nabil Elarabi to recommend action on the ‘Agenda for Peace’, and
what emerged was a selection of ideas that preserved the integrity of the
Charter. Continuity and gradual change rather than drastic change in the
United Nations role enjoyed consensus in the end. Our own approach was
to stick as close to the Charter as possible and to accommodate innovative
interpretations. We were absolutely insistent that peacekeeping operations
should be mounted only with the consent of the concerned state or states.
A classic example of constructive ambiguity arose in the context of
our position. Bearing in mind our own situation in Jammu & Kashmir, we
suggested that peacekeeping operations should have the support of the
states concerned. Questions were asked why it had to be ‘states’ (plural),
and I explained that if more than one country was involved, the support
of all the concerned states was necessary and hence the plural. When
there were objections to the use of the plural, I proposed that it could be
‘state or states’, a reasonable compromise. When even this was not ac-
cepted, I said with tongue in cheek that ‘state(s)’ could be used. To my
surprise, there was support for that formulation and it was adopted. But
the joke was when the Arabic version of the resolution appeared and
someone told me that it said ‘state or states’, as there was no other way
of expressing the idea. I did not check the Chinese version.
Ghali brought out an ‘Agenda for Development’, as demanded by the
developing countries, but it did not attract the same attention as an
‘Agenda for Peace’ and the parallel working group on it was a damp squib.
Although the end of the Cold War had made the debate on development
less confrontational, the need for the developed countries to help tackle
108 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

poverty, unemployment and social dislocation was still in focus. Ghali in-
troduced new dimensions to development such as the linkage between de-
velopment and democracy, but the developing world would rather have
him call on the rich to aid the poor. Ghali pointed out that democracy fos-
tered the good governance and stability that are necessary for development
over time, as well as the creativity essential for success in the age of infor-
mation and argued that peace and development were inextricably inter-
twined. This had no takers in the developing world, as resources were
considered the key for development and the agenda did not have any in-
novative or bold proposals for raising resources. The effort continued to
find innovative ways.
At one stage, the president of the General Assembly appointed me
chairman of a working group on financing for development. I tried various
proposals, but none was found acceptable. Interestingly, it was the devel-
oping countries themselves who were against any notion of assessed con-
tributions for development. Multilateral assistance had already become less
fashionable and while the developed countries were generous in emergency
situations, they did not have much enthusiasm for meeting long-term de-
velopment needs. Conditionality came to be attached to development in
the post Cold War period. ‘Development’ became ‘human development’
and then ‘sustainable human development’, and these expressions came to
be widely accepted. The concept of development got diluted each time an
adjective was added to it.
The UN peacekeeping operations grew exponentially after the Cold
War and assumed new dimensions during my second tenure in New York.
Although we had our reservations on the UN military observer group in
India and Pakistan, we participated in most of the peacekeeping missions
to which we were invited. We were hesitant to participate in the mission in
Yugoslavia because of its subservience to NATO, but Prime Minister
Narasimha Rao was persuaded by Boutros Ghali to provide a commander
to the UN forces in Yugoslavia. General Satish Nambiar brought India
credit, but he himself did not want to continue after a year because of the
constraints we had anticipated. One new feature of peacekeeping, which
developed as an offshoot of the reform of the Security Council, was the
regular and formal consultations with contributors of troops, which were
conducted by the under secretary general for peacekeeping Operations,
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 109

Kofi Annan. He was particularly solicitous to the needs and sensitivities of

India. I happened to see him in New York on the day Rajiv Gandhi was as-
sassinated, and I was touched by his regard and concern for India.
Shashi Tharoor, one of the brightest Indians in the Secretariat, was an
important member of the Annan team even at that time. I had met him
before, as my son had asked me to get him to autograph a copy of The
Great Indian Novel, a clever, modern adaptation of the Indian epic, The
Mahabharata. Tharoor bridged a generation gap in our family by becoming
a friend of both the father and the son. We had the privilege of felicitating
him at our home in Vienna on the day of his appointment as, in my words,
‘the newest, the youngest and the handsomest under secretary general’.
I have read most of his writings and reviewed some and have found
him receptive to my comments, even to criticism. India matters to him
immensely and he has begun to matter to India a great deal.
Environmental issues were on centre stage during my second tenure in
New York. The expectations raised by the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
were not fulfilled, and even the agreements at Rio began to fall apart in the
years that followed the summit. The Commission for Sustainable Develop-
ment, with Nitin Desai as the under secretary general responsible for it, was
set up with much fanfare, but fell into the routine of the UN commissions
and began to adopt papers, which did not lead to action on the ground. The
action shifted to the global environment facility (GEF), which became an
appendage of the World Bank, and as the only additional resource for the
environment came from the GEF, the replenishment of the GEF became
the main concern of the international community.
Another body, which did some concrete work, was the Intergovern-
mental Negotiating Committee on Climate Change and its successor, the
conference of parties to the convention, of which I became the vice chair-
man for three years. Battle lines were clearly drawn there, as the conven-
tion had already identified the countries that had the primary responsibility
for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and the concern of the developing
countries was to ensure that no obligations were imposed on them. This was
no easy task as the developed countries were quite anxious to bring in at
least the major developing countries like India, China and Brazil to the
discipline of reducing emissions even though there was a case for them to
increase the emissions for their economic development.
110 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Shekhar Dasgupta, Additional Secretary for the UN matters in the Min-

istry of External Affairs, did much of the work relating to climate change
before and during the Rio Summit. In fact, he was characterised as one of
the ‘movers and shakers’ at the Rio Summit. I succeeded him as the Vice
Chairman of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Climate
Change and continued on the Conference of Parties till the Berlin Confer-
ence, which established the Berlin Mandate, the precursor of the Kyoto
Protocol. Our objective in these bodies was a simple one, that is, not to ac-
cept any obligation for the developing countries to reduce emissions. At the
same time, we insisted that the developed countries should not only reduce
their emissions, but also provide new and additional resources to meet the
incremental costs of environment-friendly industrial ventures and make
technology available at concessional rates. These were principles adopted
at Rio, but the developed countries were inclined to back away from them
on the pretext that major developing countries should also have commit-
ments to reduce emissions.
The Conference of Parties met in Berlin in 1995 to determine the basis
for a protocol to the convention on climate change. As the head of the of-
ficial delegation, I was designated the spokesman of the G-77, but the G-77
itself got divided, as the OPEC countries and the small island states did not
join the battle of the major developing states to fight off commitments. The
OPEC countries were opposed to restrictions on emissions in general, and
the island states wanted to stress adaptation measures to combat sea-level
rise. As spokesman of a truncated G-77, I presented the first draft of a Berlin
Mandate with the bottom line of no commitments for the developing
countries. A representative of the World Wildlife Fund and some other
NGOs assisted me in preparing the draft and we styled it the ‘green draft’.
Angela Merkel, the then environment minister of Germany and presi-
dent of the conference, was directly involved in the negotiations. One of
the few GDR officials to survive the reunification of Germany, Merkel had
a special affinity for India and came to rely on me for advice throughout the
conference. She met me every evening and sought my advice on how to
proceed. When there was no meeting ground at the end, I suggested to her
that she should attempt shuttle diplomacy between the major groups. She
kept us in two different rooms and met us alternatively for a whole night
and a compromise Berlin Mandate was eventually agreed upon in the early
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 111

hours of the morning on the last day. Merkel was pleased with the result and
promised me that she would record the contribution of each of us in her
chronicle of the negotiations. Her chairmanship of the Berlin conference
paved the way for her success as a politician, and she rose gradually in her
party to become the Chancellor of Germany. The mandate itself was chal-
lenged by many NGOs, as developing countries escaped commitments, but
the focus was on the need for the developed countries to reduce their
luxury emissions. The Berlin Mandate led to the finalisation of the Kyoto
Protocol subsequently. Significantly, the United States was part of the con-
sensus in Berlin, but not in Kyoto.
The years 1992 96 saw a series of summit-level conferences: environ-
ment in Rio, human rights in Vienna, population in Cairo, social develop-
ment in Copenhagen, women in Beijing and habitat in Istanbul. I was
personally present in Copenhagen and Istanbul and was involved in the
preparations for others. These conferences examined the post Cold War
agenda and prepared action programmes, but, in the end, what set in was
a conference fatigue and proposals were made for a conference-free period.
But the UN bureaucracy and professional diplomats soldiered on and even
started having Rio Plus Five and Rio Plus Ten and others to keep the con-
ferences going.
The main outcome of the Vienna Conference on human rights was
the proposal for the creation of a high commissioner for human rights, a
proposal that was opposed by the developing countries, including India.
The idea came from the Carter Centre in Atlanta with the blessings of the
US administration. Among the opponents of the proposal was Ghali, who
argued that the post would be regarded as an attempt to consolidate pres-
sure against the developing countries and that would only strengthen
their resistance to progress in human rights. But the Vienna consensus in-
cluded a mandate to the General Assembly to discuss the terms of refer-
ence of a new post and it came to the Third Committee as the most
important issue in 1993. Edward Kukan, who later became the foreign
minister of the Slovak Republic, chaired the Third Committee that year.
He set up a working group to deal with this issue under the chairmanship
of Jose Ayala Lasso, the suave and friendly ambassador of Ecuador to the
United Nations. I had worked with Lasso in the Security Council, and
he picked me as one of the five friends of the chair to help him deal with
112 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

this sensitive issue. My own instructions were to restrict, severely, the

role of the high commissioner, if at all a post had to be created. But in the
new spirit of cooperation with the United States, we had dropped our
fundamental objection to the concept itself. We worked behind the
scenes, often late at night, to sift through the various proposals, to enable
the chairman to come up with compromise proposals each morning. This
technique worked well as the different groups were represented among
the friends and we supported the chairman each time. Somewhere in the
process, Lasso developed an interest in the post himself, and the United
States rewarded his success in establishing the post by proposing his name
as the first high commissioner, even though he had no experience in the
human rights area before he assumed the post. He, in turn, offered me an
adviser’s post in his office, but I preferred to continue with the govern-
ment. Lasso’s gentle and inoffensive approach gave credibility to the post
in the eyes of the developing world, but the human rights activists found
him too bureaucratic and lacking in messianic zeal. India invited him to
Jammu & Kashmir after much deliberation, and his report was generally
sympathetic to our point of view.
The Social Development Summit in March 1995 in Copenhagen was in
the nature of establishing the linkages between different phases of develop-
ment. The social consequences of economic development and the effect of
deterioration of society on economic development were obvious enough,
and Copenhagen tried to tackle this interdependence. Hamid Ansari, my
second PR during my second term, had taken a special interest in the prepa-
rations, and I was not expecting to be at Copenhagen. But Ansari had just
left and since the new PR Prakash Shah had just arrived, the ministry de-
cided that I should also be on the delegation. Of the 187 countries repre-
sented at Copenhagen, 117 were at the highest level, including Prime
Minister Narasimha Rao of India. The Indian delegation was quite large
and most of the politicians on the delegation did not know why they were
there. Narasimha Rao was his usual morose self. Boutros Ghali recalls in his
book Unvanquished that when Ghali said to Rao, referring to the US admin-
istration and the Congress, ‘Isn’t there an Indian saying that “When the ele-
phants fight, the grass gets trampled”?’ Rao replied with no sense of
humour, ‘The UN isn’t grass; it is the Parliament of the world!’ The most
innovative idea of the summit was the so-called 20-20 formula, by which
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 113

20 per cent of overseas assistance would be spent on social services, and the
developing countries would devote 20 per cent of their national budget for
such services. A little doctoring of figures must have helped to accomplish
the formula.
My last major task in New York before I set sail to another semi-
multilateral post, Nairobi, was to get the General Assembly to agree to set
up a working group on the UN reforms, an idea the US delegation was
pursuing without success for a couple of years. The new president of the
General Assembly from Cote d’Ivoir chose me to head informal consulta-
tions of the General Assembly. It was my performance as the chairman of
the consultations on funding for development that prompted the presi-
dent to appoint me, but he also felt that there would be less resistance to
the idea if a leading non-aligned country were to lead the consultations. I
had taken the precaution of consulting the incoming PR Prakash Shah
before I accepted the assignment. The task was hard and there was criti-
cism of my efforts in the non-aligned group, and the PR himself told me
more than once that I should somehow bury the idea. But I persisted with
it even while my packers were at home and eventually succeeded in estab-
lishing a working group on the UN reform as the United States had pro-
posed. David Birenbaum, the US DPR for the UN reforms was the most
pleased. I was told that he would sing my praises at the daily meetings of
the US PR so much that one day Madelaine Albright remarked that it
appeared that ‘the US policy in the UN owes so much to an Indian diplomat
called Sreenivasan’. The United States expressed its gratitude for my work by
offering the chairmanship of the new working group to Prakash Shah.
The story of our disastrous defeat against Japan in the election for a Se-
curity Council seat was the story of deliberate misleading of the govern-
ment rather than of misjudgement. The story began with our warmth
towards Sri Lanka in 1994. We had retired from the Security Council in
1992, and we could well have tried for the 1995-96 term, which was con-
sidered a south Asian seat. But we conceded it to Sri Lanka, without real-
ising that Sri Lanka had struck a deal with South Korea. We were unaware
of the deal till one day, two months before the election was to take place,
the Sri Lankan DPR Nihal Rodrigo told me that Sri Lanka was withdraw-
ing and India could contest, if it wished to do so. We discovered soon
enough that South Korea had already canvassed support quite widely and
114 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

that our late entry into the fray would result in sure defeat. We tried to rea-
son with South Korea that it should wait till the next year to contest against
Japan from its own region. Japan had already announced its candidature for
that year even though Japan also had just retired from the council with us
in 1992. In our reports to Delhi, we had made it clear that our choice was
either to run against South Korea that year or contest against Japan next
year. I remember telling the Foreign Secretary Kris Srinivasan that our
choice was to lose either to South Korea or to Japan and he said, half in jest,
that the lesser evil was to lose against Japan. Nevertheless, we decided to
announce our candidature for the next year, knowing fully well that we had
no chance of winning against Japan. The only purpose was to negotiate
with Japan and arrive at some deal at a later date.
I was astonished to see from Nairobi that we had begun to believe that
we could defeat Japan and started our campaign in right earnest. Japan’s
munificence weighed more heavily with most of the developing countries
than our promise to play a fair game in the Security Council. As far as the
industrialised countries were concerned, there was no doubt that their
sympathy lay with Japan. It was, therefore, astonishing that we came to a
positive assessment of our chances. Envoys were sent to different capitals
and our PR was given considerable resources to promote our candidature.
I made no secret of my concern that we were heading for a defeat and spoke
to all concerned, including Savitri Kunadi, Kamalesh Sharma and even Ex-
ternal Affairs Minister, Inder Kumar Gujral, whom I knew well. All of them
shared my concern, but went by the exaggerated predictions of the mission
till we reached a point when we could not withdraw any more without
losing our credibility. Calculations of personal gain rather than honest
judgement prevailed at that time. The mission predicted that India would
get no less than 70 votes in the first round. I made my own calculation
sitting in Nairobi and told everyone, who cared to listen, that we would
get no more than 40 votes. We finally got 39 votes plus our own. Mercifully,
the Indian system has no provision for penalising wrong judgements. Some,
who have made even more grievous errors of judgment, have not only
survived but also flourished in the foreign service.
I was once asked, when I was about to leave New York, as to which was
the biggest achievement for India during my tenure in New York. I said,
unhesitatingly, that it was the fact that Pakistan failed to get any kind of
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 115

resolution in any of the UN bodies on Jammu & Kashmir during 1992 95.
Following the end of the Cold War and the spurt in the UN activism pro-
pelled by Ghali, Pakistan thought that the time had come to drag the
United Nation into Kashmir. The first forum, in which they tried to revive
the issue, was the Security Council. They thought that the Russian veto
might not be there, and the other members could be persuaded to approve
a very weak resolution. But the rebuff was much stronger than they had
expected. Russia said it would oppose any such move and even the other
permanent members showed no enthusiasm. Then the matter was raised in
the Human Rights Commission in Geneva, where India’s deft handling led
to the withdrawal of the resolution at the very last minute. Pakistan brought
the issue to the General Assembly through the Third Committee and once
again, there was no support for any resolution. Exchanges took place be-
tween Munir Akram and me in most committees and, in the Third Com-
mittee, even Farooq Abdullah and Inder Kumar Gujral chipped in. The
last attempt was made in the First Committee, which was a grave mistake
on the part of Pakistan, as none of the major countries wanted to detract
from the disarmament agenda of the First Committee. Pakistan realised
that, however, much the world may have changed, it had not changed
enough not to equate India and Pakistan. This took a lot of legwork for us
in New York. Chinmaya Gharekhan and Hamid Ansari led the effort, but
I considered it my mission not to allow any Kashmir resolution to emerge
from the General Assembly or the Security Council and worked hard to
accomplish it.

India’s pursuit of an expansion of the Security Council had begun

even before my first arrival in New York in 1980. The main spirit behind
the move was Brajesh Mishra, the then PR, who joined with Japan and
some of the non-aligned countries, and tabled a draft resolution on ‘Eq-
uitable representation on and expansion of the Security Council.’ The
draft proposed a simple expansion of the non-permanent membership of
the Security Council from 10 to 15 or 16 on the ground that the mem-
bership of the Security Council should expand to match the expansion of
116 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

the General Assembly. The explanatory memorandum attached to the

draft gave even the distribution of the seats among various regional
groups. The immediate effect of the draft was that it united the perma-
nent members against it. Demarches were made in Delhi by each of them
in a bid to scuttle the move. Since the move was seen as an Indian pro-
posal, the pressure was mounted most on Delhi, and it was decided that
the resolution will not be put to a vote and it will be postponed for con-
sideration on a future date. Since then, the ‘Indian proposal’ came up
from year to year, but it was postponed each year without a debate. It was
never withdrawn altogether.
By the time I reached New York as a DPR, the global situation had
changed considerably and there was a momentum towards an expansion of
the Security Council, including the permanent membership. Basically, the
proposal was to induct Japan and Germany on the ground that they would
pay a higher contribution to peace-keeping if they became permanent
members. Soon enough, an idea came up that some major developing coun-
tries should also be made permanent members in order to make the com-
position of the council more representative. The old Indian proposal came
up that year, and I suggested to Gharekhan that we should try for a simple
procedural resolution to seek the views of the member states on the subject
in the light of the changed world situation. He agreed and we presented a
draft resolution to the original co-sponsors of the agenda item. The response
was overwhelming. Many countries came forward to support the idea, and
the resolution, under the old agenda item, was unanimously adopted. The
resolution simply asked the member states to submit their views to the sec-
retary general and requested the secretary general to compile the various
views and submit them to the next session.
The publication of the views of the member states was revealing. No
one, not even the permanent members, argued that no change was neces-
sary. Views differed widely as to what the changes should be, but the mes-
sage came loud and clear that changes should be made. The next step for
the Indian delegation was to present a draft, setting up a working group to
consider the issue. At this point, some countries staged a coup against
India. The PR of Singapore approached our PR, Hamid Ansari, who was
relatively new to the intricacies of the United Nations, and convinced him
that India, as a candidate for permanent membership, should step down as
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 117

the coordinator of the group on the expansion of the Security Council. The
process went out of our control from then on and a large group of countries
got together to draft the next resolution, setting up a working group of the
General Assembly to find a formula for an expansion of the Security Coun-
cil. We had to work hard to ensure that the mandate of the working group
was right. We ensured that the mandate of the group was not only to find
a formula for expansion, but also to examine and suggest a reform of the
working methods of the Security Council.
When the working group was set up under the chairmanship of Singa-
pore, the matter appeared to move swiftly towards a ‘quick fix’ on the ground
that there was virtual agreement on the induction of Japan and Germany as
permanent members. The momentum started building up as, virtually, every
speaker supported the two countries. The support was not absolute as most
countries that supported Japan and Germany also wanted inclusion of oth-
ers as permanent members and an expansion of the non-permanent cate-
gory. The situation came so close to a determination that the first stage
should be the induction of Japan and Germany, after which consultations
could continue on other aspects. We saw the danger in this approach and
energised the NAM group to say that if a comprehensive expansion could
not take place, then the first stage should be an expansion only of the non-
permanent membership. On our initiative, the NAM developed a paper as
a ‘fall-back position’, which suggested the addition of some 10 non-perma-
nent members. It was this move, together with the pressure of the ‘rejec-
tionists’ like Italy and Pakistan, that scuttled the ‘quick fix’ idea and placed
the issue in cold storage. It was no mean achievement that we prevented a
limited expansion, which would have closed the chapter of expansion of the
Security Council for many years to come.
Once the momentum for a quick fix was lost, the whole expansion
process went into a lethargic mode and the working group continued for
years without making any substantial progress. We ourselves advanced our
position from seeking to establish objective criteria for permanent mem-
bership to staking a claim on the basis of the criteria that we had recom-
mended. As the acting PR at that time, I presented our case to the working
group in February 1995, which was widely reported around the world.
Since the claim of Japan and Germany was on the ground of economic
strength and their high financial contributions, I said: ‘Contribution to
118 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

the United Nations should not be measured in terms of money. We do not

agree with the view expressed by a delegation that permanent membership
is a privilege that can be purchased. Financial contributions are deter-
mined on the basis of “capacity to pay” and those who pay their assess-
ments, however small, are no whit less qualified for privilege than the
major contributors.’
Our claim was made so strong that it became clear that if a single de-
veloping country were to become a permanent member, that would be
India. At the same time, doubts began to be raised as to whether the per-
manent category would be expanded at all. The idea of a rotation of ‘semi-
permanent seats’ came up. Ideas such as two permanent seats for Africa
and one seat for the Enropean Union complicated matters further. The
permanent members were generally opposed to any dilution of their own
position, and others felt that they had nothing much to gain if one or
another country became a permanent member. The medium and small
countries came to believe that they stood to gain more by an expansion of
the non-permanent category rather than by an expansion of the perma-
nent category. By the time I left New York in 1995, the expansion drama
had been played out without any outcome.
The expansion exercise, however, had some unintended results, some
positive and some negative from our perspective. The discussion on the
working methods led to a certain transparency in the decision making of
the Security Council, and successive council presidents introduced novel
schemes to reveal some of the considerations that weighed with the mem-
bers in arriving at conclusions. But, on the negative side, the discussions
highlighted the fact that a vast majority of the member states had not
served even once on the Security Council, while countries like India, Japan,
Pakistan and Egypt had served on the council several times. This raised ex-
pectations all around, and countries began declaring their candidatures
many years in advance. India, which used to get elected every seven years
or so, was not elected even once after 1992. The only time we contested
against Japan, we ended up with 40 votes in our favour. Since candidatures
have been announced by others for many years to come, India has to take
on one of them in an election or wait till an expansion takes place. After
the nuclear tests of 1998, the chances of India becoming a permanent mem-
ber have receded further.
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 119

India is one of the few countries, that nominate members of parliament

and other distinguished citizens to our delegations to the General Assem-
bly sessions. This is a practice established by Pandit Nehru himself. A few
other countries do send members of parliament and others, but only as
observers. Our non-official delegates are given specific responsibilities in
the various committees and it is they who make most of the important
statements in the General Assembly and its committees. This imposes a
strain on the mission at a busy time of the year in New York as the officials
have to coach them on the intricate negotiations, write speeches for them
and also take care of their personal needs. Most of them settle down to the
routine of the session and benefit from their stay to learn and to under-
stand issues. Some who come with the idea of making a splash or changing
India’s policy on certain issues are disappointed when they find that they
can do little to change the existing pattern. Moreover, they cannot partic-
ipate in the actual negotiations that go on in intimate groups of profes-
sional diplomats. But the merit of the system is that those who come to the
UN sessions gain an insight into the functioning of the United Nations and
the role played by our diplomats there. Almost all of them develop a healthy
relationship with the Ministry of External Affairs for the rest of their ca-
reers. Several members of parliament, who came to the sessions during my
time, came to occupy important positions in the government, some of them
in the Ministry of External Affairs itself. Inder Kumar Gujral, Atal Behari
Vajpayee, Farooq Abdullah, Najma Heptullah, Vayalar Ravi, E. Ahamed,
Kamal Nath, S. M. Krishna and Eduardo Faleiro were among those who
attended the UN sessions when I was there. Vajpayee appeared to enjoy
his annual short visits to the United Nations for several years. A veteran
of the United Nations, Brajesh Mishra, was also with Vajpayee on several
occasions. E. Ahamed was nominated to several sessions continuously and
earned the title of ‘unofficial permanent representative’.
On occasions, the members of the delegation have created difficult sit-
uations to the mission in New York. One member of parliament did not
agree with our Afghanistan policy and wanted our vote changed from ab-
stention to positive (against the Soviet Union). Having failed to convince
the permanent representative of the change, he decided to take the law
into his own hands and said ‘yes’ in a roll call vote in one of the commit-
tees. But, unknown to him, I went to the secretariat and got the vote
120 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

changed to abstention in the records, and reported the matter to the gov-
ernment. Another member of parliament felt that our position on East
Timor needed modification. The changes he made in the draft speech we
had given him were not in keeping with our policy, and he was advised to
stick to the text as drafted. But he did omit a word or two when he actu-
ally read the text to reflect a slight shift in policy. Indonesia and Portugal
noticed the change, but I made sure that the original version appeared in
the records.
Mercifully, none of our delegates went to the extent of changing the
whole speech as a Pakistani delegate did on one occasion. He went to the
podium with one speech written by the mission in his hand and another by
himself in his pocket. The Pakistan delegation was dumbfounded when he
started reading his own version. Uganda was even more embarrassed when
a dissident read out an anti-Amin speech from the UN podium when no of-
ficial was present at the Ugandan seat. Story goes that Idi Amin ordered
that all the six chairs of the Ugandan delegation in the General Assembly
should be occupied at all times.
I worked with five Indian permanent representatives to the United
Nations Brajesh Mishra, Natarajan Krishnan, Chinmaya Gharekhan,
Hamid Ansari and Prakash Shah. They were highly intelligent, motivated
and hard-working officers, who had distinguished themselves in the service
of the nation. But they had different styles of functioning and different
reputations. Mishra, for instance, had the reputation of being tough, both in
the mission as well as outside. He was friendly and relaxed with his counter-
parts, but they were not sure as to where they stood with him. We could see
in the mission that, behind his tough exterior, he was gentle and gracious. His
statements were precise, his negotiating skills were excellent and he was a
fighter. The most important lesson he taught us about multilateral diplomacy
was that we should be credible at all times. Since news travelled at the speed
of lightning at the United Nations, we should never say different things to
different people on any subject, he used to say. In private and in public, he
maintained a high level of credibility, which was his greatest strength.
Krishnan was a contrast to Mishra in many ways. Unlike Mishra, who
appeared to know every issue, Krishnan seemed unsure of things till he ex-
tracted every fact and every suggestion from his interlocutors. ‘No, no, I
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 121

don’t know ...’ was his constant refrain, even when he knew everything.
He was very popular because of his transparency and readiness to listen
even to junior diplomats from other missions. He allowed all of us to oper-
ate on our own, within his general guidance. But he was capable of deci-
sive intervention, where necessary. He had no problem obtaining the results
he wanted from any situation, even if it took long to reach there. We could
take liberties with him in a way we would not do with other senior officers.
One amusing situation arose when we were in Havana for a NAM meet-
ing. Krishnan was the only state guest among us, whose hotel bills were
paid by the host government. In order to economise on our laundry bill, we
began sending our clothes to the laundry through his room. He did not
challenge it till one day he found that the laundry of Sarita Bali, our young
lady colleague, was delivered to his room. He could not stop laughing when
he told us that the Cubans would really wonder what he was up to.
Gharekhan was very much in the Krishnan mould low-key, compe-
tent and relaxed. He served longer than any other PR in New York as he
moved from the prime minister’s office to New York as an additional sec-
retary. He became subdued and pensive after his daughter’s tragic death,
but he continued bravely till he retired and joined the Secretariat as the
under secretary general. He finished his service as the president of the Se-
curity Council and joined the Secretariat as an aide to Ghali, the next day.
He made a mark in the Secretariat too during his five years, partly in New
York and partly in Gaza. As the secretary general’s special representative
in the Security Council, he made a significant contribution to the United
Nations. Working with Gharekhan, like with Krishnan, was tension-free.
The appointment of Hamid Ansari as a PR was a surprise, as he had no
previous UN experience. But he had distinguished himself in some tough
assignments like Kabul and Teheran and as the Chief of Protocol. The New
York appointment was a reward for him, and it also suited the government
to have a Muslim PR in New York at a time when Pakistan agitated the
Kashmir issue at the United Nations. Ansari’s keen understanding of inter-
national issues more than made up for his lack of familiarity with the United
Nations, and we worked as a team fairly well till he moved to Saudi Ara-
bia. The arrival of a second DPR created some complications, but we over-
came them in due time.
122 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Prakash Shah brought a wealth of the UN experience and considerable

reputation to the post of the PR, but he created various roadblocks for me
during my short stint with him in New York. He insisted that I should
leave the bureau of the climate change conference of parties after I left
New York even though my responsibilities in Nairobi included environ-
mental issues. The defeat in the elections to the Security Council was a
low point in his career, but he had no one other than himself to blame for
raising false expectations.
Nairobi is the only UN capital in the developing world, with the UNEP
and the UN Commission on Human Settlements (Habitat) located there.
After the Rio Summit and the establishment of the Commission on Sus-
tainable Development, the environmental scene shifted to New York and
deprived Nairobi of much of its importance. Habitat also had lost much of
its appeal, as it was chronically short of funds and generally mismanaged.
Africans themselves were the last to fight for importance of Nairobi, as they
preferred to travel to New York, Geneva and Vienna rather than hop across
to Nairobi for meetings. India attached importance to both UNEP and
Habitat and, generally, supported the growth of Nairobi as a UN capital. My
efforts were, therefore, aimed at implementation of the programmes of the
two units as well as strengthening them. But the general attitude of the
donors and the poor management of the two institutions made it difficult
to improve the situation. The best we could achieve was to ensure that the
two institutions stayed in Nairobi and their mandates remained focused on
economic development.
Elizabeth Dowdswell, the executive director of UNEP, a former Cana-
dian diplomat, was obsessed with the idea that she should have access to
ministers of member states on a regular basis as she thought that most
permanent representatives had no say in policy matters. She spent the
last two years of her term, trying to set up a high level committee to
oversee the work of UNEP over and above the Committee of Permanent
Representatives and the General Conference. As the chairman of the
Committee of Permanent Representatives, I found myself in opposition
to this move, while some of the developed countries, notably the United
Kingdom, at the level of its environment minister, supported it strongly.
Although I was acting at the behest of the committee, the British Envi-
ronment Minister, an arrogant gentleman, came to the conclusion that
 MAGIC OF MULTILATERALISM 123

I was single-handedly blocking a consensus in favour of the new body

and went to the extent of declaring that funding to UNEP would be
stopped. The UK Foreign Office even raised the issue bilaterally. Even-
tually, a high-level committee was established with a mandate so dis-
torted that it had no role at all, only to be dismantled by the secretary
general within a short time. Our position was thus vindicated, but the
amount of effort and resources spent on this exercise was a colossal
waste. It is not unusual for the UN bodies to become captive to some
hare-brained ideas of the secretariat officials.
The preparations for Habitat II in Istanbul and its follow-up dominated
our work in the area of human settlements. Habitat II became crucial for
the institution in Nairobi as many developed countries were convinced
that Habitat should be wound up or shifted out of Nairobi. There were also
proposals to merge it with UNEP or some other UN body. With Kenya’s
active cooperation, the G-77 countries decided to oppose such moves and,
instead, strengthen the institution even more. As the spokesman of the G-
77 at the conference, I had to put up a fight on behalf of the developing
world to save Habitat from extinction. Our success in Istanbul was hailed
by Africa and the entire developing world.
I thought that I would be homesick for multilateral fora in Washing-
ton, but our observer status in the Organisation of American States (OAS)
and the negotiations on the establishment of a Community of Democracies
initiated by the state department gave me some multilateral interludes. The
only time we had to be active in the OAS was soon after the nuclear tests
in 1998. I heard from the US Ambassador to the OAS, who was a colleague
in New York, that a resolution on the Indian nuclear tests was under con-
sideration in the OAS. Ambassador Naresh Chandra and I lost no time in
getting there. Chandra was given an opportunity to explain the Indian case,
while I worked among the delegates. Latin Americans, who are generally
friendly to India, were helpful in moderating the language. The United
States was keen on condemnation, but under pressure from the Latin coun-
tries, generated by us, the resolution adopted was less strong than origi-
nally intended.
A Community of Democracies as a grouping at the United Nations
and elsewhere was the brainchild of the Secretary of State, Madelaine
Albright. The idea was sold to the Poles, who became the hosts of the
124 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

first conference, but the preparatory work was done in Washington by a

group of diplomats from prospective member states. Jaswant Singh was
one of the early converts to the idea, and India was designated as a mem-
ber of the preparatory committee. We spent considerable time deciding
on invitees and preparing the agenda. Special care had to be taken not
to step on the toes of a forum of new democracies, which was already
functioning in New York. The idea of several discussion groups rather
than a series of speeches was widely accepted. The conference in War-
saw, which I missed, laid the ground rules for the community and estab-
lished a biennial calendar for it. The logic of a forum for democracies
was self-evident, but the US championship of it was not convincing in
the light of its record of making some of the worst dictatorships its allies
for short-term gains.
 Chapter Three
Nuclear Winter,
Kargil Spring

Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral was particularly relaxed that evening
in September 1997. He sat across me on the only other chair in the room
at the prime minister’s residence, in his neatly pressed kurta, and talked to
me about the trip he had just made to the United States. He had returned
from New York that very evening and I had not imagined that he would see
me the same day. Since he knew that I was returning to Nairobi the next
day on my way to Washington, he had decided to see me.
‘Many people said that I was walking into a trap, but I did not see any
trap there,’ he said triumphantly. ‘President Clinton was very warm and
friendly. He spoke with boyish enthusiasm about his proposed trip to India.
He was asking me what he should see and do in India. He made no sug-
gestion that the Kashmir issue should be resolved in one way or the other,
or express any desire to mediate between India and Pakistan. He told me
that if he was in my position, he would do exactly what I was doing.’ He
seemed relieved that the meeting did not enter issues like Kashmir and
non-proliferation.
Later, Strobe Talbott described the meeting between Clinton and
Gujral on September 1997 in his book Engaging India as ‘not particularly
substantive, in part because Gujral spoke so softly that everyone on the
US side had trouble hearing what he was saying. He had come to the
meeting expecting tough questions and hard demands on Kashmir and
nuclear weapons. To Gujral’s immense relief, Clinton was not interested
126 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

in dealing with sensitive and weighty matters so much as setting the right
tone for the relationship.’
Gujral spoke about the furious speculation in the press about the motives
of President Clinton in asking to see Gujral and Nawaz Sharif in New York.
It became a national crisis when it was known that Gujral would have to
advance the date of his arrival in New York to accommodate the meeting.
The press went into frenzy and arguments were advanced for his going and
not going. Gujral had decided right from the start that he would go. For an
‘interim prime minister’ like him with a strong background in foreign policy,
this was an opportunity of a lifetime to create history. But he deliberately
pretended to be vacillating and gave his officers many options. By then,
Nawaz Sharif had already accepted the invitation to see Clinton. Finally, a
Hindu solution was found. Gujral would travel via Africa to America to
remove any suspicion that he was tilting towards the United States.
Gujral spoke at length about his vision of India US relations. Having
heard him for decades talking about India USSR relations and his predic-
tion that the twenty-first century belong to the Soviet Union, I found his
words very refreshing. He said that he had chosen me to go to Washington
as the deputy chief of mission because of the huge potential for developing
India US relations and he wanted someone energetic and imaginative to
support Ambassador Naresh Chandra. He mentioned that my presence in
Washington would be useful as he had just agreed with Pesident Clinton to
launch a comprehensive and sustained dialogue between India and the
United States on issues of disarmament and non-proliferation. He had
assured Naresh Chandra that I would be an excellent deputy. I protested
mildly about being a deputy chief of mission at my age and about the hope
I had that I would be given a multilateral post. But he assured me that the
post in Washington would present the appropriate challenges. He had no
doubt that I would enjoy the posting. I repeated what I had told Foreign
Secretary Salman Haider, when he first conveyed the prime minister’s deci-
sion that I should go to Washington, ‘I cannot say no to the prime minister.
Nor can I say no to Washington.’
I had known Gujral since his days in Moscow where I served with him
as a first secretary. I had already spent a year there under Ambassadors
K. Shelvankar and D. P. Dhar before Indira Gandhi sent Gujral there. It was
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 127

no secret that he had to leave the cabinet because of differences with Sanjay
Gandhi, the designated heir to Indira Gandhi. As Minister of Information
and Broadcasting, Gujral did not see eye to eye with Sanjay Gandhi, who,
after the declaration of the emergency, wished to curtail press freedom.
Although Moscow meant political exile for him, Gujral decided to make it
a success and plunged deep into diplomacy. He valued the advice I gave him
on several matters and our association continued throughout his political
career, first as a member of parliament and a delegate to the UN General
Assembly, as a minister of external affairs and then as a prime minister.
Haider’s call came when I was deeply involved in a Habitat meeting in
Nairobi for which a delegation had come from India. I was chairing a group
to reform the Habitat to save it from total annihilation. I was very surprised
when Haider told me that the prime minister had hand-picked me for
Washington. First my predecessor, Shyamala Cowsik, had not done even
two years in Washington. I had just come to Nairobi from New York and I
had no hope of getting back to the United States immediately. Till then, no
foreign service officer had done more than two postings to the United
States. Moreover, I had thought that I was too senior to be a deputy again.
Haider brushed aside all these doubts and said that I should let him know
immediately because the posting was urgent and that I should leave in a
month. While holding the foreign secretary on the line, I asked Lekha what
she thought of the idea. She took no time in deciding that we should go.
She was missing the children and the friends she had left behind in the
United States and this was too much of a windfall to resist. Haider himself
was surprised when I told him ‘yes’ straightaway and he expressed appreci-
ation for my discipline and sense of duty. This was in May 1997.
Then came the long wait. No orders were issued till August and I was
sure that the bureaucracy had overruled the prime minister. Haider himself
retired and there was no word from Foreign Secretary Raghunath. Finally,
Raghunath traced me to my brother’s home in Cape Town one night and
told me that I should get ready to move quickly. It was then that I was asked
to go to Delhi to be briefed about my new assignment.
The story of my posting to Washington was revealed to me in bits and
pieces in Delhi, though nobody had the full picture. Apparently, my pre-
decessor Shyamala Cowsik had differences with Naresh Chandra on her
128 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

style of functioning. The Indian press in Washington was also not

favourable to her. It was also felt that the deputy in Washington should be
senior to the consuls general in other US cities for the sake of effective
coordination. When the issue was referred to the prime minister, he
promptly suggested my name. Gujral had wanted to move me out of Nairobi
and he ordered my posting after speaking to Chandra. Chandra did not
know me at all, but he was willing to go by Gujral’s judgement. In any
event, Chandra, a Narasimha Rao appointee, was expected to leave after
the change of government. No one had predicted the advent of the BJP
government and the close links that Chandra would develop with it.
My arrival at Washington in October 1997 coincided with the begin-
nings of the preparation for Clinton’s visit to India. Naresh Chandra had
already established a cozy relationship with Rick Inderfurth, the assistant
secretary of state for South Asia. Inderfurth and I had worked together in
New York as deputy permanent representatives on issues such as peacekeep-
ing and Security Council reform. These were issues on which India and the
United States had major differences, but Inderfurth and I had a relation-
ship of mutual respect. He had no particular interest in India and when his
patron Madeline Albright took him to Washington and put him in charge
of South Asia, it was an altogether new field for him. He had visited India
as a staffer of the national Security Council with President Carter in 1978.
He took a crash course on South Asia and became an expert fairly quickly.
He had settled in well in the job by the time I reached Washington.
I had also known Thomas Pickering, the under secretary for political
affairs, when we served on the Security Council in 1992. In fact, as the
joint secretary (UN), I was Pickering’s host in New Delhi when he came
for consultations as the US permanent representative. I had to literally
rush around in the Delhi airport to catch up with Pickering who did not
bother to come to the VIP lounge where the United States’ acting ambas-
sador and I were waiting for him. He walked through all the barriers with
his hand baggage, and if we had not found him in the taxi line, he would
have reached the hotel long before we did. I remember briefing him on
the NAM, and his response was that if the movement were what I made
it out to be, the United States would like to apply for its membership. I still
treasure a very charming letter of thanks he wrote to me on his return to
New York.
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 129

I also had a fleeting acquaintance of Madeline Albright when she was

the permanent representative in New York. Towards the end of my tenure
in New York, the president of the General Assembly had appointed me
chairman of a group to explore the possibility of setting up a working group
to reform the United Nations. This was a pet project of the Americans,
conceived and promoted by a democrat lawyer David Birenbaum who was
appointed as deputy permanent representative with the specific mandate of
reforming the United Nations. The American proposal had not made much
headway on account of objections from the non-aligned. I had an uphill
task, but I managed to find an acceptable formula in the end which glad-
dened the hearts of the Americans.
K. P. Nayar, a journalist who was once a student of mine in the University
of Kerala, wrote in Sunday when my appointment was announced that my
acquaintance with Albright, Pickering, and Inderfurth would come in
handy in Washington. But in actual fact, my interaction was mainly with
Inderfurth and that too mostly in the company of Naresh Chandra who
also had to deal with Inderfurth, at least till the nuclear tests, when Strobe
Talbott suddenly came on the scene. Low-key preparations for Clinton’s visit
went on till the fall of the Gujral government. Even after Gujral became
caretaker, he tried to persuade Clinton to come, but the United States was
not willing to play along. Inevitably, the visit had to wait till the elections
were over.
The Americans liked Gujral, particularly, since he had prevented the
BJP from coming to power and shared power with the Congress. Paradox-
ically, it was the Congress party, with its socialistic vision that came to enjoy
the confidence of the United States rather than the rightist and market-
oriented BJP. The liberalisation of the economy by Narasimha Rao and the
agreements he reached with Bill Clinton in 1994 led to unprecedented US
warmth towards the Congress party. The radical changes that Narasimha
Rao brought about in Indian foreign policy found approval in Washington.
Gujral was also sensitive to the Americans in many ways because he
was afraid that his old Soviet connections would be held against him.
Inderfurth was particularly fond of him. He showed me a cartoon in a
Pakistani newspaper which showed a father and a son reading two news
items, one about Inderfurth and the other about Gujral, and the father
telling the son, ‘No, my son, Inder Gujral and Inderfurth are not brothers!’
130 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

When Inderfurth asked Gujral to autograph the cartoon, Gujral signed it

with the remark, ‘Are you sure?’
The advent of a coalition government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee upset
the Americans initially and the media was full of speculation that the ‘Hindu
Nationalist Party’ would pursue radical policies and create communal ten-
sions in India. The Americans were comfortable with the Congress party
because of its commitment to secularism and pluralism. BJP was basically an
unknown quantity in Washington. There was also concern that India
Pakistan relations would take a nosedive. The swadeshi slogan of the BJP
had also led them to think that the liberalisation policy of Narasimha Rao
would be reversed. The greatest service that Naresh Chandra did to the BJP
government was the way he worked hard to improve the image of the BJP
in Washington. Naresh Chandra, a Narasimha Rao nominee, submitted his
resignation, but he was asked to stay on and went about explaining how
the BJP had no reason to antagonise the Americans. Naresh Chandra’s
credibility as a Congress nominee was most valuable in this context.
Clinton took the opportunity of a visit to India by his Energy Secretary
Bill Richardson to send a political message to Vajpayee. The secretary’s
visit was on the cards even before the elections in India and it was in the
context of the evolution in India’s environmental policies brought about
quietly by Katy McGuinty, a former White House adviser who spent a year
with the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI). I was astonished how
McGuinty persuaded the government of India to accept the concept of
tradable emissions, which we had rejected earlier on the ground that it was
a device by the industrialised nations to escape their commitment to reduce
emissions in absolute terms under the Framework Convention on Climate
Change. It was mainly because of her efforts that India came to accept the
clean development mechanisms in the climate change negotiations.
As the first high-ranking Clinton administration official to visit India
after the elections, Richardson was received well and gained a favourable
impression about the Vajpayee government. Pakistan’s testing of the Ghouri
missile coincided with the visit of Richardson, and he had the occasion to
see the strength of feelings in India more about the name of the missile
(Ghouri had defeated the Hindu king Prithvi Raj Chauhan by stealth) than
about its lethality. Richardson was impressed by the assertion of restraint by
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 131

the new government. In his meetings, Richardson kept expressing appre-

ciation for the government’s restraint and nobody contradicted him, not
even Vajpayee or his Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra. Apparently,
George Fernandes, the defence minister, assured Richardson in so many
words that there would be no surprise testing.
The declaration by the ruling coalition that nuclear weapons would be
inducted was read by the US administration together with the announce-
ment of a national defence review, and the Americans thought that a deci-
sion on nuclear testing would be taken only after the review. Richardson
reinforced this impression on his return, and reported that India was mak-
ing a careful study of its options. Inderfurth was specially focused on the
review and repeatedly asked Chandra and me how the review went and
whether he could do anything to help. We had no information about the
review and we had not thought much about it.
The Foreign Secretary Krishnan Raghunath came to Washington for
the annual foreign office talks with Pickering in the first week of May 1998.
The new strategic dialogue was also set to begin at these talks. Raghunath
appeared tense, but nobody took much notice of it because he was never
relaxed. When Pickering kept complimenting the government of India on
its restraint in the face of provocation by Pakistan, Raghunath reminded
him more than once that India’s nuclear option was non-negotiable. The
usual warmth was missing in the exchange and I noticed that a one-on-one
lunch that Pickering and Raghunath had at the Cosmos Club ended rather
abruptly. During the talks, Raghunath maintained that India would be
restrained in its reaction to the missile test by Pakistan, but would leave all
options open for appropriate decisions at the appropriate time. As it turned
out, the Americans held Raghunath guilty of dissimulation, as he did not
reveal the intention of the government to move rapidly to testing. Whether
Raghunath himself was guilty of deception or he was simply ignorant of
the decision to test was irrelevant. His visit to Washington at that juncture
made him persona non grata with the Americans with retrospective effect.
On 11 May, I had an engagement in Richmond to inaugurate an
exhibition of photographs on India. As we were driving to the museum
where the exhibition was held, I received a call from my son Sreenath, at
that time an associate professor of journalism at the Columbia University,
132 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

to ask whether I had heard the news. It was then that I heard for the first
time that a few hours before India had detonated three nuclear weapons
in the Pokhran test site in Rajasthan. I had a feeling that it was coming,
but the timing of it surprised me as much as the others, including the
state department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). I called
Chandra who had already reached the office and started working on the
phones. He had spoken many times to Delhi and also to Inderfurth and
Pickering. He said that I could take my time to return as nothing would
happen till Monday. I went to the function at the museum expecting ques-
tions on the news of the tests, but no one seemed to be aware of what had
happened. As I spoke about the recent improvement in India US rela-
tions, I expressed the hope that the news of the day would not affect these
relations too adversely. Nobody seemed to know what I was talking about.
Back in Washington, I found a different situation. Chandra and I went
to see Inderfurth on 12 May. He had a number of other officers with him
including Bob Einhorn, the high priest of non-proliferation in the state
department. The scene had to be seen to be believed. Inderfurth, normally
a charming man, fond of banter even in the midst of diplomatic conversa-
tions, was dead serious this time. He appeared personally hurt that we
should have done this during his tenure as assistant secretary. Indrefurth
mumbled something about surprise and deception and lack of faith, and
Chandra began his masterly spin on the tests, which he later perfected.
Einhorn was emotionless and asked technical questions. Chandra displayed
his knowledge about the tests, which he had gathered during his tenure as
cabinet secretary. He told long stories of his own experience of the tests
having been called off as late as D-3, that is three days before the tests
should have taken place. He tried to be cheerful and relaxed, but the Amer-
icans were not willing to fall into his trap. Einhorn asked whether the ‘series
of tests’ had ended or some more were coming, and Chandra said that he
did not know. It turned out that two more tests were conducted on 13 May
though we were not aware of such plans at that time.
Pickering joined the meeting after a while. In his characteristic fashion,
he fired a number of questions at Chandra and declared in no uncertain
terms that this was total betrayal. A spirited Chandra took exception to
these charges and recounted the whole history of the Indian nuclear saga.
But his tactic to put the tests behind us and move forward did not succeed.
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 133

Pickering kept harping on punishment for the crime rather than looking
ahead. He was sure that the punishment would be meted out before any
talk of the future. At this point, Chandra realised that the matter had to
be dealt with at a different level. He mooted the idea of a dialogue either
in Delhi or Washington on nuclear issues, an idea he could not have
brought up without instructions from Delhi. But Pickering would have
none of it. He ignored the suggestion and kept warning us of the dire
consequences, which were about to follow. There were several spells of
long silence in the conversation, an unusual occurrence for both Chandra
and Pickering. Finally, as we walked out with Pickering, Chandra told
Pickering again about the need for a dialogue. This time Pickering could
not ignore it and he said that he would seek instructions. Chandra and I
hardly spoke during the car journey to the embassy. We realised that tough
days were ahead of us.
In the first flush of anger, the White House did not hesitate to compli-
cate matters for India. ‘We are going to come down on those guys like a ton
of bricks,’ President Clinton said at a meeting at the Oval Office, 24 hours
after the news had reached Washington. We forwarded to Clinton a letter
from Vajpayee, explaining the reasons for the tests. In the letter, Vajpayee
mentioned two neighbours, China, ‘an overt nuclear weapons state on our
borders, a state which committed aggression against India in 1962’, and
Pakistan, ‘a covert nuclear weapons state’ as reasons for the test. This was
a confidential communication, but its full text appeared in the New York Times
the very next day, an obvious leak from the top. The letter, together with the
report of an earlier remark by Defence Minister George Fernandes that
China was India’s ‘Enemy No. 1’, complicated India China relations. China
was, particularly, angry that it was cited as the reason for the tests.
I believe Pickering contacted Chandra again the next day when Presi-
dent Clinton was already in the air on his way to Europe. He told Chandra
that the president would sign the orders, imposing comprehensive sanc-
tions against India on arrival in Europe and that the situation could be
retrieved still if India was willing to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
(CTBT) forthwith. The answer that Chandra conveyed was that he was
not able to get a decision from Delhi before the president landed because
of communication problems. The sanctions were duly imposed and a new
era began in India US relations.
134 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

The next four weeks were the hardest in the relationship. Contacts were
virtually frozen. Unaccustomed to the kind of sweeping comprehensive
sanctions that were imposed against India, the US officials decided to err
on the extreme and began interpreting the law on presumption of denial.
The detailed regulations came later, but they had to match the practice
already in place. High-handed action by over-zealous bureaucrats shook
the very foundations of civilised dealings between the two democracies.
Stories of dismissals of Indian scientists from research institutions started
pouring in. There was some panic that no visa would be issued to Indians,
and this impression gained ground when R. Chidambaram was denied a
visa to visit Washington to attend a crystallography conference. In fact, the
decision to deny visa to Chidambaram was part of an unwritten ‘people
sanction’, that was put in place. Nuclear scientists were the first targets,
but later we discovered that many others were also denied visas. Another
feature of the ‘people sanction’ was that Indian visitors were received one
step below their protocol equivalents in the United States. But in the case
of delegations in which the United States had a special interest, like a group
on vaccines, no such problems arose even in the early days of the sanc-
tions. The choice in these matters was entirely in the state department,
particularly, as India did not impose any reciprocal restrictions.
The embassy geared up for the exceptional situation faced by us. Our
lobbyist David Springer pointed to the great damage the tests would cause
to India US relations that he had helped to build and suggested that we
should lie low for a while. Chandra rejected the advice outright and asked
me to draw up a programme of aggressive salesmanship of our new nuclear
policy. It was decided that the state department, the Congress, the media,
and the Indian community should be contacted at every level and that no
stone should be left unturned to carry the message of the rationale of a
minimum deterrent home to everyone. Chandra himself met the main
players and I accompanied him to most of the meetings. My other col-
leagues and I fanned out on our own to meet others. The standstill at the
state department gave us the opportunity to focus on other institutions.
Chandra’s media management was impeccable. He was on every television
channel, answering questions patiently, convincingly and transparently.
The sheer value of his arguments appealed to the viewers. In fact, many of
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 135

the points he made on live television subsequently became the talking

points for Indian diplomats around the globe.
The senators and congressmen, even members of the India Caucus with
the exception of Frank Pallone and Benjamin Gilman from New Jersey,
turned hostile overnight. The friendliest of them appeared more aggrieved
than angry. They lectured us on the teachings of the Buddha, Mahatma
Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, and advised us to take remedial measures.
Many of them suggested that we should accept punishment in some form.
Some even suggested that we could choose the mode of our own punish-
ment. Some of them blamed the advent of the BJP and said that the con-
gress party would not have made such a mistake. Chandra set the tone of
our response, firm, analytical, and non-repentant. We followed his line in
every conversation and left a deep impression in the minds of our inter-
locutors, though none of them conceded that we were right. The work
done by the embassy in the first two months after the tests made a great dif-
ference to the perception of Indian policy in the minds of the Americans.
Two congressional events, which were planned earlier as part of our
efforts to win friends and influence people, took place just after the tests.
A congressional hearing on India by the Senate Foreign Relations Com-
mittee with Senator Helms in the chair was meticulously planned with the
help of Swadesh Chatterjee who won a Padma Bhushan much later for his
services. Senator Helms, who was extremely critical of India in the past,
was supposed to have had a change of heart. The hearing was planned and
organised to give him a chance to praise India for its accomplishments as
a democracy for the first time. But the date chosen was 13 May, the day the
second set of tests was conducted. The whole world believed that the hear-
ing was arranged to discuss the tests and a massive audience filled the con-
gressional hall. Instead of praising India, Helms spewed venom on the
government of India in an unprecedented manner. He said that India had
shot itself not only in the foot, but also in the head. He had no word of
support for India’s defence needs and condemned the whole policy as mis-
guided and doomed. He went to the extent of saying that India’s weapons
directly threatened the United States. He said that India’s advanced space
programme was designed to deliver nuclear weapons to distant lands. He
also criticised President Clinton for cozying up to India. Others spoke less
136 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

harshly, but the refrain was the same. There was no justification for India’s
development of nuclear weapons; India had no threat from Pakistan or
China; India had undermined the whole non-proliferation pledge of the
world; and India and Pakistan would destroy the world sooner or later.
The representative of the state department Karl ‘Rick’ Inderfurth, Assis-
tant Secretary for South Asian affairs, threw away the earlier ‘feel good’
testimony he had prepared and, instead, delivered a harsh message begin-
ning with President Clinton’s statement announcing his decision to invoke
sanctions against India for conducting nuclear tests. He rejected a variety
of reasons that India had cited in private and public as the rationale for
testing and characterised them as insufficient justification for ‘this most
unwise act’. Unresolved problems with China, China’s ties with Pakistan,
Pakistani support for terrorism in Kashmir, India’s feeling that its military
capabilities are no longer respected in the region none of these, he said,
was persuasive as a justification. But he did admit that the decision to test
had been greeted almost universally within India with firm support, border-
ing on euphoria. He went on to recount the negative international reaction
to the tests, and declared in no uncertain terms that India’s tests were a set-
back to India US relations, global efforts for non-proliferation, India Pak-
istan relations and stability in Asia. He also outlined the harsh penalties
under the Glenn amendment, which he said were uncharted waters. Unlike
Helms, Inderfurth ended on a hopeful note that the United States would
continue to respect India as a complex, democratic society whose achieve-
ments and potential would never be underestimated.
The only voice of moderation came from former Congressman Stephen
Solarz, whose credibility was not high on account of his known pro-Indian
proclivities. Moreover, it was known that he was campaigning for a lobby-
ing contract for India. In fact, Prime Minister Gujral had promised him
that contract, but could not convince the bureaucracy that the expense
was justified. As it happened, it was his statement at the congressional hear-
ing on 13 May that earned him the contract subsequently. With his deep
understanding of India’s history and politics, he traced the evolution of
India’s nuclear policy and the various threats that the country faced, par-
ticularly from China. He recalled the Chinese aggression of 1962 and the
continuing threat from China to India’s integrity. He stressed the need for
a minimum nuclear deterrent for a country of the size and population of
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 137

India. His masterly defence of the Indian tests, however, fell on deaf ears
as the audience was clearly inclined to condemn the tests. I had met Solarz
in Fiji in 1987, when he came there to look into the plight of the Indians
there after the military coup. He already had earned a reputation for being
sympathetic to Indians everywhere.
The other event that took place by sheer coincidence at the time of the
tests was a hearing by a committee of the congress on the proposal to set
up a Gandhi memorial in Washington DC. This was a project that had
remained on the cards for many years. It was as early as in 1949 that the US
Congress first resolved to authorise the India League of America to erect a
memorial for the Mahatma in Washington. Forty years later, another Indian
American organisation, Indian American Forum for Political Education,
got another bill passed by the Congress in 1988, but both these decisions
remained unimplemented. Naresh Chandra revived the proposal in 1997
in the context of the celebration of 50 years of Indian independence and
implemented it with single-minded devotion during his tenure as ambassa-
dor. He was scheduled to appear before the committee on 12 May and we
feared the worst. But the hearing took a strange turn when congressman
after congressman said that Gandhi should not be penalised for the mis-
takes of the present leaders of India. In fact, some of them asserted that a
Gandhi memorial would be a reminder of what India stood for in the past
and serve to remind the world of India’s contribution to world peace. The
proposal to erect a Gandhi statue on Massachusetts Avenue, tabled
by Frank Pallone and Bill McCollum, was unanimously approved and
Clinton and Vajpayee unveiled the memorial in September 2000 after much
water had flowed in the Potomac.
In the gloomy days of India US relations, a chilling winter in the mid-
dle of summer, the enthusiasm of the Indian American community gave us
great warmth. They were angry with their own government that it had
taken such a dim view of India’s security interests. In fact, part of the rea-
son for the change in the Clinton administration about a dialogue with
India was the pressure of the Indian American community. We built up
that pressure by addressing as many gatherings of the community as pos-
sible. One of the best gatherings I addressed was a group of young profes-
sionals of Indian origin who had come together as Network of South
Asian Professionals ( NETSAP ) in Washington. The state department
138 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

was also asked to participate in the discussions, but the state department
gave a set of questions to the coordinator, Kapil Sharma, to ask the Indian
representative. Sharma asked the questions faithfully, but the audience
was clearly on my side and I had no problem convincing them that the
Indian position was impeccable. One thing that struck me at that meet-
ing and at subsequent encounters with the second and third generation
Indians in the United States was that these young people are more proud
of India and its accomplishments than their parents. Unlike their parents,
who have some grievance against India on account of their old experi-
ences with the government or the social system, they look at India with
clear eyes and appreciate the value of democracy there and are generally
willing to help India overcome its present difficulties. They may not speak
Indian languages or understand many Indian customs, but they take pride
in their Indianness. The nuclear tests had an electrifying effect on the
young generation of Indian Americans.
Soon after the tests, we were in great demand among the think tanks
and also non-governmental organisations. The questioning at these
gatherings was clearly hostile as peaceniks and non-proliferationists
joined hands. The older people in the audience, mainly women, asked as
to why a poor country like India was frittering away its resources for use-
less and expensive nuclear weapons. No amount of arguments about
India’s security needs convinced them about the need for such wasteful
expenditure. Some of them literally shed tears for the poor people of
India! The most widespread concern was that India and Pakistan would
blow up the world, while the United States and Russia were working
hard to remove such a danger.
At a seminar on security organised by the Carnegie Foundation, a
Chinese official was particularly patronising when he remarked that India
should focus on what it could do best, that is information technology, and
not waste its resources on nuclear weapons. I chose to hit back and said that
the Chinese argument smacked of colonialism. In the old days, India’s colo-
nial masters cut off the fingers of Indian artisans to prevent them from
weaving delicate fabrics. Indians were advised at that time just to grow cot-
ton and feed the industrial revolution in Europe. The Chinese official was
very offended, as the last thing that he liked to hear was that the Chinese
were no different from the colonialist exploiters. The Chinese take pride in
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 139

their solidarity with the developing world, but when it comes to issues like
non-proliferation, they are no better than the Western ideologues.

A special session of the UN General Assembly on narcotics brought the

then Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Jaswant Singh to
New York in July, and we were asked to explore whether he could initiate
a dialogue with the United States. Apparently, Jaswant Singh had met
Richardson in Delhi and conveyed that he was designated by Vajpayee to
be a discreet channel of communication with the United States. The
response was somewhat tentative from the US side, but the freeze was
intolerable even for the Americans and they agreed to begin a dialogue.
It was not clear in the beginning who his interlocutor would be. Even
though we made it known that he had the rank of a cabinet minister, the
decision was to match the deputy chairman of the planning commission
with the deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott. Talbott, a correspondent
turned diplomat and ‘Friend of Bill’, was busy burying the Soviet Union for
several years and had no time for India or Pakistan, though he had made a
trip to India and Pakistan in April 1994, which led to Narasimha Rao’s visit
to Washington later in the year. He stepped into South Asia soon after our
tests when Pakistan threatened to test also. It was Talbott, who rushed to
Islamabad with a package to dissuade Pakistan from testing. He failed to
prevent Pakistani tests, but it was not even clear whether the United States
wanted the tests to be prevented. There was speculation that Pakistan
would test, but sign the CTBT immediately to ward off the sanctions. But
Pakistan eventually decided to maintain parity with India in every respect.
Talbott returned ‘empty handed’, but he was fully in charge of South Asia
by the time he returned from Islamabad. His designation to speak to
Jaswant Singh was logical.
Talbott was chosen also for another reason. The more seasoned Thomas
Pickering, the India hand and his outfit stood discredited in the eyes of the
Washington establishment. They had reported that India would not test at
least till the promised defence policy review was completed. After the tests,
the state department divided itself into two camps, the ‘relationists’ and
140 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

the ‘non-proliferationists’, the former led by Pickering and Inderfurth, and

the latter by ambassador Hollum and Bob Einhorn. Talbott had kept him-
self out of either camp, and thus became a natural choice for the dialogue.
Inderfurth and Einhorn became his lieutenants, and a new figure Matthew
Daley, a former deputy chief of mission in New Delhi, was brought into
the South Asia Bureau to be Talbott’s eyes and ears. Daley, who was a
candidate for Inderfurth’s job, had an axe to grind and his arrival was a sure
recipe for trouble for Inderfurth. But Albright’s continued support sustained
Inderfurth through the Talbott Jaswant Singh talks and beyond. Daley
faded out after the change of the government into some innocuous bureau
in the state department. But Daley played a major role in the negotiations
by using his old contacts in Delhi, through unorthodox channels to convey
messages back and forth.
Talbott Jaswant Singh talks will remain a mystery in the history of
India US relations, even though Talbott has written extensively on the
talks in his book Engaging India. The two spent the bulk of the time talk-
ing between them while delegations waited outside or in their hotels.
Records are incomplete and no agreement of any kind was reached.
Talbott and Inderfurth gave informal accounts of the talks at think tank
discussions, but Jaswant Singh was tongue-tied most of the time. He gave
very sketchy accounts in parliament and outside. The first compromise
made was that the talks were called talks on disarmament and non-
proliferation. In the eyes of the Americans, the talks were on non-
proliferation, which essentially meant that the effort was to put the
Indian nuclear genie back in the bottle. For India, the exercise was to
make the United States aware of the compulsions that necessitated a
minimum deterrent for its own security. The objectives of the United
States were clearly defined in terms of the five or ‘four and a half’ bench-
marks that were no better than demands. India should sign the CTBT;
commit itself to enter the negotiations on the Fissile Material Cut-off
Treaty (FMCT); impose strict export controls, and define and spell out
the specifics of the minimum deterrent. The ‘half’ benchmark was the
improvement of relations between India and Pakistan, something unre-
lated to the talks from the perspective of India. Satisfaction on the
benchmarks was essential for the United States to lift the sanctions
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 141

against India. The United States had set the same kind of benchmarks for
Pakistan, and Talbott had several rounds of negotiations with Shamshad
Ahmed, the foreign secretary. The reasons for the imbalance in level
between the Indian and Pakistani talks and the infrequency of Pakistani
rounds were obvious. Pakistan was sure to follow the lead of India on all
these aspects, and the talks with Pakistan was essentially to keep it
informed of the progress with India.
Jaswant Singh approached the talks as though they were a matter
between him and Talbott, and the rest of the world was some kind of a dis-
traction. He totally denied the very perception of the Americans that the
ultimate outcome would be the lifting of the sanctions in return for cer-
tain actions by India. In fact, he maintained throughout that the sanctions
were not his concern at all. A number of issues relating to sanctions came
up and the appropriate forum to discuss them was the talks. Jaswant Singh
would let Naresh Chandra raise these issues, but maintain a studied silence
when they were discussed.
A picturesque image developed by Jaswant Singh in the initial round
was a recurring theme throughout. He said that there was a Rajasthani say-
ing that ‘we should ask for the way to a village only if we knew the village
we wanted to reach.’ The village became some kind of nebulous objective,
he was pursuing with the Americans. He never conceded that there were
benchmarks, but indicated readiness to sign the CTBT when a national
consensus in its favour was generated, for which he assumed responsibility.
He had no problem to undertake to negotiate the FMCT in good faith on
the understanding that the treaty would not cover the existing stockpiles
of fissionable material. There was no question, however, of any interim
agreement on the cessation of production of fissile materials. He initiated
action to tighten the export control regime in India on the lines of the
guidelines of the nuclear suppliers group and other similar entities. But on
the question of defining minimum deterrent, he remained quite elusive.
He gave different arguments, but basically remained non-committal. He
frequently referred to minimum deterrent not being ‘fixity’, something
totally incapable of mutation. He claimed that the security situation of
India was in a flux, and that the optimum number of weapons and the
systems of delivery should be subject to constant review.
142 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Jaswant Singh depended on two joint secretaries, Rakesh Sood and Alok
Prasad, to do the spadework for his arguments. Naresh Chandra, as a
member of the delegation, offered valuable advice. But none of them seemed
privy to Jaswant Singh’s vision of the talks and the desired outcome. The
Foreign Secretary K. Raghunath was on the fringes of these talks, although
he attended some of the rounds. There was one occasion when Raghunath
was in Washington, when Talbott invited Jaswant Singh to his home for a
private dinner. I was asked to convey a suggestion that the foreign secretary
should also be invited to the dinner, but we were told that Talbott’s wife was
cooking and that she could cook only for two. Further drama was added to
the dinner when Talbott arrived at the Watergate Hotel, driving a convert-
ible and donning a straw hat to pick up Jaswant Singh. The embassy car had
to follow to bring back Jaswant Singh after the dinner.
Several rounds of talks were held in different European capitals,
depending on Talbott’s schedule and some rounds were held in Washington
and New Delhi. There was no agreement even about the number of rounds
held as the American count of the rounds included even a couple of airport
meetings between Jaswant Singh and Talbott, while the Indian count did
not include them. Brajesh Mishra was generally aware of the details of
the talks, but found it necessary to come to Washington, occasionally, to
correct what he thought were imbalances in Jaswant Singh’s presentation.
He felt that he had to come because Jaswant Singh could not make certain
points to the Americans forcefully.
A speech made by Talbott at the Brookings Institution on 12 November
1998 contained the clearest and most comprehensive account of what he
sought to accomplish in his talks with Jaswant Singh and Shamshad
Ahmed. He was categorical in his assertion that the long-range goal of
universal adherence to the NPT would not be abandoned and that, unless
and until India and Pakistan disavowed nuclear weapons and accepted
comprehensive safeguards, they would ‘continue to forfeit the full recogni-
tion and benefits’ that accrued to countries in good standing with the
NPT. He called it ‘a crucial and immutable guideline’ of the US policy. He
recognised, however, that India and Pakistan were not going to give
up their nuclear weapons. Instead of giving them the cold shoulder, the
United States was encouraging them to take five practical steps to avoid
nuclear competition between them and to bolster non-proliferation goals,
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 143

he said. He then listed the five steps or benchmarks, which were already
known. First and foremost, India and Pakistan should sign the CTBT. Sec-
ond, they should halt all the production of fissile material and, for that pur-
pose, join the FMCT negotiations. Since the FMCT was still several years
away, they should join the other nations that have conducted nuclear tests
in announcing that they would refrain from producing fissile material.
Third, they should exercise strategic restraint by imposing limitations on
the development and deployment of missiles and aircraft capable of carry-
ing weapons of mass destruction. Fourth, India and Pakistan should
strengthen their export-control regimes to prevent further proliferation.
(He failed to say that in the case of Pakistan, import control was as impor-
tant as export control.) Talbott called the fifth also a benchmark, though
he conceded that it had nothing to do with the overt manifestations of the
nuclear status of the two countries. This had to do with the long standing
tensions and disputes between India and Pakistan. They should liberate
themselves from their own enmity as no amount of diplomatic exertion by
others would help. Though Talbott called the catalogue a progress report,
there were more demands in the list than points of agreement. He also
claimed that his discussions with India were also on behalf of the interna-
tional community as a whole, represented by a ‘South Asia Task Force’ con-
sisting, among others, of the countries that had voluntarily abandoned their
nuclear programmes like South Africa, Brazil, and some of the former
Republics of the Soviet Union.
The Talbott report of November 1998 annoyed Jaswant Singh to such
an extent that he characterised it as ‘unacceptable’. In a statement to the
Indian Parliament in December, he stated, ‘One of the ground rules of the
negotiations was to maintain confidentiality regarding the contents of the
negotiations. Talbott did not go into contents, but did start drawing a con-
tour map of the US concerns. It was also made clear at the Rome round of
talks that this was a violation of the rules. It was also made clear that we
had engaged in dialogue with the United States on a bilateral basis and
that, therefore, for the United States to go on reaffirming the multilateral
agenda would not work.’ So much for the personal equation and warmth
between the interlocutors!
Vajpayee also took the parliament into confidence just before
Jaswant Singh’s statement and virtually confirmed the position outlined by
144 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Talbott. While Talbott characterised the benchmarks as conditions for

improvement in bilateral relations, Vajpayee maintained that the propos-
als were made by India on the basis of its own security considerations. He
asserted that the talks focussed on issues related to disarmament and non-
proliferation, keeping regional issues distinctly apart. In direct answer to
Talbott, Vajpayee said that India would not stand in the way of the CTBT
coming into force. But he wanted a positive environment for concluding the
discussions on the treaty. He also assured the parliament that the signing of
the CTBT would neither jeopardise national security nor constrain India from
continuing its nuclear research. He was willing to join the FMCT negotia-
tions, but it was a firm no to any interim measures such as a moratorium on
fissile material production. In return for stricter export controls, he wanted
greater access to dual use and high technologies. As for defence postures, he
bluntly told the parliament that these are sovereign functions, not subject for
negotiations. ‘In fact, our talks are based on the fundamental premise that
India will define its own requirements, for its nuclear deterrent, on its own
assessment of the security environment,’ he said. India was talking to the
United States and other interlocutors simply because they were interested in
understanding our positions and our policies better. He then went on to speak
about no first use, minimum deterrent, no arms race, and so on, the doctrines
he had outlined to the UN General Assembly in the autumn of 1998.
What was actually accomplished in the Talbott Jaswant Singh talks will
be known only when the archives are opened to the public. But it is clear
that much of what was said in these talks were innovations by Jaswant
Singh and Talbott, which did not have the sanction of the public on both
sides. They brought about a certain normalcy in the relations, but no action
taken by the Americans was directly attributable to the talks. We too pre-
tended that our own policy was not determined by what was demanded at
the talks and that we were doing what we would have done in any case for
the sake of our own interests. Other officials like Hollum maintained a
hard-line approach throughout and we ignored those pronouncements as
irrelevant. As the frequency of these talks reduced and other avenues of
dialogue opened, nobody seemed to mind it at all. The rounds ended uncer-
emoniously long before the change of government in the United States,
but they were never formally terminated.
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 145

The Talbott Jaswant Singh talks paved the way for President Clinton’s
visit to India in 2000, though his speech in the parliament was nothing but
a veiled attack on India’s refusal to move forward on any of the bench-
marks. Talbott’s book has a wealth of information on the talks and it
claims credit for the most comprehensive dialogue between India and
the United States. But he candidly admits, ‘But the boulder we had been
counting on Jaswant to budge was still at the bottom of the hill. He might
go through the motion of giving it one more shove, and we must do what-
ever we could to help him. But the fact was we had exhausted our lever-
age on Indian decision making.’
One salutary effect of the nuclear tests and the attitude of the Indian
government that the international reaction will have no great impact on
Indian politics and the economy was the confidence that India gained in
having a dialogue with the Americans on nuclear issues. There was a cer-
tain panic in the minds of the commentators in the earlier days that India
would surrender to the Americans on the NPT if any dialogue was held.
Two occasions when such a dialogue was attempted, the public opinion in
India revolted to such an extent that the dialogue had to be abandoned.
One occasion was when a proposal was made at the time of Prime Minister
Morarji Desai to set up a joint scientific panel to study the implications of
India signing the NPT. Foreign Secretary Jagat Mehta, who supported the
idea, was virtually hounded out of the office by the anti-US elements in
India. On another occasion, during the time of Prime Minister Narasimha
Rao, a discussion with the Americans on nuclear issues planned in London
under the leadership of Ambassador Natarajan Krishnan had to be
abandoned when the news of the talks leaked. But the dialogue with the
United States after the tests did not cause nervousness and it was generally
welcomed. There was considerable support for the process even though
the details of the talks were not known. In the popular mind, the dialogue
was meant to normalise relations between the two countries and to have
the sanctions lifted.
In a country, where policy is made in diverse fora, it was perhaps naive
to assume that long conversations between two individuals could alter
policy. Too much importance was given to the personal equation between
Jaswant Singh and Talbott. In fact, it was the initiative of a Republican
146 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Congressman Sam Brownback of Kansas that led to some dilution in the

sanctions. President Clinton did not use the discretion given to him by the
congress with regard to the sanctions as the administration attached great
importance to India signing the CTBT. When the Senate rejected the
ratification of the CTBT, the Clinton administration suffered a setback in
its efforts to get India and Pakistan to sign the treaty. India continued to
maintain till the end that the government was engaged in building a
consensus to sign the Treaty. The tangible benefits of the Talbott Jaswant
Singh talks, thus, remain shrouded in mystery. Much of the mystique built
around these talks was illusory. My suspicion is that many of the theories
spun by Jaswant Singh and Talbott will not stand public scrutiny when the
archives are thrown open.

A set of players whose role in the crisis will never be determined are the
lobbyists whom we used in Washington. Signing up of the United States
lobbyist was an innovation accomplished by Ambassador Sidharth
Shankar Ray mainly on account of his clout with Prime Minister
Narasimha Rao. With the death of Janki Ganju, a former embassy official
who functioned as some kind of lobbyist and factotum for the embassy,
Ray felt the need to resort to a professional lobbying firm to support his
work. The outlay approved for the first lobbyist was quite controversial
and both Ray and Rao had to do much explaining to justify the expendi-
ture. I remember my son Sreenath, who was freelancing for New Delhi
Television, being asked by the network to go to Washington to interview
Ray about the hiring of the lobbyist in 1994. Ray told Sreenath that the
lobbyist was a kind of guide who would be essential to explore a forest. Of
course, you can explore the forest on your own, but without a guide you
may miss the trees. No one would deny that any newcomer would find
Washington a political wilderness.
The practice of hiring of lobbyists was well established by the time I
came to Washington and the embassy had two lobbying firms. One was the
Washington Group represented by David Springer, whom congressman
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 147

Gary Ackerman of New York had recommended to Ray. Ackerman and

Springer had a cozy relationship. Springer made himself useful for the
embassy with his contacts on Capitol Hill. When the republicans captured
the House of Representatives, Springer persuaded Ray to hire a republican
firm also, the American Consultative Group (ACG). It was the responsi-
bility of the deputy chief of mission to keep in touch with the lobbyists,
assign work to them and assess their performance. I was impressed with
Springer, but the ACG did not appear particularly useful. I brought the lob-
byists out of a confidential relationship with the deputy chief of mission
and roped in the Heads of Wings into the weekly meetings with the lobby-
ists. We sat with them and chalked out the kind of activities that the lob-
byists should undertake each week. This diversified the activities of the
lobbyists beyond fixing meetings and receptions on the Hill.
Before the tests, we were preoccupied with the Burton amendment,
an annual ritual that had come to be regarded as the litmus test of the
popularity of India on the Hill. The amendment sought to effect a token
cut on the quantum of the US assistance to India on the ground that the
human rights record of India was hopeless. The Khalistan and Kashmir
lobbies were behind the Burton move, and the embassy and the India
Caucus in the congress took pride in reducing the support for Burton
Amendment over the years. My predecessor Shyamala Cowsik was proud
that Burton got the lowest ever number of votes in her final year in
Washington and told me that the challenge to me was to improve on her
record. I was lucky that Burton stopped pressing his amendment to a vote
from 1998 onwards as his support had dwindled considerably. This was
accomplished with continuous and systematic lobbying of congressmen
with the help of Indian American activists.
The other preoccupation was the Gandhi Memorial for which we were
chasing friendly congressmen for sponsorship. Springer and the ACG were
fully engaged in these activities. It was through their efforts that we had set
up a congressional hearing on India on 13 May 1998 and the Gandhi
Memorial hearing on 12 May 1998. Another routine responsibility of the
lobbyists was to keep an eye on the letters written by some congressmen,
occasionally at the behest of G. S. Aulakh, a Khalistan lobbyist and the
other pro-Pakistan groups active on the Hill. Each time such letters or other
148 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

documents appeared on the Hill, we made sure that other congressmen

issued an appropriate response. Pakistan had its own lobbyists on the Hill
and a congressman commented to me that the two sets of lobbyists were so
evenly balanced that neither country could win. The Indian Americans
constantly complained about the inadequacy of the Indian lobbyists. When
told about this, Ambassador Riaz Khokar of Pakistan told me that if it were
any consolation, we should know that Pakistani Americans were equally
critical of the lobbyists hired by Pakistan.
Our priorities changed the moment the tests took place. We left no
stone unturned to win supporters for the tests. Henry Kissinger’s famous
remark at that time that India was living in a tough neighbourhood made
headlines around the globe. At the time the tests occurred, former Sen-
ator (and presidential candidate) Bob Dole and former congressman
Stephen Solarz were campaigning to get lobbying contracts for their
respective firms. Senator Dole was a partner in one of the leading lobby-
ing firms in Washington, Verner, Lipfert, Bernhard, McPherson, and
Hand. Solarz was hoping to work for a suitable firm once he got the con-
tract. Both were engaged soon after the tests even when Springer and
ACG were still working for us. We now had a formidable team of lobby-
ists to work for us in Washington. My weekly meetings with the lobbyists
became strategy sessions where lobbyists vied with each other to prove
their usefulness.
Springer and Solarz had an advantage over the others as they had some
understanding of India US relations and had friends in India. The repre-
sentatives of the new firm, led by a lawyer called Brenda Meister, were
solid on contacts on the Hill, but lacked any grounding on India. Former
senators Dole and Mitchell were themselves ready to assist, and Chandra
and I had several meetings with them. They listened to us and promised
to help with both the administration and the congress, but there was no
issue on which they came back with a definite answer. Their lawyers were,
however, adept in analysing legislation and drafting resolutions, bills and
letters. But the main contribution of the lobbyists was to identify poten-
tially friendly congressmen and Senators and fix meetings with them for
Chandra and myself.
The lobbyists themselves caused a crisis in the midst of the nuclear
winter, posing a new challenge. A decision was taken to phase out Springer,
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 149

ACG and Solarz, and to entrust our entire lobbying effort to the leading
lobbying firm in Washington, Verner, and Lipfert. Having anticipated this
development, Springer made his moves to checkmate us. He persuaded his
friend Ackerman to stage a coup in the India Caucus by ousting its
co-chairmen Frank Pallone and McCollum by bringing up the argument
that there should be rotation. Ackerman and a friend of the ACG, and a
Republican congressman Jim Greenwood, a total novice on India, became
co-chairmen. Their calculation was that India would not want to antago-
nise the co-chairmen of the India Caucus by terminating the contracts of
Springer and the ACG. But Chandra was made of sterner stuff and he took
the crucial decision to get rid of these lobbyists. The chairman of the India
Caucus, who should be our best friend, turned against the embassy and
started working with a section of the Indian American community, and
began to malign the embassy. A colourful Indian journalist Narayanan
Keshavan was appointed a staffer in the office of Ackerman at the instance
of the Indian community. Keshavan and Springer drafted Ackerman’s
speeches to the community, criticising the embassy, but praising the govern-
ment of India and the Indian Americans.
At a major gathering of Indian Americans to celebrate the Indian
Republic Day in January 1999, Ackerman read out a speech in which he
said that the policy of the government was bewildering even to its friends.
He was referring to the nuclear tests, which came after many years of sup-
port to disarmament and the elimination of nuclear weapons. He went on
to say that the Indian Embassy was ‘asleep at the switch’ and that it did not
recognise true friends of India. As the next speaker, I departed from my
own text and said that congressman Ackerman might see us wanting in
many things, but not in our sincerity and dedication to the cause of
India US relations. Ackerman had left soon after his speech and many
community leaders had gone out to see him off. Bhishma Agnihotri was
the only Indian American who took the cue from me and regretted the
uncomplimentary references to India and the Indian Embassy in the speech
of the chairman of the India Caucus.
Ackerman’s efforts to get Springer reinstated were not confined to pub-
lic speeches. He raised the subject with Chandra and myself separately and
together, and pleaded for some arrangement by which he could be retained.
During a visit to India organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry,
150 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

he campaigned for Springer and even complained to the prime minister

against the embassy. But since the government had full trust in Chandra
and the Prime Minister Vajpayee and External Affairs Minister Jaswant
Singh did not want to interfere in the business of hiring of lobbyists,
Ackerman got no encouragement. He had sobered down by the time he
returned and started working with us normally, but his uneasy relationship
with Naresh Chandra continued throughout his tenure. Ramesh Chandran,
normally a balanced and respected journalist, came to be associated with
the Ackerman Springer group and gave some publicity to the controversy
in The Times of India. Taranjit Sandhu, the congressional officer of the
embassy, and I had our own line with Keshavan and other Indian
Americans who were close to Ackerman, and this enabled us to work with
the India Caucus even at the height of the crisis with Ackerman. Chandra
did not approve of these contacts fully, but saw merit in salvaging the sit-
uation. The Springer Ackerman episode revealed that Chandra, who nor-
mally avoided open confrontation with anyone, would be ready for a fight
if the situation so warranted. The leading ethnic newspaper India Abroad
and its Washington Bureau Chief, Aziz Haniffa, also were suspects during
this period. My own old association with India Abroad came in handy to
keep some balance in our dealings with the newspaper. This was long before
Haniffa, a Sri Lankan, became an influential journalist in Washington, to
whom the two presidential candidates in 2004 opened their hearts on
India US relations.
Side by side with the freeze in relations on account of the tests, there
arose the charge of persecution of Christians by the Sangh Parivar, in a
sense even a more serious development than the tests in the minds of aver-
age Americans, particularly in the Bible belt. The Indian American com-
munity was also agitated over the issue, opening up a new battlefront for
us. Apart from the story of the brutal murder of a Christian missionary
and his children in Orissa, there were reports of incidents of attacks
against the Christians from the tribal areas of Gujarat. The Keralites were,
particularly, concerned that Christianity was under threat in India for the
first time and began imagining the havoc it could play in Kerala where
Christians had lived together with other communities for nearly two thou-
sand years. They started holding protest and prayer meetings and tried to
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 151

rope in congressmen and senators. Some of the BJP strategists in the

United States were alarmed by the impact on the congress of the reports
of Christian persecution. Chandra agreed that I should go to as many of
the Christian meetings as possible and reassure them on behalf of the
government that Christianity was not in danger. My Kerala origin was
useful in this regard. In an article in India Abroad, I traced the history of
Christianity in Kerala and showed how religious tolerance and harmony
had developed to give stability to the society. I brought out the distinction
between stray instances of communal criminality in tribal areas and the
fabric of religious harmony that underpins the life in Kerala. The sharpness
of the attack on the government reduced considerably, once we won over
the Kerala Christians who were the most alarmed about the reports of
attacks on Christians. I also convinced them that Christianity in India
would suffer if an impression were created that it needed the protection of
foreigners for its very existence. I met every Christian group that came to
the embassy and convinced them that the government of India was not in
collusion with the Hindu fanatics, and that prompt and strict action was
being initiated in each case of harassment. I remember that one group
which came to the embassy to protest with slogans against the govern-
ment burst into singing the National Anthem after I spoke to them. The
media and the congress lost interest, the moment the Indian American
community stopped protesting against the persecution of Christians. At
one point, the news about persecution of Christians looked like a greater
threat to India US relations than the nuclear tests. But our persistent
efforts helped to defuse the issue. The issue surfaced once again when
Vajpayee came to Washington, when a Christian group wanted to meet
him. Jaswant Singh met the group, but they had nothing to complain and
they ended up complimenting the embassy for its prompt response each
time they came to raise the issue.
The Indian American community played a helpful role in enabling
India to tide over the nuclear winter in India US relations. But this
would not have been possible if the embassy had not made painstaking
efforts to assist them to project the issues in the proper perspective. This
proved particularly difficult in the absence of a unified national leader-
ship for the community. We had to deal with individuals rather than
152 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

organisations in this effort. A hundred or more activists throughout

the United States had access to policy makers and many of them were
keen to help advance the cause of India. But most of them had no
understanding of the foreign policy of India, not to speak of its history
or economics. They had simplistic notions about India US relations and
they thought that their relationship with one congressman or another
could transform these relations. They had the notion that the need was
for us to spend a large amount of money on publicity so that India could
be seen on television screens and in newspapers. They had their own
ideas as to who should be lobbying for the embassy. Very often, they had
a love hate relationship with the embassy. Some of them liked to be seen
as friends of the embassy, essentially for social status among their peers,
but most of them did not have much respect for the government repre-
sentatives of any kind as the government was generally seen as a neces-
sary evil in the United States itself. There was even a certain reluctance
to be associated with the embassy for fear that the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) might be watching their activities.
An incident during the time of Siddhartha Shankar Ray as ambassador
contributed to the fear of close association of community leaders with the
embassy. An Indian American, Lalit Ghadia, was caught making small
contributions to politicians in different names. The investigation agencies
traced him to the embassy, arousing suspicion that the embassy was pump-
ing money into the US elections. The embassy link was never established,
but Ghadia went to jail and came out as a bitter man. The Ghadia story
was carried by India Abroad and other ethnic media, and created the
impression that the embassy was somehow exploiting the Indian commu-
nity. For some time, the friends of the embassy were extremely reluctant
to be seen in the embassy.
The nuclear tests, however, electrified the community, particularly the
BJP sympathisers and a certain pride was generated by it. The Overseas
Friends of the BJP (OFBJP) took the lead in marshalling the support of the
community to back the government. Long-term residents of Indian origin,
who had a certain complex about India’s military weakness, felt proud of its
nuclear capability. Many Indians sought factual information and arguments
to counter the propaganda against India, and many of them sent letters to
their friends in the congress and the senate based on the material the
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 153

embassy supplied. This was definitely helpful, but not decisive in the swing
that took Place in favour of India later. Careful orchestration by the
embassy of Indian American views rather than spontaneous activity by
them determined the effectiveness of the community. But because of the
sensitivities involved, the embassy remained in the background and let the
community take the credit. We let them believe that the Indian immigrants
were the true ambassadors of India who bore the brunt of projecting a true
image of the country, while the professional diplomats were merely those
who were sent to lie abroad for their country.
The formation of the India Caucus many years ago at the initiative of
Stephen Solarz and Frank Pallone was indeed an achievement of the
community, and the Caucus played a crucial role at the time of the cri-
sis. After the exit of Solarz from the congress, Frank Pallone was the sole
congressman who remained steadfast with India in every crisis. Many peo-
ple believed that he was acting at the behest of the embassy. He was very
often ahead of the embassy in supporting the Indian cause. He acted inde-
pendently and took his own initiatives on India. His staffers did consid-
erable research and advised him even before we went to him with facts
and figures on specific issues. The Indian community even outside the
constituency gave him great support.
The Economist called the Caucus the ‘cash cow’ of the congress per-
haps rightly because what attracted the congressmen to the Caucus was
not always the case of India, but the cash of the Indian Americans. Join-
ing the Caucus was a tangible reward for cash contributions by Indians,
and half the Caucus members did not know what their role was. They
could not care less for India. No Caucus meeting had ever attracted more
than 12 congressmen, while someone like Krishna Reddy, a dentist from
Los Angeles, could get nearly 50 congressmen to his annual friendship
council dinner in Washington. Individual activists like Jayant Kalotra
were in a position to influence individual congressmen in a favour of
India. He had the reputation of contributing funds to the politicians.
When the Indian Americans defended the government of India, the
members of the Caucus felt a moral obligation to rally around India. This
was a slow and painful process because many Caucus members were
ardent non-proliferationists and they were attracted to the Caucus
because of India’s pacifist policies.
154 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

An Indian community lunch for the congressmen, an annual event

on the Hill, organised by an activist Indian group for political awareness
happened to take place within days of the tests. Many congressmen who
regularly came to these lunches did not turn up. The format of the lunch
was such that the audience would wait for hours together for the con-
gressmen to drop in at intervals. Once a congressman turned up, his con-
stituents would introduce him to the audience and the congressman
would then address them. In 1998, the audience waited expectantly, but
only the hardcore supporters of India came to enjoy the lunch. Some
declined to speak, a rarity for congressmen, and those who spoke, except
Frank Pallone and Benjamin Gilman, criticised the tests. The commu-
nity leaders were in a dilemma as to whether they should applaud these
speeches. But they took a long-term view of things and tolerated the crit-
icism against India voiced at their own function. The appearance of Sen-
ator Edward Kennedy was a morale booster, even though he was not
supportive of the tests. The very presence of the congressmen and sena-
tors at the lunch assumed symbolic significance, even if they were not
explicit in their support to India.
The credit of opening up the embassy to the community is often
attributed to Ambassador P. K. Kaul, a retired cabinet secretary. But he
did no more than become a social bird. He entertained a cross-section of
the community at his residence and also attended events at Indian
homes. But he stood apart from his predecessors who were seen as snob-
bish by the community as they had little time for Indian Americans. His
successors followed his lead, but it was during the tenure of Ray and his
Deputy Chief of Mission Kanwal Sibal that a systematic effort began to
exploit the potential of the community to influence events in the US
politics. Navdeep Suri, a young officer who was in charge of congressional
affairs in the embassy, had hit upon the idea of compiling a list of major
Indian contributors to American politicians. This was possible by locat-
ing the Indian sounding names from a published list of contributors. The
list so compiled was an eye-opener because it revealed that many self-
styled friends of congressmen and senators had not paid a penny to their
patrons while there were many others, unknown to the embassy, who had
paid decent sums of money and were influential with lawmakers. The
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 155

embassy managed to create a database on these contributors and also

established contacts with them. Newsletters and other materials were
sent to them to brief them on developments. Many of them turned out to
be useful channels to educate the US lawmakers and in some cases, they
turned out to be very valuable allies of the embassy. My immediate
predecessor, Shyamala Cowsik, maintained these contacts and also
expanded them. But she became embroiled in many controversies. There
was considerable resistance when she tried to designate leaders for the
community at one point.
My congressional officer, Taranjit Sandhu, and I inherited these arrange-
ments and improved on it substantially. Wajahat Habibullah of Jammu and
Kashmir fame, who was the minister for community affairs in the embassy,
provided considerable support. Chandra and I wrote regularly to our Indian
contacts and often called them whenever important issues came up. We
also made it a point to meet them personally when we travelled to differ-
ent parts of the United States. We had to convince them of the Indian case
each time as they were constantly under the influence of Western propa-
ganda. They would make the case, but not with much conviction as what
they heard around them influenced their thinking. Moreover, the main
motivation for their lobbying was their desire to matter to India and to the
political life in the United States. In other words, the community was effec-
tive in lobbying efforts only to the extent that the embassy was able to guide
and direct them. Some BJP activists, who began operating on their own, did
not make much headway. Even they felt the need to come to the embassy
to get the right line to take in their discussions.
The emergence of Senator Sam Brownback as a South Asia activist
helped to change the legislative maze into which the Glenn amendment
had landed India and Pakistan. Senator John Glenn, who was then prepar-
ing for his second space flight and retirement from the senate, told me that
he had not even dreamt that his amendment would be the instrument for
retribution against India and Pakistan. He was thinking of Libya, North
Korea and Iran when he submitted that amendment. Moreover, he thought
that the penalties under the amendment were so severe that no nation
would risk testing its effectiveness. He felt genuinely sorry that India and
Pakistan had chosen to defy it and attracted penalties.
156 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

The administration, which had no experience of the actual operation of

the Glenn amendment, chose to apply it as strictly as possible. Initially, the
situation was that the United States would do no business with us except
humanitarian assistance. The sanctions affected a wide variety of the US
activities in India, including development assistance, military sales and
exchanges, trade in specified dual use goods and technology, the US loans,
guarantees and credits to India, loans and credits by the US banks to the
government of India, and support for India within the international finan-
cial institutions.
The first relief came when it was clarified that the banks and other
Indian institutions could continue to operate. The first Brownback
amendment enacted within the first six months of the test was meant to
remove some of the more glaring provisions that would hurt the inter-
ests of the United States itself. Brownback must have got involved in this
process, essentially because a major wheat deal with Pakistan which
would have benefited his state, Kansas, was in the danger of being can-
celled. As the successor to Senator Dole, Brownback had inherited an
interest in South Asia, but he knew little about the subcontinent at the
initial stages. But he learnt the complexities of the subcontinent very
quickly as he plunged into the whole question of sanctions against India
and Pakistan. He also made two visits to the region at the height of the
crisis. Christina Rocca, who later became the assistant secretary of State
for South Asian Affairs, was on his staff at that time.
The first Brownback amendment was quite narrow and dealt with only
the purely financial sanctions. It gave sufficient authority to the president
to remove virtually all sanctions except military and dual use technology,
but the president relaxed only a limited number of sanctions. He just
restored EXIM, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), and
TDA programmes in India. Two main areas that remained were the World
Bank and IMF loans and the dreaded ‘Entities List’, which virtually black-
listed nearly 150 public and private sector companies. They could buy
nothing from the United States without specific clearance and there was
a presumption of denial built in. This list included not only the obvious
entities like Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and Defence
Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) but also some private
sector companies, which were suspected to be making components for
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 157

nuclear weapons. The list was long, partly because the individual units of
DRDO were listed separately, among them, the Garden Maintenance
Unit. But the impact of the Brownback amendment was very real as it
removed the sting from the sanctions. Brownback became a hero in the
Indian American community. The embassy and the government of India
did not go overboard in praising him because his real motives were still in
doubt. In a letter to Clinton on 12 November 1998, Vajpayee said that
‘we would have welcomed a more wide-ranging exercise of waiver author-
ity on other restrictive measures, which in our view only come in the way
of more meaningful and mutually beneficial interaction between our busi-
ness communities.’
The emergence of a second Brownback amendment (Brownback II) was
even more suspect as it sought to remove all sanctions against India and
Pakistan, including the Pressler amendment. The amendment was projected
as a positive move and Brownback gave an early version to us, suggesting
that we should lobby for it. We were naturally more upset than pleased
because of the history of Pressler and the impact it had on public opinion in
India. We conveyed our views to Brownback and to other senators and con-
gressmen, but even many friends of India, including Gary Ackerman, felt
that we were not very reasonable. Frank Pallone was the only member of
the India Caucus who opposed the lifting of the sanctions under the Pressler
amendment. Brownback claimed that his amendment had the broad support
in the congress, but we conveyed to him in no uncertain terms that we
would rather have the sanctions against India remain rather than acquiesce
in removing the Pressler amendment. Brownback, who had the support of
the administration, went ahead and got his amendment approved, but for-
tuitously, the military coup in Pakistan prevented the president from relax-
ing the sanctions against Pakistan under Brownback II. The credit for
retaining the Pressler amendment in the books went to Parvez Musharraf
rather than to the US Congress.
There are many who suspect that Vajpayee’s bus ride to Lahore and
the concessions he made to Pakistan were at the instance of the United
States. Perhaps, India was responding to the fifth benchmark put forward
by Talbott, viz., improvement in relations with Pakistan. Whether there is
truth in this or not, the United States warmly welcomed the initiative,
though it was careful not to give the credit entirely to India. A certain
158 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

vagueness about the originator of the proposal was carefully maintained in

all pronouncements. The development that was welcomed most was the
agreement signed between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan
on nuclear issues, which was hailed as a major achievement. We ourselves
were proud to say that India and Pakistan were able to achieve within a
year what the United States and the Soviet Union took several years
to accomplish, viz., confidence-building measures in the nuclear area.
We chose to ignore the danger signals that were clearly visible in Lahore.
Conspicuous by his absence in Lahore was the Army Chief of Pakistan
Parvez Musharraf, who was busy elsewhere undermining the peace
initiative launched by India.

I was in India when I heard first about the late discovery made by the
Indian army that Pakistan had intruded into the Kargil area of Jammu and
Kashmir during the winter months. Traditionally, the Indian and Pakistani
armies had withdrawn in the autumn from these mountains to avoid the
difficulties of manning this inhospitable region in winter. A deployment
pattern had emerged, which was respected by both the armies over the
years. But in the winter of 1999, the Pakistani militants and army moved
early into the evacuated Indian positions, thus, breaking tradition and
trust. Pakistan had gained a significant tactical advantage by threatening
the only ground route India had to take supplies to Ladakh. The director
of military intelligence in the army headquarters, who briefed me,
appeared worried about the extent of the intrusion and told me repeatedly
that the seriousness of the Pakistani action should be made known to the
Americans. By the time I returned to Washington, we had begun bomb-
ing the Pakistani positions on our side of the Line of Control (LOC). Gary
Ackerman lost no time in organising a briefing of the Caucus by Chandra
on the situation, which was nothing but a veiled attempt to warn India
against escalation. Ackerman, Pallone, and McDermott were the only con-
gressmen present. Both Ackerman and McDermott expressed their con-
cern over the latest developments and asked repeatedly whether bombing
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 159

was really necessary. Chandra, who had excellent knowledge of the terrain
in Kargil, explained calmly, but firmly, the rationale of the operation and
dismissed their advice as ill-informed. Their instinct was, however, to
balance India and Pakistan by suggesting that the intrusion was wrong,
but that the Indian reaction was disproportionately strong.
The Kargil intrusion was particularly shocking for India as it came close
on the heels of Vajpayee’s bold effort to normalise relations with Pakistan
by travelling to Lahore. The spirit of Lahore was supposed to have opened
a new chapter in India Pakistan relations and paved the way for a new
phase. For this reason, India felt betrayed and humiliated by Sharif in
Kargil. By early June 1999, a serious military conflict had erupted in the
Kargil sector, including artillery clashes, air battles and infantry assaults by
our troops against Pakistani forces, which had dug in well.
The historic change in the US position on Kargil was attributed
personally to President Clinton, but the state department was also
convinced that Pakistan had overreached itself. We made available to the
Americans a lengthy taped conversation between the Army Chief of
Pakistan Pervez Musharraf and his deputy, Lt. Gen. Mohammad Aziz. This
showed beyond doubt that the army had masterminded the whole operation
and that some of the intruders were Pakistani soldiers. Musharraf spoke from
a Beijing hotel and the interception of the conversation was a masterstroke
for Indian intelligence agencies. Americans, who had their own intelligence
to trace the culprits must also have zeroed in on Musharraf. A series of state-
ments from the state department and the presidential spokesman began to
indicate that regardless of the dispute over Kashmir, Pakistan must
withdraw to its position behind LOC. The only advice to India was to be
restrained and not cross the LOC. Although this was difficult from a
military perspective, India had no plans to cross the LOC, but was deter-
mined to throw Pakistan out. The new US position surprised both sides
because Islamabad assumed that the United States would always back them
and India could not believe that the United States would judge the crisis on
its merits. For once, the United States appeared not to be bound by the past.
Once the American position changed, the rest of the world too started to
declare the sanctity of the LOC and began demanding Pakistani withdrawal.
At no time in the history of Kashmir had the US administration been on the
160 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

side of India. It marked the beginning of a spring in India US relations. I

called it the ‘Kargil Spring’ at a seminar and it caught on in the subsequent
debates on South Asia in the United States and India.
Bruce Riedel, who was special assistant to the president and senior direc-
tor for Near East and South Asia Affairs in the National Security Council
at the White House from 1997 to 2001, has recorded in great detail the
exertions of President Clinton, particularly on 4 July 1999, to get Nawaz
Sharif to withdraw from Kargil [Policy Paper Series 2002, University of
Pennsylvania]. I was in touch with Rick Inderfurth throughout and Riedel’s
account tallies with the briefing I received from Inderfurth. According to
Riedel, the reason for the American interest in the situation was that the
United States was ‘alarmed’ from the beginning of the conflict because of its
potential escalation. ‘We could all too easily imagine the two parties begin-
ning to mobilise for war, seeking third party support (Pakistan from China
and the Arabs, India from Russia and Israel) and a deadly descent into full-
scale conflict all along the border with a danger of nuclear cataclysm.’
The historic Blair House meeting between Clinton and Sharif on 4 July
1999 was arranged at the initiative of Pakistan as it became clear to them
that the war situation was going against them. Clinton had made it clear
before agreeing to meet Sharif that he should come only if he was ready to
withdraw and the only question open was what he could get in return. The
Pakistani objective was to involve Clinton in the ‘root cause’ and thus find
a face-saving device for them. Clinton was anxious to do that, but knew
that the Indian objections would thwart any such effort on his part. What
happened in Blair House was, therefore, a last ditch effort by Sharif to gain
something out of the military misadventure undertaken by his generals,
perhaps, without his knowledge.
As Riedel narrates, Sharif pleaded with Clinton to intervene directly
in the Kashmir dispute, just as the United States was doing in the
Arab Israeli dispute, but Clinton rejected the parallel on the ground that
the two sides in Kashmir had not asked for American mediation. He said
that the best approach was the road begun at Lahore, that is direct con-
tact with India. ‘Pakistan had completely undermined that opening by
attacking Kargil, it must now retreat before disaster set in.’ The gruelling
negotiations between Clinton and Sharif resulted in an agreement ‘that
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 161

the prime minister has agreed to take concrete and immediate steps for the
restoration of the LOC.’ In return, Sharif got an assurance from Clinton
that he would take ‘personal interest to encourage an expeditious resump-
tion and intensification of the bilateral efforts once the sanctity of the
LOC had been fully restored.’
According to Riedel, Clinton called Vajpayee to preview the statement,
but it is not known what his reaction was. When Inderfurth read out the
statement to me, subsequently, I expressed unease about the president’s
commitment as our position was that resumption of the Lahore process was
subject to the necessary conditions being created. Inderfurth had no hesi-
tation in acknowledging my point.
Clinton had apparently asked Vajpayee also to attend the Blair House
meeting on 4 July, but India was not in favour of Tashkent being re-enacted
on the Potomac. But Clinton called Vajpayee at least twice to apprise him
of developments. Vajpayee either said nothing or asked Clinton in charac-
teristic style, ‘What do you want me to say?’ But interestingly, Riedel asserts
that there was no give in New Delhi and none was asked for.
The impact of the Kargil Spring on India US relations was tangible and
perceptible. Indian commentators could not believe the dramatic change
in the US policy. I remarked at a seminar that this was not the first time that
India was seeking justice and truth in its policy towards Pakistan, but this
was the first time that the United States was on the side of justice and truth.
The reasons for the change could be traced back to 1997, when Clinton
had taken a clear decision to make relations with India, the corner stone
of his policy towards South Asia. He was awaiting an opportunity to return
to that track after the setback of the tests and their aftermath. Kargil pre-
sented an opportunity for him to demonstrate his preference for India with-
out appearing to change course as Pakistan was patently wrong in crossing
the LOC in Kashmir. Moreover, the Lahore process was something which
the Americans had not only supported but also encouraged through the
Talbott Jaswant Singh dialogue. And most important, Clinton was anx-
ious to visit India and Pakistan, ‘the missing piece’ in his political career.
Clinton confirms in his autobiography, My Life, that it was Nawaz Sharif
who asked for the meeting on 4 July 1999. ‘Sharif was concerned that the
situation that Pakistan had created was getting out of control, and he hoped
162 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

to use my good offices not only to resolve the crisis but also to help mediate
with the Indians on the question of Kashmir itself.’ Sharif came with the
clear understanding that he would agree to withdraw behind the LOC and
that Clinton would not agree to intervene in the Kashmir issue, especially
under the circumstances that appeared to reward Pakistan’s ‘wrongful incur-
sion’. Clinton felt after the meeting that Sharif had come in order to use
pressure from the United States to provide himself cover for ordering his
military to defuse the conflict. The main motivation Clinton had in
helping out Sharif was his interest in Pakistani collaboration to restrain
Taliban and the Al-Qaeda. Apparently, Pakistan had agreed to train 60
Pakistani troops as commandos to go into Afghanistan to get Osama bin
Laden, though Clinton was sceptical about the project because of the
presence of Taliban sympathisers in the Pakistan army. An immediate
consequence of Musharraf’s coup in October was that the plans to send
Pakistani commandos into Afghanistan to nab bin Laden were abandoned.
India and the United States were in contact right through the night-
mare of the hijacking of IC-184, and Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu
to Delhi. The hijacking began on 24 December 1999 on the eve of Christ-
mas and ended in the evening of 31 December 1999, just before the dawn
of the new millennium. As the drama unfolded in Lahore, Amritsar, Dubai
and Kandhar, Naresh Chandra contacted Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbott
and Counter-Terrorism Chief in the State Department Michael Sheehan,
who took a keen interest in it. Although they did not anticipate that the
terrorists released by India in order to secure the release of the hostages
and the plane would one day become part of a terrorist attack on the
United States itself, they were aware of the gravity of the situation and pro-
vided whatever assstance they could by way of intelligence and advice. But
former External Affair Minister Jaswant Singh has recorded that the United
States did not cooperate with India in bringing the Taliban leaders respon-
sible for aiding the hijackers to book.

Talks began about Clinton’s visit to India soon after the Kargil crisis. Ini-
tial apprehension about the visit being in the context of the new ‘personal
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 163

interest’ in Kashmir disappeared soon enough. The debate between the

‘non-proliferationists’ and the ‘relationists’ surfaced once again in the US
policy-making bodies. The former insisted on a closure on some of the issues
being dealt with in the Talbott Jaswant Singh dialogue, while the latter
argued that better relations with India should be pursued regardless of the
results of the dialogue. Clinton himself was on the side of the latter and he
openly told some of his Indian American friends that he was in a dilemma
as his advisors were not letting him go. The sessions of the Talbott Jaswant
Singh talks were speeded up, but no conclusions were announced. Even-
tually, it was Clinton’s own determination to visit India and Pakistan that
carried the day as he felt that the United States interests would be
advanced by his visit to the region. ‘I was going to India to lay the founda-
tion for what I had hoped would be a positive long-term relationship. We
had wasted too much time since the end of the Cold War, when India had
aligned itself with the Soviet Union principally as a counterweight to
China,’ said Clinton. Bangladesh was added as it was friendly to the United
States, it had no nuclear weapons, it had signed and ratified the CTBT,
and it had some innovative economic policies.
The indication that Clinton would visit Pakistan also after his visit to
India in March 2000 caused consternation in India. It revived memories of
the proverbial balancing that the US government did between India and
Pakistan. It was believed that there was an administrative instruction to the
effect that no senior official should visit one country without visiting the
other! Indian media and intellectual circles began to say that the United
States was still on the old track and that Clinton’s visit to Pakistan soon
after his visit to India would detract from the new relationship that was
being forged between India and the United States. The charge was made
that the United States did not care for India’s democracy and that it was
equally happy with military dictators in Pakistan. The government became
sympathetic to this argument and instructed us to make sure that Clinton
did not go to Pakistan. We activated the India-lobby in Washington, consist-
ing of the active members of the India Caucus, the Indian community,
friendly Think Tanks, and others to mount a campaign to dissuade Clinton
from going to Pakistan. There were a number of officials in the US govern-
ment itself who advised against a visit to Pakistan. The secret service was
particularly worried about Clinton’s safety. But it was Clinton himself who
164 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

prevailed in the end and a short visit to Islamabad was included in the pro-
gramme. We were assured that the visit would be very short and that the
president would deliver a tough message to the new leader of Pakistan by
appealing directly to the people of Pakistan. After the visit was over, Indi-
ans were happier about what Clinton said in Islamabad than about what he
said in New Delhi.
The terrorism dimension of the Clinton visit to Pakistan was not very
clear at the time. The 9/11 commission report makes it clear that Clinton’s
agenda in Islamabad went beyond Kashmir and the nuclear issue. In Janu-
ary 2000, Rick Inderfurth and the Coordinator of Counter-Terrorism in the
State Department Michael Sheehan met Musharraf in Islamabad and
offered him the carrot of a presidential visit if Pakistan would persuade
Taliban to restrain bin Laden. For Musharraf, a presidential visit was manna
from heaven, but he promised Inderfurth and Sheehan only that he would
make an effort with Mullah Omar. They had no illusion that Musharraf
would do anything. But still Clinton decided to go for the sake of ‘balance’
and because he wanted to put pressure on Musharraf to do more on coun-
terterrorism without publicising it. Clinton pulled Musharraf aside for a
brief one-on-one meeting and pleaded with him for help regarding bin
Laden. ‘I offered him the moon when I went to see him, in terms of better
relations with the United States if he would help us get bin Laden and deal
with another issue or two,’ Clinton told the 9/11 commission. ‘I decided I
had to go for several reasons: to encourage an early return to civilian rule
and a lessening of tension over Kashmir; to urge General Musharraf not to
execute the deposed Prime Minister, Nawaz Sherif, who was on trial for his
life; and to press Musharraf to cooperate with us on bin Laden and Al-
Qaeda,’ Clinton says in his book My Life.
The Clinton visit was prepared more in New Delhi than in Washington
and we were involved only marginally in it. Some protocol and some sub-
stantive matters passed through the embassy, but the prime minister’s
office and different ministries carried out bulk of the work. As it is their
wont, the Americans pushed their way around everywhere, particularly in
matters of protocol and security. On the Indian side, a multiplicity of min-
istries, state governments, and NGOs got into the act to get Clinton to
visit various cities. The biggest battle was between Andhra Pradesh and
Karnataka as indications came early in the day that Clinton was inclined
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 165

to visit Hyderabad rather than Bangalore. Karnataka politicians cam-

paigned heavily to include Bangalore, but eventually Clinton went only to
Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Hyderabad and Mumbai.
Clinton literally took India by storm. The way the members of parlia-
ment jumped over chairs and knocked down colleagues to shake his hands
after his address to the Joint Session of the Parliament reflected the public
mood. There was a spontaneous and indecent urge to shake hands with
him and be photographed. Clinton basked in the glory of the proverbial
Indian hospitality. He did not mince words when he spoke of the need for
non-proliferation and for nuclear restraint on India’s part. Even his critical
words were applauded everywhere. He played on the Indian sense of impor-
tance and greatness in world affairs and held up the carrot of better eco-
nomic relations without abandoning the stick of sanctions. He praised
India’s economic achievements, particularly Kerala’s social statistics, which
compared favourably with those of developed countries. When no one
applauded his compliments to Kerala, he asked, ‘No one from Kerala here?’
Then there was applause and laughter all around.
After his first meeting with Vajpayee and the joint press conference,
the mood in India changed from caution to euphoria. For this reason, the
banquet speech by President K. R. Narayanan later in the day seemed a
little out of place when he admonished Clinton for suggesting that ‘the
Indian subcontinent is the most dangerous place in the world today and
Kashmir is a nuclear flashpoint. These alarmist descriptions will only
encourage those who want to break the peace and indulge in terrorism
and violence.’ The president had also remarked earlier, ‘the fact that the
world is a global village does not mean that it will be run by one village
headman.’ These statements would have been quite in order on the
previous day, but by the time the president read the speech, the mood was
such that the Americans complained and the prime minister’s office sought
to dissociate itself from these remarks!
The reasons for the change of mood were obvious enough. On non-
proliferation, Clinton praised the Talbott Jaswant Singh talks and
sounded optimistic about reaching more common ground on the issues of
testing, on the production of fissile material and export controls. With
regard to the CTBT, he expressed the hope that the democratic process
would produce a signing and ultimately the ratification of the treaty. The
166 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

crucial point was that he did not make progress on these issues condi-
tional to improvement in relations. He repeatedly asserted, in his own
sugarcoated fashion, that nuclear weapons had not enhanced India’s
security. In his parliament speech, for instance, he maintained, ‘only India
can determine its own interests. Only India can know if it truly is safer
today than before the tests. Only India can determine if it will benefit
from expanding its nuclear and missile capabilities, if its neighbours
respond by doing the same.’
On India Pakistan relations also, Clinton took a cautious line by not
blaming either side for the violence in Kashmir. A massacre of Sikhs on the
eve of the visit had brought the Kashmir issue to the centre stage, but
everyone treaded on thin ice with proverbial prowess. Clinton presented
the three Rs restraint, respect for the LOC, and resumption of dialogue
as key to ending violence. There was no suggestion that Kashmir was a
nuclear flashpoint, no desire to mediate between India and Pakistan. But
he did not fail to support ‘some process by which the Kashmiris’ legitimate
grievances are addressed.’ In the parliament, he pitched strongly for
resumption of dialogue. He said that he had not come to South Asia to
mediate the dispute over Kashmir. Only India and Pakistan could work out
the problems between them. But he underlined the urgency of finding a
solution which was in the interest of the entire international community.
Clinton himself was surprised at the ‘grand reception’ he got in the Indian
parliament even after he had spoken frankly about Kashmir and nuclear
matters. Members of parliament climbed on chairs and tables and created
a stampede to shake his hands and to congratulate him on his ‘wonderful
speech’. ‘They applauded by slapping the table, demonstrating that they
were as eager as I was for our long estrangement to end,’ Clinton said.
Clinton gave away nothing during his India visit, but by his charisma
and felicity of language, he engaged India at every level and the public
response bordered on euphoria. A ‘Vision Statement’ issued by the two
leaders charted out a new course to realise the full potential of the rela-
tionship. It used grand words like ‘this is a day of new beginnings’, but on
crucial issues the statement was forthright. ‘The United States believes
India should forgo nuclear weapons. India believes that it needs to main-
tain a credible minimum nuclear deterrent in keeping with its own assess-
ment of its security needs.’ Similarly, they acknowledged, ‘tensions in South
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 167

Asia can only be resolved by the nations of South Asia.’ They went on to
build the architecture for institutionalised dialogue, knowing well that the
next administration would have its own priorities.
But Clinton’s visit to Pakistan and the speech made there gladdened
the hearts of Indians more than all the speeches made in India and all the
documents signed. The way Clinton had to stealthily slip into a small
aircraft hidden behind Air Force One, the way he avoided going anywhere
except the airport in Islamabad, the way he addressed the people of
Pakistan over the head of Musharraf, and the warnings he uttered about the
demise of democracy in Pakistan were all full of drama that India lapped up
gleefully. The very people who argued against a visit to Pakistan by Clinton
at this time praised him for his courage and vision. ‘Six days in India, but
only six hours in Pakistan!’ they declared. The warmth and fragrance of
‘Kargil Spring’ prevailed.
Clinton was full of India on his return and spoke about his trip at many
places. He said that the world is divided into two kinds of people, those
who have had the good fortune to see the Taj Mahal and those who have
not. He was glad that he had moved from the latter to the former group.
He spoke about a computer he saw in Hyderabad, which gave an expectant
mother all she needed to know about her baby. He said that if any of his
governors had such a computer, he would be governor for life. He also kept
praising the many ceremonials he attended in India, including his having
been showered with flower petals by 30 rural women dressed in colourful
costumes in Rajasthan.
Vajpayee’s decision to come to the United States the same year on the
eve of a presidential election was also a product of the new euphoria. There
was nothing for him to accomplish within such a short time after Clinton’s
visit. His health was poor, and he could hardly walk because of problems in
his knees. As Vajpayee himself put it, if Clinton’s visit added a new chap-
ter to India US relations, his own visit was a mere footnote. But we saw a
unique opportunity for our prime minister to be received well when
Clinton was still basking in the glory of his visit to India. It was also thought
that Vajpayee would cultivate Al Gore and Governor George Bush, the
two presidential candidates.
Clinton went out of his way to make Vajpayee’s visit an unqualified
success, particularly, from the ceremonial point of view. The usually stiff and
168 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

unyielding White House protocol was friendly from the beginning, but even
the so-called ‘non-negotiable’ elements of the programme were thrown open
when Clinton came to know of Vajpayee’s knee problem. Initially, it was not
clear whether Vajpayee would be able to address a joint session of the senate
and the congress. The administration maintained that it was a sovereign deci-
sion of the congress. Both the embassy and the Indian community got active
in campaigning for it, and it became clear that an invitation to address the
congress would come. As for the physical arrangements for the address, the
congress made available, at short notice, the facilities for Vajpayee to sit and
speak. The attendance by senators and congressmen was not too impressive,
but the special invitees and senate pages filled up all the available space and
the address was well received. He proved prophetic when he talked about
terrorism in our neighbourhood and asserted that the threat was global. ‘Dis-
tance offers no insulation, it should not cause complacence,’ he said.
The visit took the relations further forward, but there was nothing in
the visit itself to be characterised as historic. Clinton’s warmth and friend-
liness presented an exaggerated picture of the state of relations. But the visit
marked the culmination of a phase that began with the aftermath of the
nuclear tests and ended with a high point in the relations. The Americans,
who generally do not encourage heads of states and governments, who are
in New York to attend the General Assembly, to come to Washington for
bilateral visits, made an exception in the case of Vajpayee. Torn between a
desire to appear normal and the compulsions of a bad knee, Vajpayee made
many requests at the last minute for changes in the programme. The con-
gress and the White House accommodated each request. Originally, we were
told that Vajpayee would walk and stand normally and even climb a few
steps, but we were told at the last minute that walking should be to the min-
imum and that climbing of steps should be avoided. This threw the scenar-
ios for banquet and other events to the wind and new routes had to be
devised. The US protocol became very innovative and suggested various
alternatives from which we could choose. An ambulance lift, originally
improvised when Clinton hurt his leg, was made available to Vajpayee to
alight from the plane and to board it at Andrews Air Force Base. The press
was kept completely out of the arrival and departure ceremonies. The elab-
orate drill of the White House banquet, which involved different walks and
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 169

climbing of stairs, was changed drastically to suit Vajpayee’s knee. Clinton

and Vajpayee received the guests to the banquet sitting in chairs.
The United States gave considerable importance to the Indian American
community at the time of the visit. Donald Camp, a foreign service officer
who was assigned to the White House, kept enquiring about various indi-
viduals and organisations which should be involved in the visit. We gave
the required information, but maintained that they should decide as to
which of their citizens should be invited. This was our way of dealing with
an avalanche of requests received by us for recommending one name or
the other to the White House. We confined ourselves to dealing with the
participation of the Indian nationals involved. We found that the White
House had invited virtually every celebrity in the Indian American commu-
nity either to the White House banquet or to the lunch given by Al Gore
at the state department. At my own table at the banquet, I had Deepak
Chopra, the popular New Age philosopher; M. Night Shyamalan, the direc-
tor of The Sixth Sense; Sabir Bhatia, the founder of Hotmail; and Kalpana
Chawla, the astronaut. As Clinton himself noted in his banquet speech,
‘there are more than one million Indians here in America now. I think more
than half of them are here tonight. And I might say, prime minister, the
other half is disappointed that they are not here.’
One objective of the visit, which was to get to know the candidates,
was only partially fulfilled. I was in touch with the Republican camp con-
stantly to arrange a meeting with Governor Bush. Many Indians in the
republican party and our lobbyists also put in their efforts. It appeared
that a meeting might take place, but the best that could be done was to
arrange a telephone conversation between Bush and Vajpayee. Bush was
warm and friendly, but there was not much substance in the 11-minute
conversation. As the serving Vice-President, Al Gore hosted a lunch at
the state department and there was a private conversation between Al
Gore and Vajpayee. Whether Al Gore was keen to see Vajpayee was not
clear. We were first told that Madeleine Albright would host the lunch.
Only when we turned down this invitation that Al Gore decided to return
to Washington from his campaign tour to see Vajpayee. Apparently, the
conversation did not go well as Gore was not in touch with Clinton any
more and he was at a different wavelength. He kept harping on the theme
170 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

of non-proliferation and promised to press for the CTBT if he was elected.

Moreover, he did not appear to grasp the new spirit in India US rela-
tions. Vajpayee came away with the feeling that a democratic victory may
not be in India’s interest.
At Al Gore’s lunch, I was seated next to the CIA Chief George Tenet,
with whom I had a delightful conversation about the life of the world’s
most important spymaster. He said that one of the advantages of doing a
super secret job was that he did not have to socialise. He chose to come to
the lunch because of his interest in India. Our conversation about the jour-
nalists led to my telling him about my journalist son at the Columbia Uni-
versity. I told him that my son would value a message from the CIA chief.
He promptly wrote on the menu card, ‘Sree, your dad has told me all your
secrets. But trust me, I won’t tell anyone!’
Clinton’s presence at the unveiling of the Gandhi statue in front of the
Indian Embassy, together with Vajpayee, was a public relations coup for the
president. We were not sure whether he would come till the previous day.
Someone called me out of Vajpayee’s meeting with the congressmen to tell
me that Clinton would come to the ceremony next day, and I promptly
conveyed the message to Brajesh Mishra. I was summoned to the embassy
within minutes to have a meeting with a White House team that wanted
to visit the embassy within the next hour. Things moved so fast and we had
to do a number of things to make sure that the standards of security were
met. All the hassles were supposed to be for the 10 minutes that Clinton
was supposed to spend at the ceremony and everything had to be speeded
up. But as it happened, Clinton spent nearly an hour, meeting everyone
around, answering questions and posing for pictures with the artist who
made the statue. The unveiling of the statue was the only ceremony asso-
ciated with the Vajpayee visit, which the embassy organised, and it became
a great success because of Clinton’s participation.
The installation of the Gandhi statue in the midst of the preoccupa-
tions of the fallout of the tests, two major visits, and the controversy about
Christians was nothing short of a miracle. Naresh Chandra set his heart on
completing this project and took the lead himself in accomplishing it. But
his way of going about it caused many complications. After Wajahat
Habibullah had done much of the work, the ambassador’s Special Assistant
Amar Sinha handled the matter. The utter simplicity that Chandra wanted
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 171

in the design was not practical as the city had its own rules. The installa-
tion costs shot up and the general appeal for funds did not elicit much inter-
est. Chandra hit upon the idea of publicising the names of those who
contributed US$10,000 and asked the leading members of the community
to contribute. We also accepted smaller contributions to ensure wide
participation. Funds raised by Achamma Chandrasekaran, an Indian
American lady, who was involved in the earlier efforts to erect the statue
were also added to the resources for the statue.
The bureaucratic hassles of putting up a statue on federal land, even
with a congressional decision to back it, were mind-boggling. Short of
changing the way Gandhi looked, the various committees (the National
Park Service, the National Capital Memorial Commission, the Commis-
sion of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission) inter-
fered with everything its height (should not be higher than the Churchill
statue a mile down the same street), the size and shape of the pedestal, and
the landscape around it. We discussed these at length with every conceiv-
able city, state and national bureaucracy. The most difficult part was in
securing a huge block of marble from India, properly shaped and engraved.
Sree Nair, an old friend of mine from my university days whom I met in
Omaha, gifted the block from his quarry in Karnataka.
The traditional reception that the Indian community in the Greater
Washington area hosted for Vajpayee presented its own challenges. The
overseas friends of the BJP wanted to take over the function and the more
seasoned leaders of the community were not inclined to agree. I received
instructions directly from Brajesh Mishra that Dinesh Aggarwal from
Philadelphia should be made co-coordinator of the programme. Naresh
Chandra washed his hands of the affair and wished me luck. I worked
among my friends in the community and convinced them that the wishes
of Vajpayee should be respected. At a meeting of the leaders in the embassy,
after many speeches were made about grandiose plans, I proposed Aggarwal’s
name, which was supported by those whom I had planted. Bhishma
Agnihotri, who became the BJP ambassador for overseas Indians later, sat
at the back watching the proceedings. To the infinite surprise of the BJP
leaders present, Aggarwal was unanimously elected the co-coordinator of
the reception committee. Other leaders were declared co-coordinators of
various sub-committees, but the BJP took on the responsibility of running
172 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

the show. The reception went well, but Vajpayee decided to speak in Hindi,
without interpretation, causing uproar. Vajpayee claimed that he spoke in
Hindi even at the United Nations, without realising that his Hindi speech
was deliberately drowned out there by the interpreters. But he regaled the
Hindi speakers with vintage Vajpayee anecdotes and aphorisms.
Senator Jesse Helms, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, despite his strong reservations on India’s nuclear tests, received
Vajpayee for a discussion on the international situation. Helms also took
Vajpayee to the committee room and introduced him to his colleagues.
Mercifully, he did not make the kind of mistake he made during a visit by
Benazir Bhutto as the prime minister of Pakistan. Helms took Bhutto to
the senate committee and introduced her as ‘the prime minister of India’.
When everyone laughed in embarrassment, Helms made matters worse by
saying, ‘It is all her fault. She spent a whole hour with me and all she spoke
was about India, not a word on Pakistan.’
The emergence of the local BJP stalwarts as policy makers and guides
was an undesirable consequence of the advent of the NDA government. In
Washington, an OFBJP vice-president took on the mantle of a BJP strate-
gist and constantly interfered in the functioning of the embassy. He had
his own ideas on media and congress management, and gave unsolicited
advice to Chandra and me. Since Chandra did not give him much atten-
tion, I was his main target. There were little pieces of valuable suggestions
in his long lectures, and I had no problem in picking them up. Chandra,
who initially resented him, later realised that he had some amount of influ-
ence with Vajpayee and began to give him some importance. Apparently,
a mild complaint Chandra made to Vajpayee about him elicited a response
to the effect that the man had ‘good intentions’. Chandra did not miss the
message in the response. He then became very active in lobbying efforts
on the Hill, particularly on the issue of harassment of Christians in India.
His activities even reached the state department and the White House,
causing doubts about the standing of the embassy with the government of
India. Questions were raised as to why the government relied on people
outside the government to get things done. The occasion of Vajpayee’s visit
provided a happy hunting ground for the BJP activists, but a mix of accom-
modation and firmness on the part of the embassy led to a happy ending of
the visit.
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 173

The press corps in Washington made its own contribution to India US

relations, mostly positive but sometimes negative. A dozen representatives
of the Indian media operated in Washington. The doyen was T. V. Parasuram,
the Press Trust of India (PTI) correspondent who, it was rumoured, came
with the first batch of Indian immigrants to the United States. The Times
of India was represented by the sober and sedate Ramesh Chandran, the
Indian Express by the ebullient Chidanand Rajghatta, The Hindu by the
mature and reliable Sreedhar Krishnaswami, The Telegraph by controversy-
loving K. P. Nayar, and the Hindustan Times by the veteran N. C. Menon.
The Economic Times sent Swaminathan Iyer to Washington towards the
end of my stay. Their dispatches appeared in the papers long before our
own reports reached the ministry and the public, and even policy makers
drew conclusions without the benefit of the embassy’s analysis. We had a
hard time correcting the distortions that crept in. Some of them sought our
perspective before filing their stories, but there was no way to contradict
them in public. They focused on issues like Kashmir and the nuclear
policy to the extent of making the readers believe that nothing else
happened in Washington.
The ethnic press also played its role. India Abroad and its Washington
Bureau Chief Aziz Haniffa covered India US relations extensively and
reported the speeches of the ambassador and deputy chief of mission. He
tended to sensationalise some of the statements, reading too much between
the lines, as though policy emanated from us and not from New Delhi. One
of my accomplishments in Washington was that on account of my old asso-
ciation with him, Baburaj Stephen, the publisher of Express India, stopped
attacking the embassy in his paper during my tenure. It was rumoured that
the embassy took shares in his paper. In actual fact, he was just being kind
to his wife’s teacher in the University of Kerala. The Stephens have been
our hosts in Washington before and after our posting there. Raghubir Goyal
of the India Globe reached everywhere, whether it was the White House
pressroom or the smallest Indian community functions. In the White
House, he was known as the ‘Goyal foil’, as the spokesmen used him to dis-
tract attention when a particular issue got too hot to handle. They could
trust him to ask his standard question on India US relations, whatever the
occasion might be. There were other stringers and correspondents who
contributed occasionally to periodicals. Prominent among them was Amir
174 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Tuteja who kept good contacts with the embassy and prominent people in
India, notably Khushwant Singh and Maneka Gandhi. Known as Purane
Papee in the e-mail circuit, he kept us informed of the developments in
India and Pakistan and regaled us with jokes. He acknowledged that he
had to work hard to tell me a joke that I had not heard before.
The Monica Lewinsky episode that dominated my years in Washington
did not have any bearing on India US relations. Our nuclear tests took
place a few months after the Lewinsky scandal hit the headlines and Clin-
ton was in the midst of his preparations to testify before the grand jury at
that time. The reference to the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests in Clin-
ton’s autobiography is in the same chapter that deals with the Lewinsky
crisis. ‘I was deeply concerned about India’s decision, not because I consid-
ered it so dangerous, but because it set back my policy of improving
Indo US relations and made it harder for me to secure senate ratification
of the CTBT,’ Clinton says in My Life. We had the apprehension that
Clinton might overreact to the tests to distract attention from his troubles,
but we had no evidence that he would have reacted differently if the
Lewinsky scandal was not there. Till the impeachment failed in the senate,
where not only the democrats but also some republicans voted for him,
there was also speculation that he would be forced to resign. But Clinton
turned out to be a ‘Teflon President’, with everything bouncing off him.
Nothing stuck to him. The joke in Washington was that if Clinton were the
Titanic, the iceberg would have sunk.
Apart from the close encounters I had with Clinton during the
Vajpayee’s visit, I saw him occasionally at the golf course of the Army Navy
Country Club, of which I was an honorary member. It was the Pakistani
ambassador who told me about the provision for senior diplomats to be
admitted to the club without the hefty entrance fee. Since Chandra did
not play golf and he supported my membership, I was able to be a member
of this elite club. I also had opportunities to play on other courses, thanks
to my friends Jayant Kalotra and Mike Bedi.
President Clinton would arrive on the golf course late in the evening in
summer not to disturb other golfers. Once I found myself alone on the first
tee, but out in the rough were a number of golf carts with men in suits and
no golf clubs. I proceeded to play alone when one of the men in the carts
approached me to say that the president was on the course but that I could
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 175

continue to play, leaving a hole between him and me. I was far behind, but
when I saw him coming on an adjacent faraway in my direction and waved,
I thought it prudent to quit. The normal tendency of the golf ball to go for
the wrong target could land me in more serious trouble than a lost ball or
a two-digit score. Clinton was known to be a keen but not a steady golfer,
and the rumour was that he took several mulligans till the ball landed where
he wanted. To show how the media picked up only the negative stories
about Clinton, there was a story that Clinton hit a ball into the Potomac
River, but walked on the water to bring it back. The media simply reported
that he could not hit his golf balls straight.

I had a sense of fulfilment after the Vajpayee’s visit, and I was greatly look-
ing forward to my next assignment in Vienna. It also looked like a good
time to leave as the US elections were around the corner with a change
of president, if not a change of the ruling party itself in the offing. Leela
Ponnappa, who was supposed to be my successor, suddenly found that she
was not to come to Washington. Alok Prasad, who was dealing with the
United States for some years in Delhi, was chosen to replace me and we
agreed that the change would take place in December. By then the epic
elections of 2000 were finally over and the republican victory was a reality.
We watched the extraordinary events of the counting of votes from a Las
Vegas hotel room. At one point, we dozed off, thinking that Al Gore had
won, only to wake up after a few minutes to see that he had not. My last
administrative task was to choose a social secretary in place of Rita Wad-
hwa who decided to leave the embassy when I finished my term. The new
incumbent Arathi Krishna, who came with high political connections,
turned out to be an excellent choice. Though she did not work with me, she
tied up many loose ends after my departure and became a good friend of the
family. Her daughter Anindita spent a summer with us in Vienna later.
One of the happiest moments of our stay in Washington was when our
elder son Sreenath tied the knot on Roopa Unnikrishnan, a bright and
beautiful girl, who was introduced to us by Mohan, Lekha’s brother. She
had just finished her studies at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and moved to
176 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

New York to work for a consulting firm. Sreenath and Roopa lived within
50 blocks in Manhattan and had heard of each other, but they met only
after her name was suggested as a prospective bride for him. It was a case
of love at first sight for all of us when we met her and it did not take long
for us to meet her parents K. V. Unnikrishnan and Jayashree, and to have
a formal engagement in our Maryland home. Within days of the engage-
ment, news came of the Arjuna Award for outstanding sportspersons for
Roopa on account of the gold medal she had won at the Commonwealth
Games in Kuala Lumpur the previous year for rifle shooting. Most of our
family members saw her for the first time at the Rashtrapati Bhavan when
she went to receive the award. The wedding took place on 24 November
1999 at the embassy residence in Washington. I was personally indebted to
Naresh Chandra for lending me his house and other facilities for the wed-
ding. He had known Roopa and her parents from his days in Colombo. The
ambience of the embassy residence gave a special charm to the wedding.
Naresh Chandra and his niece Vatsala Kumar were gracious and charming
to us at all times.
We were overwhelmed by the invitations we received for farewells and
we had to struggle to cope with them. The official farewell given by Inder-
furth was memorable for a touching speech made by the host. He spoke of
the ‘Five faces of Sreeni’, ‘a consummate diplomat, who has been a key
interlocutor in the planning and execution of President Clinton’s visit to
India in March and prime minister’s visit to Washington in September.’ He
went on to say that my five faces were the chief management officer of the
embassy, a liberated husband, an accomplished toastmaster, a doting father
and an enthusiastic golfer. Naresh Chandra added a sixth face that may
have enabled me to get posted to Vienna after Washington instead of a
remote country in Africa.
Twenty major Indian American organisations, which rarely work
together, joined hands to host a gala reception for us. The speeches were
revealing as they indicated to us as to what aspect of our personalities and
functioning appealed to them, even after allowing for politeness and civil-
ity on such occasions. John Wycliffe, who was with me in college 40 years
ago, made a touching speech. He touched upon every aspect of my life,
including our younger days when, according to him, I talked myself out of
every predicament. This must have helped my career as a diplomat.
 NUCLEAR WINTER, KARGIL SPRING 177

The Washington Post found Naresh Chandra’s farewell for me worthy

of coverage. It quoted me as saying that I had learnt from Chandra in 3
years what I had not learnt in the previous 30 years and that unfortu-
nately I did not have 30 years more to practise what I learnt. I meant
every word of what I said. I had difficulties with his ‘durbar’ style of func-
tioning, which meant all of us spending considerable time, listening to
his anecdotal wisdom. He also had the habit of expressing critical views
not to colleagues directly, but through others. But his judgement of peo-
ple and situations was perfect and he had a tremendous sense of India’s
national interests in every field. His presence in Washington in 1998 and
there after was a great asset to the government. He had the capacity to
judge every move by the United States from the perspective of India,
devoid of any personal prejudice. He could never be considered either
pro- or anti-US. He was pro-India to the core. He recognised the delicate
role of the deputy, and we had an excellent working relationship. He had
his favourites among younger colleagues who caused misunderstanding
occasionally, but he gave me full confidence and support throughout.
Given the history of the relationship between the ambassador and his
deputy in the previous dispensations, ours was considered an ideal situa-
tion where we complemented each other.
Stephen Solarz said at my farewell that his observation was that the
post of the deputy chief of mission in Washington appeared to be a one-way
ticket to stardom for Indian diplomats. I had taken it up as a challenge and
did not regret the decision at any time. I could have been the head of the
mission in a number of countries, but the post in Washington was undoubt-
edly more satisfying than any of them. The frustrations of being a deputy
were more than compensated for by the relevance of the job to India’s
needs and interests.
Clinton’s visit to India and Vajpayee’s visit to the United States in 2000
marked the spring in bilateral relations, while the nuclear tests in May 1998
marked a frozen winter in the middle of summer. The point to be remem-
bered, however, is that these are but seasons that are subject to change.
India US relations have not reached a plateau to continue to flow steadily,
not subject to seasonal changes. As later events have shown, it continues
to be a roller-coaster ride. But the Clinton years, characterised by the
president’s boyish enthusiasm for India, which was noticed by Gujral
178 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

when he met Clinton in New York, were historic for India US relations.
Clinton overcame a host of hurdles to fulfil his wish to play a role in South
Asia. He would have liked to do it in happier circumstances before India and
Pakistan tested nuclear weapons. After the tantrums of the non-proliferation
lobby swept him off his feet, he seized the opportunity presented by Kargil
to make amends and to follow the path he had originally set for himself.
India has always been ready to work with the United States. It is the US
leadership that will blow hot and cold for a long time till they settle for a
steady relationship in a different global scenario.
 Chapter Four
On Whom the Sun
Never Sets
1

The great grandson of an Indian immigrant from Bihar wakes up to greet

the sun as it rises in the island of Taveuni in the Fiji Islands. At that very
moment, another immigrant from Karnataka drives home in his Mercedes
to his suburban home in San Jose as the evening sun still blazes on his
windshield. The British Empire has got accustomed to the setting of the
sun, but the Indian diaspora enjoys the sunshine continuously in one part
of the world or another. No country in the world has remained untouched
by it, no civilisation has remained unembellished. Louis Armstrong may
not have met an Indian on the surface of the moon, but his giant step for
mankind was possible, in part, by the toils of several Indian scientists in
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
I received Indians in every home I made abroad, from Shimo Ochiai
in Tokyo to Spitzergasse in Vienna. Among them were Indian nationals,
immigrants, and refugees, some who had not even set foot on Mother
India. They had their grievances, their frustrations about India, their
disapproval of the way India was run, and their brilliant solutions to the
problems of India, but one thing common to them was the awareness that
they were the inheritors of a great civilisation. Being away from India for
years did not make any difference to their Indianness. Other influences
changed their language, attire and attitudes, but they remained essen-
tially Indian in their hearts. Indians may leave India, but India never
leaves them.
180 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

No Indian immigrant community was farther away from India than the
Fiji Indians, the progeny of the indentured labourers, who were taken to the
distant paradise to work in the cane fields there. The original immigrants,
presumably a group of people who had little means of livelihood in their
towns and villages in today’s Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu were
lured by promises of plenty just across the sea. They had no idea of the
distance they had to traverse, the conditions on the other side or the future
that awaited them. Their hope was basically that they would have a better life
there, even though they would have to work in the cane fields. They signed
the agreements offered to them without knowing their contents, but they
were told that they had the option of coming back after five years, or if they
decided to stay on in the islands, their status would be ‘no whit less’ than
that of the original inhabitants of the islands. Most of them carried little or
no baggage except a few implements and images of gods. The literate among
them carried the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsi Das and other prayer books.
The conditions in the ships shocked them. They were stacked up like
sardines in dark cabins with little air, light or water. Most of them described
their journey as narak, or hell, but the promise of swarg, or heaven, in a few
days prevented a mutiny. They suffered in silence without realising the
irreversibility of their situation. One result of the long journey was that
their physical closeness made them fraternal in the extreme. Their masters
in the ship were also Indians as their white masters were prudent enough
not to travel with them. There were cases of protest and even violence
en route, but these were put down with an iron hand. It was an emaciated,
exhausted crowd of Indians that landed in the tropical islands. Several
other ships followed and the passengers in them were no wiser than those
who preceded them, and they had the same ordeal.
The immigrants had even a greater shock when they reached their
promised land. They were delighted to breathe fresh air and see the sun
blazing through the coconut trees, but they were soon herded into tin sheds
with little space or sanitation. They did not even see the capital as they
were taken straight to western Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, the two major
islands of the Fiji group. British masters became visible, but they were still
in the hands of Indian supervisors who showed no mercy. Harsh living
conditions were compounded by the hard work in the cane fields infested
with snakes, mosquitoes and other vermin, which endangered their lives.
 ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS 181

In fact, the very reason for importing labour from India was that the Fijian
workers were dying in hundreds in the cane fields. The Indians were hardier
but not immune to the many diseases that confronted them. Some died,
some deserted temporarily, but most remained stoically, dreaming of a
better future for their children.
The social transformation that took place among the Girmityas
(a corrupted version of ‘agreement’), a euphemism for indentured labourers,
was remarkable. They achieved social and linguistic cohesion in a way no
other Indian groups had done. In the first place, they assumed whatever
names they fancied when they were asked to choose surnames. They chose
surnames of superior castes in a bid to attain higher social status and, at least
among the early immigrants, this did not remain a secret. Caste differences
disappeared and everyone spoke Bhojpuri, which later came to be known, as
Fiji Hindi. The only distinctions that remained after 110 years were between
the Hindus and Muslims and the north Indians and south Indians, who came
to be called Mandranjis. Till today, some Fiji Indians believe that Mandran-
jis are a sect rather than a regional name that came out of Madras. Even
these distinctions were not too divisive as is evident from the fact that a Mus-
lim, Siddique Koya, became the leader of the Indians.
The second generation of Girmityas, having survived the ordeals of
immigration and having lost any hope of returning to India, concentrated
on spirituality, education and health, in that order. The challenges of harsh
living inevitably turned the early immigrants to God, and the Brahmins
among them exploited the others by claiming monopoly of the path to com-
forts in this world and salvation in the next. They recited Sanskrit verses
as they remembered them, but Tulsi Das’s simple narration of events and
statements of worldly wisdom in the Ramcharitmanas inspired them even
more. On the model of the churches to which the Fijians went to worship
on Sundays, Ramayan mandalis sprouted in every village. It became a habit
with them to go to these mandalis, dressed in their Sunday best to hear
and recite the verses of Tulsi Das. They also felt the need to have educa-
tional institutions of their own as the British schools were not available to
their children and the Fijian schools were too polluted with meat eaters
and others, whom the Indians considered uncivilised. Schools were named
after Indian saints and political leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit
Nehru. They also built hospitals for themselves with the assistance of the
182 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

British government, which had already begun to divide and rule the Fijians
and the Indians.
The Indians lived in Fiji as though they never left India, adapting the
goods and services available in Fiji for their way of life. The demand for
Indian things brought in the second wave of immigration of Gujaratis as
traders and moneylenders. They created their own world, but they served
the pressing needs of the cane farmers. As the educational level of the
Indians increased and many of them began to get educated in India, New
Zealand or Australia, the Indians began getting white-collar jobs. Slowly,
the marketplace in Fiji became predominantly Indian. Fijians had no con-
cept of trade, as everything was community property in the villages. The
chiefs operated the economy and provided those under them with the
basic needs. If a Fijian opened a shop, his friends and relatives would come
and carry things away without even offering to pay. The Indians, however,
saved every penny they could and introduced the money economy. The
arrival of the Gujaratis created a market economy with its attendant para-
phernalia of loans, interest, investment schemes and others. Fijians
remained largely unaffected by the new economy, but those who earned
salaries slowly adapted themselves to the new situation.
The independence of India had a profound impact on the Fiji Indians.
Since they came to Fiji as virtual slaves of the British, they found freedom
in the independence of India, though their British masters continued to
oppress them. They began to think in terms of liberating Fiji too from the
British, and a small nationalist movement began to emerge. But the
Fijians had an altogether different attitude to the British. Fiji was per-
haps the only British colony, which requested for accession to the British
Empire. The Fijian chiefs of the time offered the islands to Queen Victo-
ria by their own free will as they saw themselves as owing allegiance to the
British crown as a result of their contacts with missionaries who
converted them to Christianity. Queen Victoria did not know where
Fiji was but agreed to accept Fijians as her subjects. The British monarch
thus became the head of the feudal system in Fiji. The Fijians, therefore,
did not fancy the independence aspirations of the Hindus from India and
Fiji remained a British colony till 1970. It would have remained so even
longer had it not been for the Fiji Indian leadership, which constantly
urged the British to leave. Colonialism had virtually disappeared from the
 ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS 183

face of the earth and Fiji was an anachronism. The decolonisation

activities of the United Nations also played a role in Fiji’s independence.
The Fijians eventually agreed to negotiate dominion status with the
Queen remaining as the head of state of Fiji.
The seeds of future conflict in Fiji were sown in the Fiji constitution,
which came into force in 1970. It is believed that Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi advised the Fiji Indian leaders not to insist on their ‘pound of flesh’
as the majority group in Fiji. Instead, they should work out a formula by
which Fiji Indians would be allowed to live and work in racial harmony. If
a ‘one-man one-vote’ formula were to be adopted, the Indians would
have come to power immediately after independence, a prospect that the
Fijians considered worse than British rule. The formula adopted, therefore,
was to have a parliament with 22 Fijians, 22 Indians and 7 ‘others’,
Europeans, Chinese, and so on. Among these, some were to be elected
within the communities themselves and others to be elected nationally.
The compact, in effect, was that the Fijians would form the government
with the support of others and Indians would be Her Majesty’s loyal oppo-
sition. In return for this arrangement, Indians would be given long leases
of the land they cultivated and their children would be given jobs in the
government. The constitution reconfirmed that Fijian land was inalienable
and the Indians would not be able to own land. The Indians made all these
concessions in good faith in recognition of their immigrant status.
‘The world as it should be!’ This was the description of Fiji and the main
tourist slogan from 1970 to 1987. Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, who would have
been the king of Fiji as the most senior Fijian chief, assumed the prime min-
istership and he was hailed by all, including the government of India as the
champion of multiracialism in Fiji. He was the leader of the Alliance Party,
basically a consortium of Fijian chiefs with full Fijian support. The Indians
formed the National Federation Party (NFP) with leaders like Patel,
Siddique Koya and Jairam Reddy. The Indians began to work tirelessly for
building the nation, having set the scenario for the future, and Ratu Mara
was able to win international recognition and foreign aid by following a
clearly pro-Western foreign policy. He kept Fiji out of the NAM at a time
when it was fashionable for newly independent countries to join it. He
claimed that Fiji was so non-aligned that it could not fit in even in the
NAM. But the real reason was his vision of Fiji as a Western ally like
184 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Australia and New Zealand. At the same time, he cultivated India as he

knew that India’s support was necessary to sustain the support of the Indian
community. A. P. Venkateswaran, who was the Indian high commissioner
at the time of independence, saw through Mara’s game, but chose to follow
a policy of support for multiculturalism, which became the corner stone of
India’s policy towards Fiji. Mara got along well with the Indian leaders, par-
ticularly Koya, and managed matters in such a way that the Indians trusted
him to look after their interests. Mara spent much of his leisure time with
Indians as the feudal structure of the Fijian society did not permit him to
have a relaxed interaction among the Fijians. He, however, jealously
guarded his own position and that of the Fijians through a strategy of
persuasion and coercion. He turned out to be a master tactician, whom the
Indians could not match. The richer Indians, particularly the Gujaratis,
supported the Alliance Party, while the cane farmers and the trade unions
voted solidly with the NFP.
Below the surface of racial harmony lay the major weakness of the Fi-
jian nation. The constitution had perpetuated the racial divide. The two
major races had learnt to coexist, but there was no integration as the Indi-
ans considered themselves superior from the day they landed in Fiji. The
race-based constitution did not contribute to integration either. The exper-
iment was to build a nation that was divided on racial lines with very little
interracial intercourse. The Polynesian Melanesian race continued to call
them Fijians under the constitution, while the Indian immigrants contin-
ued to be called Indians. Moreover, the majority race had no chance
of gaining political power. It was a recipe for disaster from the start. A na-
tional identity and a common future are essential for any nation.
This disastrous recipe was projected for 17 years as ‘The world as it
should be!’, and Ratu Mara took the credit for building a truly multiracial
democracy. In the elections, Indians continued to elect Indians and Fijians
elected Fijians, but the ‘others’ propped up the Fijians in power. There was
one occasion when the Alliance Party lost the majority and Koya could
have formed a government, but Koya declined the offer and let Ratu Mara
continue for the fear that the delicate racial balance would be upset. The
revolt against the feudal structure of the Fijian society and the government
did not come from the Indians, but from the educated Fijians who formed
the Labour Party in 1986 under the leadership of a commoner Fijian,
 ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS 185

Timoci Bavadra. The Labour Party formed a coalition with the NFP and
won a by-election, sending shock waves through the whole system. Mara
was shocked and he saw a serious challenge to his feudal structure and de-
cided to fight the Labour Party tooth and nail.
When I was posted to Fiji from Rangoon as the head of mission for the
first time, I was quite excited as I knew that Fiji was an important post for
us. But I was not sure as to whether Fiji was an appropriate challenge
for me. I asked C. P. Ravindranathan, my predecessor, whether Fiji was
interesting. He was prophetic when he said that there was a danger of it
becoming ‘too interesting’. But he encouraged me to accept the post, bring
my golf set along as he thought that the way to the heart of the Fijian elite
was through the golf course.
There was no sign when we arrived in Fiji that time bomb was ticking
away below the surface of the island paradise. Order and prosperity were
visible and communal harmony seemed to hold sway. Governor General
Ganilau received us warmly for the presentation of credentials and recalled
his happy association with India for many years. Ratu Mara was sweet and
sour as he criticised many of my predecessors, thereby suggesting that I should
not make the same mistakes as they did. His bitterest words were about Sunu
Kochar, who, he thought, had ganged up with the Indians against him. He
was also bitter that P. C. Alexander had refused to let him speak to Indira
Gandhi when he wanted to complain about Kochar. As for Ravindranathan,
he said that he was a very good high commissioner till his last days in Fiji
when he was tempted to use the India card. Apparently, Ravindranathan
had challenged Mara’s thesis that a common name for all the people did not
necessarily generate unity. Mara had said that India was not united despite
the fact that all the people were Indians. Ravindranathan’s letter to the
editor about the subject had angered the Fijian fanatics, who called for his
expulsion. He left Fiji soon after and the episode was fresh when I arrived.
My previous posting, Burma, came up in my first talk with Mara. He
asked me how the Burmese people tolerated long years of dictatorship of Ne
Win. Among other things, I said that being Buddhists the Burmese were
more tolerant than most people. Mara appeared thoughtful for a moment
and then asked in a conspiratorial tone, ‘Why don’t you take away your
Hindus and give me some Buddhists instead?’ This particular remark
revealed the real Ratu Mara. Being a feudal chief, he had no great regard
186 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

for democracy, and he would have been happier if the Indians had not set
up a democracy after the British left. Mara felt that the Indians owed a
debt of gratitude to him for having agreed to share power with them
even though he was the hereditary monarch. Indian impatience with his
policies and direct criticism of his government were irritants. A Ne Win in
democratic clothing, he would have preferred a docile Buddhist population
in Fiji rather than the demanding Hindus and Muslims.

My first year in Fiji was uneventful. I got to know a number of Indian and
Fijian leaders and became friendly with many, and I maintained our tradi-
tional policy of supporting multiracialism. The Indian leaders were closer to
me than the chiefs for obvious reasons, but they were not in the least demand-
ing except in expecting me to attend their functions, ranging from political to
religious. The Indian high commissioner was to the Indians what the prime
minister was to the Fijians. Even where I was invited together with the prime
minister, I was ranked a close second, above cabinet ministers and the rest.
Ratu Mara did not seem to mind the kind of importance I enjoyed. He became
quite friendly, particularly, when we met on the golf course. I played with him
a couple of times, but he was mostly in the company of his own cronies. He
hit a long ball and won money by betting. Among his golf accomplishments
was a hole-in-one he scored on a par-4 hole at the Nadi golf course. The story
goes that he hit a rather long ball, but hit some trees and disappeared. After
a long search, his loyal driver and caddy, Babu Singh, found the ball in the
hole! Since holes-in-one are rare on par-4 holes, only prime ministers can be
credited with such feats. Although many Indians in Fiji played golf (Vijay
Singh being one of them), among political leaders, only Fijians played golf.
Golf was considered another divide between the communities.
Within a few months after my arrival in Fiji, our military attaché in Can-
berra came to Suva on an accreditation visit. The officer in the Fiji army who
coordinated the visit was Sitiveni Rabuka, a colonel, who had just returned
from a peacekeeping operation in Lebanon. The Fiji army, having nothing
much to do in its own country, was a regular troop contributor to the United
Nations. It got its officers trained in near-battle conditions, earned money for
 ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS 187

the government and the soldiers, and gained considerable international expo-
sure. Virtually, every Fijian soldier spent some time on the UN peacekeeping.
Being neutral ideologically, Fiji was acceptable in every situation and both the
United Nations and Fiji benefited from this arrangement. Rabuka was in touch
with my officers, but he also spoke to me a couple of times on phone. He spoke
impeccable English and told me that he had been at the Staff College in
Wellington near Ooty. I invited him to a dinner that I had organised for the
military attaché, but he declined. Within a few days I noticed a Fijian golfer
playing alone, like I used to do in the morning every day at the Fiji Golf Club.
He joined me once as we arrived at the same time and it transpired that it
was Rabuka. He was very polite and friendly, but not too talkative. But he did
reminisce over his days in India and expressed appreciation for the profes-
sional skills of the Indian Army. We began playing regularly, but I did not learn
much about his personality except that he was a good golfer. He declined all
my invitations, but he was quite happy joining me on the course.
The election campaign picked up momentum by the end of 1996 and
the likelihood of a Labour Party NFP coalition made it very interesting.
Ratu Mara and the Alliance Party were, however, confident of victory ini-
tially, but by the turn of the year, there was a certain nervousness raising its
head. When Ratu Mara realised that the Indians were going to support
labour, he began to meet me frequently to see if I could influence them in
his favour. He once told me that he would understand if an Indian wanted
to become prime minister. But if it was going to be a Fijian, he was the one
who had done most for the Indians. What had Bavadra done for them, he
asked. I listened to him patiently, but professed strict neutrality and faith
in multiracialism. He then proposed a visit to India. I was told that he went
to India whenever there was an election and then used the speeches
made in his praise by the Indian leaders for his campaign among the
Indians. I conveyed his wish to Delhi, together with the pleas made to me
by Indian leaders not to entertain his visit at that time. Perhaps, A. P.
Venkateswaran, the foreign secretary who knew the situation in Fiji, may
well have played a role, but somehow we could not accommodate his visit
during the dates proposed by him. He did not look very pleased when I
conveyed that he should visit India soon after the elections.
Timoci Bavadra, Tupeni Baba, Mahendra Chaudhury and Satya Nan-
dan of the Labour Party and Jairam Reddy, Harish Sharma and Vinod Patel
188 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

of the NFP were constantly in touch with me, but I did not participate in
any community functions, which appeared to contribute to the campaign.
On one occasion, I went with the other diplomats to a convention of the
NFP where Jairam spoke, and I was surprised that the next day newspa-
pers carried a picture not of the podium where the leaders were seated, but
a shot of the audience where I was prominently featured. Ratu Mara and
the Alliance Party had no reason to complain that I acted in a partisan way,
but they knew well where my sympathies lay. There was, of course, a
section of the Indians, mostly rich Gujarati businessmen, who believed that
a change of government would be disastrous for the Indians. They were
cozy with the Mara group and could manipulate it with their money. They
were not sure whether an ideologically strong group like the Labour Party
would be susceptible to money power. Suspicions within the Indian com-
munity also played a role in shaping their thinking.
A landslide was not possible in Fiji elections because of the structure of
the seats in the parliament. The Fijian chiefs controlled the reserved
Fijian seats, for which the Fijians alone voted, and they went en masse to the
Alliance Party. The Indian seats similarly went to the NFP. Only the few
national seats permitted cross-voting of communities and these really deter-
mined the outcome of the elections. In 1987, the Fijians and the Indians
voted largely as before, but about 10 per cent of the Fijian voters switched
their allegiance from the Alliance to the Labour Party and this resulted in the
victory of the coalition. In other words, the Indians did not switch votes to
defeat Mara. It was the educated Fijians who defeated their feudal masters.
The coalition with NFP, which held the Indian vote bank, was a convenient
tool for the democratic forces among the Fijians to oust their chiefs.
The formation of a coalition government under Timoci Bavadra was a
foregone conclusion once the results came out as he was already projected
as the candidate for prime minister. Since he was a Fijian, the anxiety about
an Indian takeover was absent and there was general goodwill when he was
sworn in. He inducted every Fijian member of the parliament in the coali-
tion into his cabinet, but he still needed many more ministers and they had
to be found among the Indians, and consequently the Indians were in a clear
majority in the cabinet. Harish Sharma was the deputy prime minister,
Jairam Reddy was the attorney general and Mahendra Chaudhury was the
finance minister. The cabinet, which lasted only for 30 days, went about its
 ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS 189

work with great determination and did wonders even in a short period.
It was the efficiency of the cabinet and its potential that speeded up the
conspiracy for the coup.
I met Bavadra and the other ministers and pledged India’s support.
But I cautioned them against dramatic changes in policy, knowing fully
well that the economy was essentially in the hands of Australia and
New Zealand, and that the Western countries had a vital interest in the
South Pacific. A radical image for the new government might do more
harm than good. Bavadra himself was in no hurry to bring about radical
change. He was aware of the rumblings among the chiefs against his
assuming the leadership of the country. Democracy had not taken deep
enough roots in Fiji to enable them to accept a mere commoner as the
prime minister. I invited him to visit India, but left it to him to decide the
timing. I was not keen to contribute to the impression that an ‘Indian
Cabinet’ had taken over in Fiji. Many even in India believed that Bavadra
himself was an Indian. His immediate task was to mend fences with the
chiefs and make feudalism come to terms with democracy.
The Taukei (son of the soil) movement was born within days of the for-
mation of the Bavadra government to liberate the country from ‘foreign
rulers’. This was seen as the handiwork of the ultra-nationalist Fijians who
had made expulsion of the Indians as their platform during the elections.
The movement held demonstrations against the government mainly in the
west of the country. But there was no sign of the movement gaining mo-
mentum within the Fijian community. The majority was willing to give the
government a chance. The government itself was reassuring in its initial
statements on maintenance of Fijian rights, particularly land laws, and
there was nothing in their statements to provoke the Fijians in any way.
On 10 May 1987, I was in the office in the morning, getting ready to
go to the parliament to hear an address by Prime Minister Bavadra when
I received a call from my son Sreenath, an aspiring journalist, anxious to
break the news, to say that there had been a military coup in Fiji. It was the
first of its kind in the South Pacific. My golf partner, Lt. Col. Sitiveni
Rabuka, walked into the Fijian parliament in civilian clothes with a
revolver (unloaded, it turned out later) and ordered the prime minister,
the entire cabinet and the members of parliament of the ruling party into
waiting military trucks. A number of masked Fiji army soldiers had lined up
190 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

inside the parliament with automatic weapons to make clear that it was a
military coup. As the truck drove off, Rabuka telephoned Adi Kuini, wife
of the prime minister, to ask for her permission to bring the prime minister
and his colleagues for detention at the official residence of the prime
minister. The place of detention gave the coup a human face right from
the start, but it was no soft coup. The soldiers had their fingers on the
trigger to meet any eventuality.
I managed to put in a call to the India House to find that wives of some
of the ministers were there. After asking them to stay put till the situation
was clarified, I tried to call Delhi, but the international lines were down. I
realised then that I was on my own to handle the crisis. Within a couple of
hours, we were told that Rabuka, who had taken over as the head of the
government, would meet the heads of diplomatic missions at the foreign of-
fice later that afternoon. The ambassadors were calling each other by then
and I was told that the high commissioners of Australia and New Zealand
would not attend the meeting to show their displeasure over Rabuka’s
action. I weighed my options and found that it was better to deal with the
man in charge rather than offend him. Moreover, as the fortunes of Fiji
Indians were at stake, I had to be part of the action from then on. While we
waited for Rabuka to arrive, the British high commissioner suggested that we
neither stand up on his arrival nor shake hands with him. We agreed.
Rabuka walked in and sat down. I had met him on the golf course two
days earlier, when he told me that he would be busy for the next few days.
Most ambassadors did not know him, and neither I nor he acknowledged
our acquaintance. He told the same story as he had told the press, namely
he had to take the action to prevent bloodshed and chaos following the
agitation of the Taukei movement. He said that he was in touch with the
governor general who had agreed to remain in place and that democracy
would be restored as soon as possible. None of my colleagues asked any
question. I expressed anxiety over the lives and properties of the Indians
in Fiji without specifying whether I was referring to Indian nationals or
others. Rabuka said that he was responsible for their welfare and I would
have nothing to worry. I also pointed out that we were not in a position to
convey what he said to my government as the international lines had been
cut off. He assured me that the lines would be restored. I was able to
contact Delhi on my return to the high commission.
 ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS 191

By the evening, stories had spread all over the town about the possible
killing of Bavadra and his colleagues, anti-Indian riots and the likelihood
of a night of the cane knives some had predicted for Fiji. My enquiries about
security at night elicited a response that the India House would be pro-
tected by the army and that any Indian who was anxious about his or her
security could move there. I conveyed the same message to the community
and a dozen Indian nationals shifted to our house that night. We spent the
night listening to the intermittent news broadcasts on Fiji and Australian
radios. Some odd events were reported, but it was an uneasy but peaceful
night. Many people, Indians and Fijians, kept vigil outside the prime min-
ister’s residence where the cabinet and the coalition MPs were detained.
The day after the coup did not seem as bad as the day of the coup
itself as it became clear that no blood would be spilt. Rabuka’s statements
indicated that there would be no harm done to the Fiji Indians as long as
they did their business and ‘made their money’. His refrain was that the
Indians were guests in Fiji and that they should remain as such and not try
to usurp the powers of the hosts. Logic was not his strong point. But true
to the reputation of the peaceful nature of Fijians, there was no call for re-
venge. Rabuka made it clear that the constitution would be changed to en-
sure that the Fijians would remain predominant in the political life of Fiji,
even though he was far from clear as to how he would accomplish it.
The Fiji Indians were totally confused. The radical sections of the
farming community were aggressive, while the business community
was submissive. The large majority was willing to find a solution in the
‘Pacific way’, a mix of conceding the special rights for Fijians and ensur-
ing freedom and security for the Indians. A small group expected India
to intervene even militarily to rescue the Indians. All these views came
to me from diverse sources, and my position was that a solution should
be found on the basis of the 1970 constitution. As the governor general
was in place, we had a legitimate authority to deal with. But my first
meeting with him after the coup left me in doubt as to whether he was
entirely impartial. He was concerned about what happened, but he in-
dicated clearly that a return to the 1970 constitution was unthinkable.
His message was that Fiji Indians should see the reality and readjust their
political ambitions. He urged me to convey this message to the Indians
in no uncertain terms.
192 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

My contacts with the governor general continued for a week after the
coup, during which I tried out several formulas for a settlement. My
proposal essentially was to constitute an interim government of national
unity with Bavadra as prime minister and begin consultations on a consti-
tution as close to the document of 1970 as possible. These discussions were
terminated when I was denied permission to enter the governor general’s
residence. I arrived there to keep an appointment with the governor general,
but the soldiers made several calls and told me after a few minutes that I had
no permission to meet the governor general. When I returned to the mis-
sion, Ganilau himself was on the line to apologise and to tell me that he
could not see me for reasons beyond his control. This was the end of my
shuttle diplomacy!
The day the prime minister and others were released after the governor
general stripped them of their positions under an order began as a day of
hope and rejoicing, but ended as a black day in the racial relationships in Fiji.
A large number of people, mostly Indians, gathered in the stadium to give
a warm welcome to Bavadra and his colleagues after five days of detention.
Rabuka feared that this would be the beginning of a movement to reinstate
Bavadra and decided to nip it in the bud. He cleverly used his thugs rather
than the army to disperse the crowd. They walked into the stadium and
began beating up the Indians indiscriminately even as Bavadra and his
friends were addressing them. The unexpected outbreak of violence took
the Indians by surprise and there was a complete chaos. I watched from my
office hundreds of Indian men, women and children running in panic. This
particular incident created such a terror in the Indians that no other
similar gathering ever took place as events unfolded. It was the last attempt
by the Indians to show their solidarity with the Bavadra government.
The governor general held some discussions with the main actors con-
cerned and forged a certain understanding by which the army would
return to the barracks and a civilian government of national unity would
be formed. An actual agreement was signed at the Pacific Harbour resort.
Jairam Reddy drove to my house to brief me about the agreement, partic-
ularly, as he felt that the agreement had ended the political role of Fiji
Indians. Soon after he left, we heard on the radio that Rabuka had staged
a ‘second coup’ by rejecting the agreement. The Indian leaders were once
again kept under house arrest for a time following the ‘second coup’.
 ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS 193

Indian policy towards the developments in Fiji began to evolve in Delhi

as I confined myself to quiet diplomacy in favour of democracy and
multiracialism. Some Fiji Indian leaders, who wanted to persuade India to
take a more active position against the perpetrators of the coup, contacted
A. P. Venkateswaran who had retired as foreign secretary. Venkateswaran
accompanied Bavadra to London when he went to represent his case to
the Queen. A case was also made to Rajiv Gandhi that India should be
proactive. As a result of all these efforts, which I was following from a dis-
tance, a policy review took place on the initiative of Natwar Singh, the
then minister of state for external affairs. Rajiv Gandhi took the line that
it was important for India to be supportive of the people of Indian origin
whenever they were in trouble. This was part of his strategy to enlist
the support of people of Indian origin to be involved in India’s economic
development. A decision was taken, therefore, to condemn the coup and
take a position publicly against racial discrimination. This was indeed a
landmark decision as his grandfather, Prime Minister Nehru, had laid down
that the loyalty of Indian immigrants should be to their country of adoption
and that the only thing that the government would do was to be ‘alive to
their welfare and interests’. The government of India had done very little
to oppose the regimes in Burma or Uganda, which discriminated against
the Indians. We had respected their decisions and taken steps to rehabili-
tate the Indians who returned. We continued to do business with these
regimes. In the case of Fiji, the decision was not to recognise the Rabuka
government, impose trade sanctions and also get it expelled from the Com-
monwealth. India’s policy towards overseas Indians changed dramatically
on account of the Fiji coup even though it was not recognised as such at
that time.
I was called for consultations to Delhi and told of the new policy, but
the unanswered question was what status I would have if I returned to
Fiji without according recognition to the regime. I pointed out this
diplomatic problem, but it was decided that I should return to Fiji and
support the cause of democracy and the Indians regardless of the
consequences. Diplomatic niceties were set aside and I was told that my
primary responsibility was to protect the interests of Fiji Indians.
194 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Rajiv Gandhi personally ensured at the Melbourne Commonwealth

Summit that Fiji was not admitted back in the commonwealth once it
declared itself a republic. The convention in the commonwealth is that
any dominion, that becomes a republic ceases to be a member and it
should apply for membership with its new status. A unanimous decision
of the commonwealth is required for such a country to re-enter the
commonwealth. India used this provision to ensure Fiji’s exclusion from
the commonwealth. Among all the measures we took, this decision hurt
the Fijian leaders the most as the absence of a link with Her Majesty’s
government was a blow to their loyalty to the Queen.
Having taken these decisions, the government left me to my own
devices to work out my continued stay in Fiji as an adversary of the
government, however untenable it might be. I cannot think of any precedent
in diplomatic history of an ambassador remaining in a country whose regime
his own government does not recognise. I changed my designation as ‘head
of mission’ because I could not be a ‘high commissioner’ in a non-common-
wealth government. Later, I assumed the title of ambassador when the Fiji
government itself decreed that all high commissioners would turn into am-
bassadors. I devised a code of conduct for myself to suit my position of non-
recognition of the Fiji government. I dealt with senior civil servants only
and not ministers, and I did not attend any of the state functions. I went to
Indian community functions and stated India’s position against racial
discrimination and support to the rights of the Indian settlers. I defended the
Indian position through speeches, letters to the editor, etc. Our position did
not change even after Rabuka put together different structures of govern-
ment in place, including a cabinet headed by Ratu Mara himself.
I had expected the Fiji government to break off diplomatic relations
after we ensured their exit from the commonwealth, but the possible reaction
of the Fiji Indians held their hand. We ourselves were mentally prepared to
leave at short notice, as our position was difficult for any government to stom-
ach. Lekha packed a suitcase each time I made a speech in Fiji or when an
official statement was made in the Indian parliament. Our creditworthiness
must have suffered, but we had no occasion to check it out. But I could see
that the video man was quite uneasy when we borrowed movies from him!
A measure that was strongly recommended by some Indian leaders at
one point was to ask the farmers not to cut the sugarcane, which was
 ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS 195

ready for harvesting at the time of the coup. If this were done, the military
government would be in a terrible mess as the contract for supply of sugar
to Europe would be dishonoured. The question arose as to how the farm-
ers could be maintained during the period. While we were still discussing
the possibilities of some financial assistance, harvesting began in some parts
of Fiji and the proposal fell through. The farmers were in no mood to make
a sacrifice to bring the government to its knees.
Finally, the day of my expulsion came rather unexpectedly after I
thought that I had made a reconciliatory speech at a highly explosive mo-
ment. I was in India when news broke out that imported illegal arms were
found in the homes of some Fiji Indians. An investigation revealed that
two containers of arms were shipped to Fiji and one of them was confis-
cated at the Sydney port. Rabuka hinted at an Indian hand in the arrival
of the shipment. I thought that he would use the arms as an excuse to
expel me and warned Delhi that I might be back soon. But I was politely
received on arrival and there was no sign of any displeasure.
Two days before my return to Nadi, the airport town in the west of Fiji,
some extremists torched the local Sikh temple. The Sikhs around the
world were quite agitated as it was after many centuries that the Sikh holy
book, Guru Granth Sahib, was desecrated like this anywhere in the world.
The Sikh leaders came to see me in Nadi and requested me to stay back
in Nadi to attend a ceremony at which the damaged Guru Granth Sahib
would be ‘cremated’ according to custom. The prevailing tension in the
country was palpable at the ceremony and some leaders were keen not to
inflame passions by the orations there. So, it was decided that I would be
the only speaker at the ceremony and the rest would be religious rituals. I
knew that religion was a bigger issue than race for the Sikhs and, there-
fore, I said that the burning of the temple was not an attack on their reli-
gion. I said that it should be seen in the context of the political situation
in the country, which threatened racial harmony and democracy. I thought
that the speech was conciliatory, but without missing the point of our
position on Fiji. But as we were driving towards Suva, I heard a report on
Fiji radio that I had made a highly inflammatory speech!
The first time I heard that the Fiji government had decided to ask me to
leave Fiji in 72 hours was on the golf course, the next Saturday morning. I
completed the round and came back to see that my colleagues, led by my
196 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

deputy Vivek Katju, had arrived at the residence by then, having heard
rumours about the possible action by Fiji. We went to work swiftly with Delhi
and took pre-emptive action to soften the blow of an expulsion. Fortunately,
Monday was a holiday in Fiji on account of Diwali and the cabinet could not
meet before Tuesday. My transfer to New Delhi as joint secretary (UN) was
announced the same evening, making people wonder why so much publicity
was given to my appointment. My friend Vidya Bhushan Soni, who was con-
sul general in Sydney, was posted to Suva to take over from me. As no agree-
ment was possible in those circumstances, the government decided to appoint
him as a charge d’affaires. When the cabinet met on Tuesday to decide on my
expulsion as ordered by Ratu Mara from Brussels, Rabuka was angry that the
matter had leaked and I had managed to take a number of measures. He,
therefore, insisted that I should not be given more than 72 hours to leave. I
received a note by Tuesday evening conveying the decision, but interestingly,
they did not declare me persona non grata. Instead, they said that Fiji had
decided to downgrade the Indian mission to consulate general and that I
should leave within 72 hours. I called up the deputy prime minister and told
him that it was not for Fiji to unilaterally downgrade the Indian mission. He
did not dispute my point, but said that they could not have an ambassador who
did not recognise the current government, a valid point in diplomatic practice.
Fiji Indians closed shops in protest over my expulsion and assembled at
my house and later at the airport when I left, but I urged restraint and asked
them not to interfere with the diplomatic process. I stopped by at the
residence of the deposed Prime Minister Bavadra at Lautoka and found
him very sick. He thanked me for all the support extended to him and Fiji
by India, and said that my departure would weaken the cause of democracy
in Fiji. He passed away, a disillusioned man, within five days of my
departure when I was still in Sydney, waiting for Lekha to pack up and join
me on my way back to India. An Indian delegation consisting of Najma
Heptullah, deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha, and Himachal Som, the
concerned joint secretary, attended his funeral.
Although the Foreign Secretary S. K. Singh and the Additional
Secretary concerned Shekhar Dasgupta gave me full support during the
crisis, I sensed a certain amount of disquiet on the part of the foreign
secretary after I reached Sydney. The general elections were around the
corner and he felt that the opposition might use my expulsion to criticise
 ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS 197

the Rajiv Gandhi government. I pointed out to him that the government
should take credit for its policy of support for the Indians in Fiji, but he
would have none of it. He instructed that I should be totally silent and
return quietly to India. I had no intention to make speeches anyway, but I
told him that the government had no reason to feel guilty over its Fiji
policy. As it happened, Rajiv Gandhi lost the elections and the new
government pursued the same policy, leading to the expulsion of our whole
embassy from Fiji within the next six months.
Fiji marked a turning point in India’s policy on overseas Indians as the
developments in Fiji took place at the time when the government of India
was in the process of rediscovering the potential of the Indian diaspora. Indian
diplomats, who considered their contacts with the Indian community a nec-
essary evil, began to see the potential of the community not just as a source
of remittance and investment, but also as facilitators of mainstream contacts
and catalysts of good relations between India and the host country. Fiji
Indians had no such role, even though some influential Indians were able to
open many doors for the diplomats. Ratu Mara, for example, had many Indian
cronies whose advice he valued. Rajiv Gandhi had the vision to realise that
his protestations of support to overseas Indians would carry no credibility if
he did not go to the rescue of Fiji Indians. His general policy towards overseas
Indians was considerably influenced by the plight of the Fiji Indians.
The V. P. Singh government and the subsequent governments contin-
ued to be sensitive to the needs of the Fiji Indians. When the wheel came
full circle and some of the Indians even forged an alliance with Rabuka and
Mahendra Chaudhury became prime minister, India openly embraced the
new arrangement and entertained Chaudhury in India. India agreed to the
return of Fiji to the commonwealth and reopened our high commission in
Fiji with a political appointee as its head. The subsequent ‘civilian coup’
by George Speight was universally condemned, but the net result of the
action was that the Indians once again got marginalised in Fiji. The Indian
saga in Fiji will eventually end not with a bang but a whimper. Most
Indians will migrate or die out within the next 30 years and the remaining
ones will eke out an anonymous existence in the cane fields. The golden age
of the Fiji Indians will be erased even out of textbooks as the future lead-
ers of Fiji will want the future generations to think that it was the sons of
the soil like Ratu Mara who built Fiji and not immigrants like Jairam Reddy
198 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

or Mahendra Chaudhury. In other words, like the impoverished Indians in

the rice-growing districts of Myanmar, the Indian rump will remain in sugar
cane plantations in some remote villages of Fiji.

The story of the remaining Indians in Myanmar, about 10,000 of them, in

Yangon and two rice-growing districts of Myanmar illustrates the conse-
quences of India’s hands-off policy with regard to overseas Indians. When
General Ne Win ordered the Indians out in 1961, the government of India
merely facilitated their rehabilitation in India. They had to leave behind every-
thing that they owned and then eke out an existence with government hand-
outs in entirely new surroundings. No compensation was paid for the property
left behind. According to legend, the Ne Win government itself suggested
that the rice farmers should stay back to provide continuity to rice cultivation.
After 25 years of Ne Win socialism, the farmers had become totally impover-
ished. They welcomed me warmly when I visited the villages, but their qual-
ity of life was extremely poor. Ironically, they did not even have rice to eat as
the procurement authorities lifted their produce almost wholly. They had to
consume low-quality rice, which the state did not want to purchase for export.
The Indians in Myanmar, including the farmers, had no documents to
prove their nationality. The only document that they had was the foreign-
ers registration certificate, which they had to renew every year on payment.
They had no rights either in their land of origin or their land of adoption,
and neither of the governments seemed concerned. The Indian community
in Myanmar was the poorest I had seen anywhere in the world. They could not
leave the country without paying large sums. Occasional de-monetisation of
the local currency made them penniless as they did not have bank accounts.
Some sought salvation by trekking across the border to seek their fortune
elsewhere. Some of them went as far as the United States and
did well. Others disappeared in India. The stateless Indians of Myanmar
remain a blot on the conscience of the two countries.
My interaction with the Indian diaspora in the United States began in
1980 in New York and continued till 2000 in Washington. The nature and
extent of my contacts varied as I moved from one position to another and
 ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS 199

the most extensive interaction was in my capacity as the deputy chief of

mission in Washington. The ‘Indian Americans’, the current politically
correct description of people of Indian origin has evolved over the years as
they grew in size and influence. Just being ‘Indians’ or ‘American Indians’
confused them with the ‘Red Indians’, a legacy of the monumental mistake
made by Columbus. So the term, ‘Asian Indians’ was used for a time. It
then turned out that, in the eyes of the Americans, ‘Asia’ meant yellow
people with chinky eyes, and consequently the word ‘Indian Americans’
gained currency. As a counsellor in the permanent mission, I had no offi-
cial contacts with the community. But the Keralite community began to
invite me to their functions in my capacity as the most senior official be-
longing to Kerala. Many of my personal friends from early days, including
my students at the Mar Ivanios College in Thiruvananthapuram who
happened to be in the United States re-established contacts with us.
The Keralite community in the United States in the eighties was a
microcosm of the Indian community, except that there were a large num-
ber of Christian nurses and their relatives among the Malayalees. True to
the saying that two Malayalees form one association and three form two,
there were a number of groups functioning on the basis of region, religion,
specialisation or simply their location in the United States. I went wherever
I was invited and got to know a cross-section of the community. They were
quite prosperous, comfortably moving into the second generation of immi-
grants, having overcome the hardships of an uprooted life in an alien land.
They had respect for the government of India and its representatives, even
if they had a number of grievances against the administrative system in India
and the alleged arrogance of India’s diplomatic representatives abroad. They
made no demands except to attend their functions and make speeches. The
differences among themselves surfaced occasionally to public view, but
they had their own way of resolving them. Only in one instance, I had to face
a controversy about the legitimacy of a particular set of office bearers. By the
time I arrived on the scene, they were able to sort out their differences.
Towards the end of my first tenure in New York in March 1983, the
Federation of Kerala Associations in North America (FOKANA) was
established under the patronage of Ambassador K. R. Narayanan. This was
a historic development as FOKANA became a true umbrella organisation
for the Kerala associations in the United States and Canada. I attended
200 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

many of the conventions that followed and participated actively in them.

The FOKANA, unlike some of the other Indian American organisations,
focused on interaction with the politicians, film stars, and writers and cared
little for investing in local politicians. After a period of glory in the nineties,
the FOKANA lost its strength in later years. The World Malayalee
Council (WMC), which began as a rival to the FOKANA, gained a global
flavour and made a mark with its humanitarian projects in Kerala. Efforts
to integrate the FOKANA with the WMC did not fructify.
By the time I reached Washington in 1997, there was a sea change in
the government of India’s attitude to the Indian diaspora, largely because
of Rajiv Gandhi’s determination to use the Indian community abroad as
a resource for technology and investment. The community too had begun
to rely on India to provide a social security net in the event of unforeseen
political storms. India’s firm stand on discrimination against the Fiji
Indians made an impression on the diaspora. Fiji Indian leaders were in-
vited to the first meeting of the Global Organisation of People of Indian
Origin (GOPIO) in New York, which was a morale booster to the Indi-
ans in Fiji. Indian Americans had also begun to think of investments in
India as a result of economic reforms in India. The mutuality of interests
between India and the Indians abroad had come to be recognised.
Indians in Kenya, known generally as ‘Asians’ to cover other South
Asians, are rich, but extremely vulnerable. They have earned their wealth by
the sweat of their brow, but their image is mixed. While they are respected
for their hard work and entrepreneurship, there is a sense that they are
exploiters. During my time, the wealth was gradually moving into African
hands, but the manufacturing and commercial sectors were still in the hands
of the Indians. The Indians owned most shops and other commercial estab-
lishments in Nairobi. People like the Gehlots and the Bhattis dominated the
construction sector. The Bhattessas, who controlled the steel industry, have
since migrated to the United Kingdom, but the industry is still with the
Indians. The disparity in income between the Asians and the Africans was
the main cause of violence. The Indians had massive homes, reminiscent of
Hindi movie sets and they employed African servants who were privy to their
conspicuous consumption. When a disgruntled African turned against them,
they had no defence and they became victims of robbery and even murder.
On an average, 50 Indians were reportedly killed in Kenya.
 ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS 201

The Indians in Kenya have many land and business interests there,
and there is no immediate danger to them arising out of the policies of the
government. They are, however, conscious of their vulnerability and
follow a policy of being supportive of the government in power. Most Indian
businessmen have their African patrons to protect them. As a commu-
nity, the Asians do considerable charitable work targeted at the African
population. Most private educational institutions and hospitals belong to
various Asian groups, prominent among them being the Hindus and the
Ahamediyas. They keep good relations with the Indian High Commission
and promote commercial relations between the two countries. A ‘Made in
India’ show, which we organized in collaboration with the Confederation
of Indian Industry (CII) was a huge success because of the support of the
Indian community.
The Indians in Kenya have a rich cultural and social life. Their hospital-
ity is legendary, and musicians and dancers from India are frequently invited
to perform in Kenya. Indian politicians are also looked after well in Kenya.
The Indians make no demands on the government of India and, except for
the sense of physical insecurity, they have no serious problems. But the
younger Indians who go abroad rarely come back, and the Indian commu-
nity is dwindling.
The Indian community in Vienna is large for a small country like
Austria and as it is concentrated in the capital, the Indian presence is
clearly visible. More than 30 Indian restaurants dot the city with names as
exotic as Yoga and Himalaya, which serve Keralite cuisine, and Shalimar
and Shangri-la, which serve Mughlai food. A Pakistani establishment
called Demi Tass is nothing but an Indian restaurant. The bulk of the com-
munity consists of Kerala Christians, the nucleus of whom came as nurses
in the sixties to Europe and settled down there. While most of the women
continue to work in the hospitals, men work for the international organ-
isations in Vienna or run private businesses. Most of the local employees
are Malayalees and the others speak Malayalam out of sheer necessity.
Punjabis do not seem to be less in number, but they are visible only at the
annual Diwali mela or the Baisakhi festival.
The Keralite community readily adopted me, as I was the first
ambassador in Vienna from Kerala. I had to brush up my oratorical skills in
Malayalam as the proceedings of most of the many Kerala functions were
202 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

either in Malayalam or in German. The arrival of Anita Pratap, the wife of

Arne Walter, the Norwegian Ambassador, gave me some relief. Although
there were several Kerala organisations, the audiences and even the per-
formers were the same at most of the gatherings. Film stars and other
artistes came to Vienna occasionally to perform for the community. The
legendary singer from Kerala K. J. Jesudas came twice and stayed with us in
a suite in the India House, which is now named after him. Veterans in
the embassy like P. Thomas and O. Joseph are valuable links between the
community and the mission.
Austria has a reputation for xenophobia because of the neo-Nazi leader
Jorge Haider, but the Indian community enjoys all freedoms and many
Indians have acquired Austrian nationality on the strength of long stay in the
country. The benefits of social security are available to all citizens, regardless
of the country of origin. Non-recognition of Hinduism as a national religion
had created some problems, but it was clarified that it was only because there
were not enough Hindus in Austria to gain recognition as a separate religion.
Austrians of Indian origin have begun to enter politics, though none has got
elected to parliament. Jorge Haider told me that his alleged hatred of for-
eigners was not against the Indians. The Indian community in Austria is a
contented group and makes no great demands on the government of India.
They rise to the occasion at times of calamities in India even with their
meagre resources and maintain contacts with the embassy.
The music maestro Zubin Mehta, who has ‘India in his marrow’,
according to his colleagues, is a household name in Austria. He began his
early music career in Vienna and is a great draw there whenever he per-
forms with Austria’s famed orchestras. An Indian pianist Maria Lena has
also made a name for herself in this Mecca of music. Austria, in turn, has
made a contribution to Bharatanatyam in the person of Radha Anjali, who
has been performing to rapturous audiences in Austria as well as in India.
The aspirations, needs and problems of the Indian diaspora are differ-
ent in Fiji, the United States, Myanmar, Kenya and Austria, but their love
for the motherland is the same everywhere. India and the Indians have
rediscovered each other in recent years, much to the benefit of both sides.
 Chapter Five
Quest for Balance

Vienna came into my life like many other capitals in which I served,
without warning. Buenos Aires was suggested for me first, but it made
little sense. I knew no Spanish and had no experience of Latin America.
Moreover, I was keen on a multilateral post. Neither New York nor Geneva
was immediately available and, therefore, I asked for Vienna. The combi-
nation of bilateral and multilateral work that Vienna offered was attrac-
tive, and I was particularly fascinated by the idea of being the governor for
India on the Board of the IAEA.
The usual hiccups of a chain of postings followed. Yogesh Tiwari, whom
I was to replace in Vienna, was not keen to go to Cairo, where he was
posted, and he told me quite categorically that he had no plans to leave Vi-
enna unless he was posted either to Delhi or to a more weighty station. But
unknown to him, there were forces at work in his own mission to under-
mine him and he was suddenly recalled to Delhi. Out of the blue, Vienna
became vacant and pressure started to mount on me to reach Vienna with-
out delay. I was ready to leave after the prime minister’s visit to Washington
and it suited me to rush matters a bit to reach Vienna in the middle of
December 2000. President Thomas Klestil received me for my presenta-
tion of credentials within a couple of days of my arrival. Though the
credentials ceremony itself was not very ostentatious, as I walked past an
Austrian guard of honour with a slight shower of snow, the history of
Europe and India’s role in it passed through my mind.
204 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

My only earlier visit to Vienna was in 1976 when we travelled from

Moscow to Europe by train in the company of S. Shekhar, a delightful
submariner, who was the assistant naval attaché in Moscow. He had gath-
ered a couple of cousins, in addition to his wife and children, for the trip.
Apart from being in a largish group and on a shoestring budget, we had
spent only a day in Vienna and had hardly explored the attractions of
Vienna. Schonbrunn Palace was the only Vienna landmark, which was
etched in my memory. For the rest, it was just a recollection of a jumble of
statues and museums spread over Prague, Rome and Vienna. Vienna was,
therefore, a new city to explore and to understand.
For India, the focus in Vienna is on the IAEA. I had dealt with the
IAEA as joint secretary (UN), but only peripherally because the nodal
agency of the government for it was the Department of Atomic Energy
under the prime minister. In fact, if the governor for India on the IAEA
Board were not the ambassador in Vienna, the Ministry of External
Affairs would not have been involved at all in the affairs of the IAEA. The
substantive aspects are still with the chairman of the Atomic Energy
Commission, and the Ministry of External Affairs deals only with political
issues. But like all international organisations, the substantive work in the
IAEA is hostage to political issues. Considerable scientific work is done,
but it is the political dimensions of the agency that agitate the members
and necessitate the intervention of the board. It is when political issues
come up that the IAEA receives attention around the globe.
The celebrated Indian nuclear scientist, Homi Bhabha, played a major
role not only in shaping the IAEA at the time of its establishment, but also
in having it situated in Vienna. New York and Geneva were the leading
candidates for the venue, but Bhabha’s love for Western music clinched
the issue in Austria’s favour. A bust of Homi Bhabha adorns the entrance
to the IAEA Boardroom. Dr Chidambaram was instrumental in installing
the bust of Bhabha at this important location. The boardroom also has two
wooden panels fixed on the wall on two sides of the chair, portraying scenes
from Ramayana and Mahabharata, a gift given by Dr Homi Sethna. Both
the panels portray war, but it is the conflict between the good and the evil
and the good prevails in the end. India is a permanent member of the IAEA
board in our capacity as one of the ten members ‘most advanced in the
technology of atomic energy including the production of source materials’.
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 205

India also permanently heads the regional group Middle East and South
Asia (MESA) within the board.
Even with all this involvement, India is considered off the mainstream
in the IAEA because of a quirk of circumstances. The IAEA was founded
in October 1956 to ‘accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic en-
ergy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world’ and to ‘ensure,
so far as it is able, that assistance provided by it or at its request or under
its supervision or control is not used in such a way as to further any mili-
tary purpose.’ India helped to shape these objectives and also participated
in the negotiations on the NPT, with a view to eliminating nuclear
weapons. But when the NPT turned out to be a discriminatory treaty,
which divided the world into nuclear haves and have-nots with varied
obligations and privileges, India had no choice but to keep out of it. It was
logical for the IAEA to become the agency responsible for the NPT
because of its mandate, but India never accepted that the IAEA would be
primarily a watchdog for non-proliferation. The other developing nations
and we give primacy to the promotional objectives of the IAEA, while the
nuclear weapon states and other developed nations see it as a regulatory
body. This divide is reflected in the term ‘balance’, a much interpreted,
much maligned and much misunderstood term in the context of the IAEA.
It has come to mean that the agency should give equal importance to the
three pillars on which it is built, namely nuclear power, safety and
non-proliferation. Treatises have been written as to how the balance should
be maintained, but its ambiguity leads to an endless debate when budgets
are discussed, programmes are prepared and the work of the agency is
evaluated. It is the quest for balance that determines our policy towards
the IAEA today.
My arrival in Vienna coincided with a change of guard at the helm of
affairs in the Indian Atomic Energy Commission. Dr Chidambaram, who
dominated the nuclear scene for many years, left his post as the chairman
and Dr Anil Kakodkar, a veteran of both the nuclear tests of 1974 and
1998, took over. Chidambaram continued as a Homi Bhabha Fellow in the
nuclear establishment and later became the principal scientific adviser to
the prime minister. Kakodkar, an extremely talented and experienced
scientist, who headed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, turned out to
be a skillful negotiator. Though less exuberant than Dr Chidambaram
206 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

and more reticent, Kakodkar’s advice was always clear and perceptive.
I had an excellent relationship with him throughout and our partnership
was fruitful.
The chairman of the board of governors is elected from among the gov-
ernors by rotation of the regional groups. The chairman plays an impor-
tant role in coordinating and directing the work of the board and thus the
agency itself. The secretariat, under the guidance of the director general,
prepares the documents for every meeting and the governors bring in their
national perspectives on them. Much of the debate is constructive, but
sharp differences are frequent and the documents are revised to bring in the
ideas on the basis of consensus. The chairman plays a role in shaping the
consensus and in the process brings in his personal views and skills. India
has been the chairman of the board twice, Ambassador Vishnu Trivedi first
and later Dr Chidambaram.
The director general, elected every four years, is the head of the
agency and, according to tradition in the agency, its moving spirit.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, an Egyptian lawyer, professor and UN civil
servant, had reached the last year of his first term when I arrived in Vienna.
There was no candidate against him and his election for a second term
was a foregone conclusion. This reflected his great popularity among the
developed and developing countries. His commitment to non-proliferation
as well as to the promotion of peaceful uses of nuclear energy gave him
great credibility. His courage of conviction and righteousness enabled him
to stand up to pressures from any quarters. Having served as the head of
the legal department and of the external relations department in the
agency, he had acquired considerable expertise that stood him in good
stead as the director general. It was during the Iraq crisis that he proved
his mettle beyond any doubt. He stuck to his position that he had no
evidence yet of Iraq having reactivated its nuclear programme since the
inspectors left in 1994 and that he needed time to come to a definite
conclusion on the issue. He did not lend any credence to the evidence
that Colin Powell gave to the Security Council about a deal with Niger
or about import of steel tubes. His position was vindicated by the fact
that the United States was not able to find a shred of evidence of nuclear
weapons activity even after they occupied Iraq and searched the length
and breadth of the country.
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 207

It was by accident that ElBaradei and I became members of the

Susanbrunn Golf Club in the outskirts of Vienna at the same time. He was
still a beginner, while I had played golf for a number of years. Once we
began playing golf together every weekend, I came to know him well and
we were able to exchange ideas on a range of issues in a relaxed and
cordial atmosphere. I did not have to ask for meetings with him even on
official matters as we could transact business on the golf course. The
number of Indian professionals in the IAEA rose to unprecedented levels
during my time because of his goodwill.
My first meeting with the director general for presentation of my
credentials as the governor for India as well as the permanent representa-
tive of India to the IAEA revealed that it was not just the position of India
as a non-signatory of the NPT that was causing concern, but our general
aloofness from some of the mechanisms of the IAEA. In our minds, several
activities of the IAEA militated against the total freedom we desired
in pursuing our nuclear option. One decision we had taken in the late
seventies was not to accept any assistance from the IAEA’s Technical
Cooperation Fund (TCF). This appeared contradictory as we were the
champions of the TCF right from the beginning and the TCF was the arm
of the IAEA which promoted peaceful uses of atomic energy in developing
countries. Right from the beginning, India’s standpoint was that as the TCF
was so small, it should be used for less-developed countries. But since the
fund is available for all developing countries without any other criteria,
China and Pakistan use the TCF to their advantage. Perhaps, our decision
was associated with our desire to be totally independent of external agen-
cies in our nuclear development. The provision in the Statute of the IAEA
that assistance provided by it should not be used for development of nuclear
weapons could have been used by other countries to criticise India in 1974
and 1998 if India was a recipient of TCF. Yet another reason could be the
apparent link between the TCF and the NPT. The contributions to the
TCF are linked to the commitment of the non-nuclear weapon states to ab-
jure nuclear weapons. India did not want to have anything to do with the
funds provided as a price for giving up the nuclear option.
India had also not signed some of the other conventions that were
considered important for the functioning of the IAEA. India did not sign
the conventions like the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear
208 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Material (CPPNM) because of the elements in it, which seemed to run

contrary to the nuclear option. We signed the CPPNM during my days in
Vienna, and I had the privilege to hand over the instrument of accession
to the director general. This enabled us to participate officially in the meet-
ings of the Conference of Parties to the convention, which met to amend
the convention to make it stronger. The Conference of Parties, however, did
not succeed in finalising the amendments to the convention. India had also
not ratified the Nuclear Safety Convention, though we had signed it.
Another issue was that India was not accepting safety-related inspec-
tions of our nuclear facilities. The IAEA kept pressing us to accept its
Operational Safety Review Teams, but we made no progress. I urged the
government to re-examine, in the light of our having acquired nuclear
weapons, whether we could take measures that would bring us closer to
the mainstream. Since some of the nuclear weapon states themselves had
signed the Additional Protocol to the NPT, we even considered whether we
could sign a similar protocol. But the general policy was to go slow and not
speed up matters that might bring us closer to the NPT regime. The allergy
to the NPT is so acute in India that no government wishes to appear to
accept it even indirectly. The rest of the world, however, considers the NPT
central to the safety of the world and is willing to do anything that would
strengthen the regime.
India has safeguards agreements with the IAEA to cover those facilities
that have nuclear materials of foreign origin. The NPT member states are
expected to have comprehensive safeguards agreement that will entitle
the IAEA to inspect any facility. The United States insisted in 1980
that no further fuel would be supplied to Tarapore unless we signed the
comprehensive safeguards agreement. India did not comply with the
demand. But if India ever chooses to reprocess the spent fuel in Tarapore,
the IAEA would be entitled to launch its inspection of the reprocessing.

I had expected that, given these special features of the Indian policy
towards the IAEA, we would be constantly under pressure. I was relieved
to find, however, that there was a certain understanding of our position
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 209

over the years and that other members sought to accommodate our point
of view rather than to embarrass us at every turn. The only other coun-
tries, which share our position, are Pakistan and Israel who have not signed
the NPT. There are, of course, nuances in their positions that make them
different at the same time. Pakistan, for example, maintains that it will sign
the NPT and the CTBT as soon as India signs them and escapes direct
pressure on itself. Israel does not sign the NPT not because it considers it
discriminatory, but because it considers itself threatened by the massive
conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction in its region. It has
already signed the CTBT. But we necessarily had to join with Pakistan and
Israel whenever issues relating to the NPT came to the fore. India took the
lead and Pakistan and Israel followed suit whenever the position of the
NPT countries had to be defended.
My first General Conference of the IAEA in September 2001 gave me a
real taste of the fight we had to mount in order to ensure that no decision,
prejudicial to our position, should be adopted. The meetings of the IAEA
Board throughout the year had not thrown up any challenge of this nature.
Our championship of nuclear power as the source of energy for the future
was not shared by a number of countries, but none questioned the freedom
of any country to develop its own strategy for development. The board was
able to reach consensus on most of the issues and the only issue that went
to the board unresolved was the choice of an external auditor, a post for
which the United Kingdom and India were candidates. We maintained our
candidature till the day of a possible vote, but withdrew on the basis of the
assessment made by me that we would lose if there was a vote. We indicated
that we were withdrawing for the sake of consensus, but we had calculated
that our withdrawal from the IAEA would brighten our chances at the
United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), where also
our comptroller and auditor general was a candidate. Although we had the
endorsement of the G-77 as the only candidate from the group, it was clear
that we were not likely to win. Among the arguments advanced at that time
was that a non-signatory to the NPT should not be allowed to audit the ac-
counts of the IAEA. The policy of the nuclear weapon states not to allow
India any leadership role in the IAEA became evident at that time.
The issue that dominated my first General Conference was the dan-
ger from nuclear terrorism as the conference took place soon after the
210 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

New York World Trade Centre bombing. In fact, we received news of the
bombing when a board meeting was in progress on September 11. Some
suggestion was made that the board should adjourn to follow develop-
ments, but the US delegate said that the board should continue its work
as though the bombing had not taken place. But neither he nor the oth-
ers realised at that time how profoundly the bombing was going to affect
our lives. At the General Conference, virtually every speaker mentioned
the New York bombing and its impact on the world. In the context of the
agency, it was suggested by many that steps should be taken to prevent
nuclear terrorism. New measures to ensure safety of nuclear material were
suggested, and the General Conference authorised the director general to
develop a programme for prevention of nuclear terrorism and to set up a
fund for the purpose. There was universal support for the idea, but we
voiced some concern that fears of nuclear terrorism should not be allowed
to inhibit the development of peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Terrorism
had become fashionable and every UN agency was keen to jump on to the
bandwagon. The IAEA proceeded to set up a voluntary fund and found
many contributors and readily began preventive measures. Security was
sought to be a new pillar of the agency, but eventually it was made part of
the safety division.
My work was cut out for me in the working group set up to consider
the EU resolution on ‘Strengthening of Safeguards’, an annual ritual in
which our non-NPT status gets highlighted. In 2000, an agreement had
been reached between the NPT and the non-NPT countries that all exhor-
tations regarding the application of comprehensive safeguards and the
Additional Protocol would be consistent with the respective undertakings
of the member states. This had enabled us, together with Pakistan and
Israel, to join in the consensus on that resolution. In 2001, however,
Egypt came up with a new formulation, which, though under the original
chapeau, sought to urge all states, which had not yet done so, to bring com-
prehensive safeguards agreement into force. We could interpret this not
to mean the non-NPT countries, but the same paragraph made a reference
to the need for universalisation of the safeguards system of the agency,
which seemed to contradict the chapeau. We spent several days trying to
remove the ambiguity in the paragraph, but the Egyptian Ambassador
Sehmi Shoukry, an intelligent but petulant diplomat, would not budge an
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 211

inch. He kept arguing that the chapeau took care of our concern, but could
not explain adequately why he needed the additional paragraph. He told
me in private that his target was not India, but Israel. But as we were in the
same category in Vienna, we could not urge Israel to do something that we
ourselves were not prepared to do. Pakistan agreed and we decided to vote
against the paragraph. One amusing incident made it clear that Pakistan
was blindly following India at the time of the vote. The Pakistani Ambas-
sador, Ali Sarwar Naqvi, who was fairly new, had understood that we were
abstaining rather than voting against the paragraph. When the negative
votes were invited, only India and Israel raised hands. Seeing the confu-
sion, I interrupted the voting process by raising a point of order, suggest-
ing that the president of the conference had not clearly indicated which
vote was being taken. This gave sufficient time for a colleague of mine to
dash to the Pakistani desk and convey our decision to vote against. An
exasperated president, the Finnish ambassador, was heard whispering
into the mike: ‘That is India letting Pakistan off the hook!’ We pretended
not to hear it.
Another battle we had to pre-empt was the effort by a group of coun-
tries, which had adopted guidelines for holding of Plutonium, to get the
General Conference to call upon other states to do likewise. By definition,
India was the only concerned state that was targeted and we decided to
nip the move in the bud. This we managed to do by a variety of methods
and the issue was postponed. The authors recognised that forcing the issue
was counterproductive. It came up again in 2002, but in a less virulent form
and it did not see the light of day.
An annual drill at the IAEA is the endless debate that takes place as
to how the decisions of the General Conference should be transmitted
to the General Assembly. Over the years, a pattern had developed by
which the board spent time picking and choosing the important
elements of the resolutions and decisions adopted just a week earlier.
In some cases, the board spent more time than the General Conference
to do the picking and choosing. The common-sense approach of
just forwarding the whole lot of decisions to the General Assembly
did not appeal to some countries. As a result, the board spent a long
time preparing a resolution on which we had to repeat our votes in the
General Assembly.
212 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

The belief that there was an understanding in the US administration

about India’s acquisition of nuclear weapons technology proved false in
Vienna in 2002. The United States made it clear that ‘1998 was neither for-
gotten nor forgiven’ when it was India’s turn to provide a chairman for the
IAEA Board. Our own internal dynamics were also partly responsible for
the denial of the chairmanship to us. Eight years ago, when it was the turn
of the MESA group to provide the chairman, the then Ambassador Kamal
Bakshi had secured the position for himself, but the government decided in
favour of Dr Chidambaram at the last minute. It was not logical to do that
as the ambassador was the governor and the chairmanship of the board was
essentially a political position, but it was meant to be an honour for one
of our legendary scientists. In 2002, even before the government made a
decision, interested parties spread news in Vienna that Dr Kakodkar, rather
than the ambassador, would be the Indian candidate. Dr Kakodkar took
the line that as on the last occasion it was the chairman of the Atomic
Energy Commission, who became the chairman, he was quite prepared to
take up the position again. This meant that I had to take up the case with
the government to see how the matter could be resolved.
In the meantime, I heard that the US ambassador had said that the
United States would not accept a nuclear scientist from India as the chair-
man, and since they were not sure that I would get it, they would rather
block India. I decided to get the right version from Ken Brill, the Ambas-
sador, whom I had known for some time. He was quite forthright in saying
that it was the considered decision of his government that, while they had
nothing against me, they would not like India to have any leadership role
in the IAEA because of 1998. I expressed surprise that even after the long
talks India and the United States had about the rationale of Indian nuclear
policy, the United States was not willing to accept India in a responsible
position in the IAEA. Brill said that nothing had changed as far as their
position on the tests was concerned. India should not have done it and it
was the US view that India’s new status would not be recognised. With the
additional complication about the Indian nominee for the post, I decided
to drop the whole proposal. Iran had also aspired to the post, but that was
a non-starter from the beginning.
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 213

As the only countries that qualified for the post of chairman were India,
Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Ambassador Nabila Almullah of Kuwait
became the natural choice and we backed her together with the rest of
the MESA group. Among those who were overjoyed by the choice was
Pakistan, which could not have even aspired to the post as it was out of the
board in 2003. Almullah had a long experience of the United Nations
and she turned out to be very convenient for the Americans when issues
such as Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Iran came up
in the board.
Almullah, as the chairman of the board, was not particularly helpful to
India. She tried to shield Pakistan in the context of its nuclear cooperation
with DPRK and I had to take exception to her attitude. On one occasion,
I had negotiated with her a text on the sources of supply to DPRK, an
indirect reference to Pakistan, but she departed from the text she had faxed
to me earlier, without consulting me. I spoke out in protest, but as she knew
that she was patently wrong, she did not challenge me. I had known her
from our days in New York together and we had a good personal equation,
but as a chairman, she favoured Pakistan whenever we had our differences.

The annual budget discussions were fairly smooth for several years as
there was an understanding that there would be no increase in the budget,
except for adjustment for inflation, what is known as the zero real growth
(ZRG). This was a discipline imposed on the whole UN system essentially
by the United States. From year to year, the IAEA prepared the budget on
this basis and only minor adjustments were possible in allocations. But this
did not mean that there was no increase in the expenditure incurred by
the IAEA. Sufficient funds were placed at the disposal of the IAEA from
time to time for safeguards by the donors as they considered it vital and
felt that there should be no slackness in safeguards operations Just before
the 2004-05 budget outline came out towards the end of 2002, Richard
Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, wrote a letter to some of the developed
countries, suggesting that there should be a substantial increase in the
allocation for safeguards in the 2004-05 budgets. The United States was
214 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

ready to depart from ZRG for the purpose and it urged the others to do the
same. In effect, the US proposal was to merge the extra budgetary resources
for safeguards with the regular budget so that all countries shared the
burden. This was attractive to most Western countries, but Japan and
Germany were not inclined to take over additional burdens. We took the
position that it was reasonable to strengthen safeguards, but it should be
accompanied by a proportionate increase in the TCF and the programmes
relating to nuclear power, technology, and so on. We argued that when the
targets for the TCF were negotiated, it was not known that there would be
an actual increase in the regular budget and, therefore, it would be reason-
able to increase the TCF also. The budget proposals took this view into
account and, in our first reaction, we urged that the move away from ZRG
after 15 years should be seen as an opportunity to remove some of the cob-
webs of the past and to modernise the entire budget system. We were able
to accomplish this to a great extent in the year-long negotiations. While the
budget for safeguards was increased, we secured increases for the other
programmes and also extracted a promise that there would be a linkage
between increases in the regular budget and the TCF. Japan and Germany
held back the agreement for a long time, but reluctantly joined the consen-
sus. A number of other concepts and practices were opened up for exami-
nation, even though no agreement could be reached on them immediately.
The September 2003 meeting of the board was historical in several re-
spects. The suspected clandestine nuclear activities of Iran had come to
the notice of the world through an Iranian dissident organisation active in
the United States. The alarm raised in the United States prompted Iran to
volunteer some information to the IAEA and invite the director general to
visit Iran for an exchange of views. After one or two postponements from
the Iranian side, the visit of the director general took place and his report
to the June 2003 board meeting was a mixed bag. He raised many unan-
swered questions about Iran’s nuclear programme, pointed out ‘failures’ on
the part of Iran to fulfil its obligations, and sought further cooperation from
Iran to enable him to clarify the unanswered questions. The board, at the
insistence of the United States, issued a presidential statement, urging
further cooperation and seeking a further report from the director general
by September. The September report turned out to be damaging to Iran as
it clearly showed that ‘something was rotten in the state of Denmark’. The
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 215

programme was large, much beyond the requirements of energy genera-

tion, the genesis and the current sate of research shrouded in mystery and,
most damaging of all, there was evidence of contamination, causing suspi-
cion that Iran had already enriched uranium. If it had not, then Iran had
imported contaminated equipment from abroad and it was obliged to reveal
the source of such equipment.
Although ElBaradei was clinically correct in his reporting, the United
States characterised the report as hazy and complex, which was seen as a
mild criticism of the director general. The United States lost no time in
concluding that Iran had not complied with its treaty obligations and in
demanding that the matter should be referred to the Security Council im-
mediately. The United States, however, relented, not in the least, because
the director general’s report did not warrant such an action at that stage.
But it remained stuck in the position that the board should list out all the
negative features in the report, set 31 October 2003 as the deadline for
Iran and IAEA to complete the verification process, and the November
board should reach definite conclusions on further action. Many efforts
were made to dilute the harshness of the draft resolution presented by
France and the United Kingdom at the behest of the United States, no-
tably by the newly formed Vienna chapter of the non-aligned movement,
but the end result was not substantially different from the original draft.
Iran tried all arrows in its diplomatic quiver. It negotiated with the spon-
sors of the draft, urged the non-aligned chapter to rise up in defence of a
fellow member, who was being targeted by the United States, and worked
with Abdul Minty of South Africa who made his own efforts to moderate
the text. It made several promises about future good behaviour, indicated
interest in signing the Additional Protocol as demanded by the United
States and lobbied hard against a resolution and a deadline. I operated
within the NAM and agreed to authorise its chairman, Malaysia, to pro-
mote amendments, which were acceptable to Iran. But when Iran suggested
that the NAM should table the amendments formally, I took the position
that we could not table amendments to the NPT-related issues and that
the amendments could be tabled only by the NPT member states. Our
position was well understood by Iran, but it was irritated by this and made
moves in Delhi to get us to join in tabling the amendments. Pressure
mounted on the government to make some pro-Iranian moves, but after
216 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

some initial confusion, the government backed my position. The United

States was glad that we did not table the NAM amendments, even though
our position was based on our own principled position. Abdul Minty was
under pressure to abandon his efforts and he withdrew his own draft on
the basis of a face-saving formula that the United Kingdom and France
would withdraw their own resolution. Canada, Australia and Japan tabled
a new resolution, which was not different from the UK-France draft as part
of a meaningless deal between South Africa and the United States. When
the sponsors declined to accept the NAM amendments, Iran threatened to
move amendments, but realised that there would be no negative votes on
the draft. Not even Malaysia and Cuba were willing to vote against the
draft. Iran then took the prudent line that it would allow the draft to be
adopted without an amendment, but it would reject and walk out of the
board meeting. Ambassador Ali Salehi, Iran’s permanent representative to
the IAEA and its governor, a US-educated scientist, blew hot and cold, at
times rejecting the demand and at times promising to comply and walked
out without his characteristic smile disappearing altogether! Salehi was
under pressure from the fanatics and the liberals throughout the exercise.
He told me once that the Americans considered him a mullah and the mul-
lahs considered him a CIA agent.
It was clear in September that Iran had adopted a policy of ambivalence
in its nuclear policy. It had learnt a lesson from the experience of Iraq and
DPRK, and perhaps of India and Pakistan that the Americans would be
deterred from aggression only if it possessed at least a dubious nuclear
weapons status. The United States went into Iraq only after making sure
that they had nothing to inflict damage on the United States. In the case
of others, the United States had learnt to live with the reality. Iranian
flirtation with nuclear weapons capability was a reality for the world to
live with.
My last General Conference as a governor of the IAEA in 2003 was
largely uneventful as there were no new issues to resolve. The lengthy
discussions on the budget for 2004 and 2005 had dealt with a number of
issues, particularly the perennial debate about balance. The General
Conference merely rubber stamped the decisions of the board. Apart from
the work of my own delegation, I had to chair the most contentious work-
ing group on transport safety. As India is neither a ‘shipping state’ of nuclear
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 217

material nor a ‘coastal state’, which is concerned about passage of nuclear

material near its shores, I had taken no interest in this working group.
I had heard horror stories of night meetings and exchange of angry words in
this working group during the previous General Conferences. Ambassador
Max Hughes of Australia chaired the group as long as he was in Vienna
and he had even returned to chair a special conference on the question of
safety of transport of nuclear materials. The search of the shipping states
and coastal states for an impartial and efficient chairman led them to me
and I accepted the post even though I knew very little of the issues in-
volved. I discovered soon enough after the briefing and one session of the
group that what mattered was not the issue at hand, but experience of
drafting the UN documents. Once I identified the differing perceptions of
two distinct groups of countries, it was a matter of finding the right words
for a balanced resolution. As I enjoyed the confidence of both the groups,
I was able to make suggestions that found ready acceptance in both the
groups. Problems arose as the conclusions of the conference were vaguely
worded in order to obtain consensus, and it presented a wide variety of
formulations each side could choose to suit its point of view. Merging these
formulations without contradictions in the final product was the challenge
and once I accomplished it, applause came from both sides. I was relieved
and later overjoyed when both the coastal states and the shipping states
expressed satisfaction over the outcome I had helped to construct. The UK
ambassador attributed the success of the working group to the chairman’s
‘verbal ingenuity, peerless humour and wisdom’.
Our annual preoccupation with the resolution on ‘strengthening of
safeguards’ continued. The new Egyptian Ambassador Ramzy Ezzeldin
Ramzy, who was with me in New York in the early eighties, signaled to me
early enough that he was not in favour of any changes in the text. He would
prefer to get three negative votes rather than change the text for the sake
of consensus, he said. This would have settled matters, but Israel, which
had a hard line on this resolution in the previous years, wanted to signal its
own flexibility to the EU and others. Perhaps, Israel wanted a unanimous
resolution on safeguards because of its possible relevance to Iran. More-
over, it had sensed that the Arabs might stage an offensive against Israel in
the General Conference on account of the disruption of the peace process.
Israel needed the backing of the EU in that eventuality and, therefore,
218 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

indicated that a minor, inconsequential change would get India, Pakistan

and Israel on board. In the mistaken impression that Israel was speaking for
the three non-NPT countries, the EU announced a cosmetic change. Iron-
ically, those who supported the change (removal of ‘all’) explained that the
change did not make any difference to the resolution either grammatically
or politically. When the time came to reject the amendment as inconse-
quential, I said: ‘We had looked at the change positively as we felt that it
changed the universality of the appeal to sign comprehensive safeguards.
But the consensus in the group is clear that it makes no difference to the
resolution. In other words, the paragraph is the same as last year. If it is last
year’s text, you will get from India our last year’s vote.’ Then I proceeded
to propose the minimum change necessary to make the resolution accept-
able, knowing well that it will not be acceptable. The delegate of the
Netherlands, the only one to respond, tried to pick holes in my argument
by asking how the contradiction between the chapeau and the operative
paragraph 3 could be resolved by making the request to the concerned
states. There was appreciative laughter in the room when I said that two
negatives made a positive to make the resolution acceptable to us!

The general acceptance of the fact that India, Pakistan and Israel have not
signed the NPT and that they are not likely to sign it in the future, I have
observed, is positive from our point of view. But some countries do not want
the world community to be complacent about the situation. Nor does the
secretary general of the United Nations wish to forget it. At the 2003
General Conference, the first salvo on this was fired by the secretary
general of the United Nations through his message read out by the newly
appointed under secretary general for Disarmament Affairs, Nobuyasu Abe.
Abe was the Japanese PR in Vienna till 2001. The message expressed the
hope that all countries, including those in the Middle East and South Asia,
would accept full-scope safeguards. When I ran into Abe the same evening
at a French reception, I said, after warmly congratulating him on his
appointment, that I was about to take the floor to protest, but I refrained
from doing so as the message was from the secretary general and that he,
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 219

an old friend, was reading it. He got the message loud and clear, but tried
to explain it away, as it was the message of the secretary general and that
he was only responsible for the reading of it! He subsequently reported my
conversation to the director general, and the director general told me that
he had no hand in the drafting of it. He told me also that there was no
point in flogging a dead horse. The whole world knew the reality of the
situation, he said.
Ambassador Ingrid Hall of Canada went beyond the normal formula-
tions on the need for universalisation of the NPT when she asserted that
signing of the NPT was a prerequisite for full membership of the interna-
tional community. Was she declaring India, Pakistan and Israel as pariah
states? I asked her that question directly and made no secret of our indig-
nation. She reacted coolly and said that she had expected my reaction and
she stood by every word that she spoke. Ingrid Hall was the officer respon-
sible for non-proliferation in the Canadian foreign office during our tests in
1998, and she had made some trips to India at that time to discuss the mat-
ter with Indian officials. She had told me that she was not received very
well in India! Naturally, Canadian protestations cannot be taken seriously
when there is no doubt that Canada is a surrogate nuclear weapons state,
not only because it is under a US nuclear umbrella, but also that it has a
certain scientific role in the development of nuclear technology in the
United States.
Arabs cannot do without some drama, even if its outcome is predeter-
mined to be a failure. The Arabs decided to make an effort to improve
upon the deal, which was carefully crafted 13 years ago, by which an Arab
resolution on a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East is adopted
without a vote in exchange for the Arabs not pressing a resolution on
Israeli nuclear threat. Israel and its supporters were equally determined not
to allow any movement, not even an inch. The result was an extension of
the conference by a few hours till the Arabs realised that they could not
gain anything by the exercise. Israel was quite ready to deal with the votes
on both the resolutions or even get a no-action motion adopted to quash
the whole move. We had voted for the controversial resolution in 1991,
but knew we could not repeat the performance in 2003 and that too just
after the first visit to India by an Israeli prime minister. We were quite re-
lieved that no vote became necessary.
220 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Soon after the General Conference, the board met to elect its new
chairman, Ambassador Antonio Nunez of Spain, a charming diplomat who
had co-chaired the working group on the budget. Spain was slated to leave
the board this year and the German ambassador was all set to become the
chairman, but the changed alliance of the United States in Europe follow-
ing the Iraq war ensured that Germany was sidelined and Spain was
brought in with some effort. The personality of the Spanish ambassador
being more acceptable than the German helped the process all around.
The new chairman of the board proved his mettle when he managed to
pilot the annual General Assembly resolution without much ado. After
consulting key countries, he submitted a draft that was generally acceptable
except for a Western slant he introduced in a paragraph on the different
activities of the IAEA. The draft referred to the IAEA’s role in develop-
ment of nuclear power and technical cooperation first and then charac-
terised its role in safety, verification and security as ‘indispensable’. But he
readily agreed to my suggestion that the adjective should qualify all the
activities and bring all of them on par as in the Statute of the IAEA. The
change satisfied many, but the ambassador of the Republic of Korea, with
his obsession with the ratification of the amendment to Article VI, tried to
include a reference to the concerned decision of the General Conference
in the resolution. A chorus of protests from others changed his mind for
him, but he still sounded as though his delegation might try to reopen the
issue in New York.
An amendment to Article VI, adopted by the General Conference in
1999, sought to expand the strength of the board from the present 35 to 43.
The amendment can come into force only if 91 members of the IAEA rat-
ify it. Moreover, the new members will have to be approved by 90 per cent
of the members of the board and the General Conference. The ratification
of the amendment has been politicised as the amendment would mean that
Israel would also be entitled to join the board through the MESA group.
Pakistan would get a permanent position on the board if the amendment
were to come into force. The Republic of Korea (ROK) would also have a
chance to be a designated member. But the other members, particularly
the Arabs, do not share ROK’s enthusiasm. The ROK’s insistence on call-
ing on countries to ratify the amendment, therefore, is seen as insensitive-
ness to Arab sentiments. We ourselves are not enthusiastic about the
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 221

amendment for obvious reasons. On the whole, the ratification of the

amendment to Article VI must await a change in international relations.

Iran loomed large in the board in November 2003, more than ever before.
Armed with the September resolution of the board, the IAEA and several
member states bombarded the Iranians with demands of all kinds arising
out of this resolution. Iran appeared to be vacillating, but the clear impres-
sion was that, even though Tehran had rejected the board resolution, it
was inclined to follow it in spirit. The IAEA began to sense a change in
Iran’s responses, and a new openness and readiness to provide access came
to light. The Europeans, particularly the United Kingdom, France and
Germany, with the leverage they have with the Iranians began a dialogue
with Iran, independent of the United States, but with their concurrence.
The Europeans held the key to the resolution of the Iran issue as Iran was
keen to have fuel and other supplies from Europe in order to maintain their
nuclear programme. An agreement reached between Iran and the EU-3, as
they came to be known, was based on the September resolution of the
board. In return for the implementation of a resolution they had rejected,
the Iranians secured an assurance from the EU-3 that they would prevent
reporting of the Iranian failures to the Security Council by refraining from
determining that Iran was in non-compliance of the safeguards agreement.
When the report of the director general appeared, enumerating the many
failures of Iran, including non-reporting of enrichment of uranium, separa-
tion of plutonium, and reprocessing of spent fuel, the US reaction was
extremely strong. The United States was of the view that Iran was in non-
compliance and that its past deeds should be reported to the Security
Council at least for information. Even though the director general indi-
cated that there was no evidence yet of a nuclear weapons programme in
Iran, he said that he needed a robust inspection mechanism to be in place
for some time before he could say that the Iranian programme was meant
exclusively for peaceful purposes. The director general himself left the non-
compliance option open by referring to Iran’s breach of obligations to com-
ply with the provisions of the safeguards agreement. But he also stated that
222 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

there was no evidence as yet that Iran had a weapons programme and that
he would need time, the continued full cooperation of Iran and a robust in-
spection mechanism in place to determine finally that the programme was
meant exclusively for peaceful purposes.
The board witnessed an unusual situation when the EU and the United
States were in opposite camps on the resolution on Iran. The EU found
common cause with the non-aligned chapter in Vienna, which tradition-
ally took a pro-Iranian position. But even the NAM was surprised to see the
first draft that the EU-3 circulated. It was bland, it was vague and it seemed
to let Iran off the hook. But the NAM response was to dilute it further at
the instance of Iran. I realised that this was a totally wasteful exercise as it
was unrealistic to expect that the United States would sit idle when its
position was so directly challenged. As it happened, President George W. Bush
was on a visit to London and there was no question that the United
Kingdom would move contrary to the US interests. Sure enough, the
second draft that came from the P-3 was much stronger. It contained the
conclusion that Iran had indeed breached its obligation to comply with the
provisions of the safeguards agreement. It strongly deplored Iran’s failures
and issued a strong warning that if further failures came to light, the
matter would be dealt with in accordance with the Statute of the IAEA. I
thought that these would be the basic elements necessary for the United
States to join the consensus, but felt that Iran would push the NAM to
amend the text. I got together with South Africa and Egypt to see whether
we could work with Iran to retain the main elements of the new draft. We
agreed to encourage Iran to accept some of the elements, but Iran surprised
us by announcing that it had accepted the new text. Quite obviously, the
negotiations in Brussels and Teheran had borne fruit. We knew that real
action was not in Vienna.
The United States insisted on further changes, this time on ‘the trigger
mechanism’, that is the requirements for the matter to be referred to the
Security Council. The United States had repeatedly stated that it was
not their intention to prompt the Security Council to take any action, but
to keep it informed of the present situation. As long as the resolution con-
tained a good ‘trigger mechanism’ for the future, the United States was will-
ing to drop its insistence on referring the matter to the Security Council.
The problem with the second draft was that it contained a statement that
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 223

the matter would remain within the Security Council as long as Iran con-
tinued its cooperation. The magic was in dropping this and in adding that
further revelations of failures, whether old or new, would trigger action.
Once this change was made, it was easy sailing for the resolution and it was
adopted without a vote.
Everyone claimed victory. The United States got the board to strongly
deplore Iran’s failures and to serve notice that it would act in accordance
with the statute if further failures came to light. The EU-3 kept the prom-
ise, in letter, if not in spirit, that they would refrain from establishing ‘non-
compliance’ and referring the matter to the Security Council. The NAM
was happy that the final resolution had the implicit acquiescence of Iran.
Iran itself was pleased, but appeared peeved by the strong criticism by coun-
tries like Australia, Canada and Japan. We made the point that the resolu-
tion reflected our position that the IAEA and Iran should continue the
good work till the matter was satisfactorily resolved. The director general
was also pleased that the board took positive action on his report and set
March as the deadline for a final report. He had felt that a weak resolution
like the one in the first draft would not do justice to the agency or the NPT.
The board approved the signing by Iran of an Additional Protocol, as
agreed. This was a mere formality, but it provided some drama because Iran
asked for a postponement of the consideration of this item when it felt that
EU-3 were under pressure from the United States to abandon their mod-
erate position. This angered many, as there was really no connection be-
tween the resolution and Iran’s agreement to sign the Additional Protocol.
After a day of suspense, Iran agreed not to insist on resolving the main issue
before the board considered the Additional Protocol. Iran’s hint that it can
also be difficult if the EU-3 broke their promise was not lost on the board.
The stage was set for the last leg of the Iran saga in March 2004.

Then came the surprise announcement by the United States and the
United Kingdom that Libya had agreed to destroy its nuclear capability after
nine months of negotiations. Nobody was more surprised than the IAEA
that Libya had been putting together designs, material and equipment for
224 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

acquiring weapons capability. ElBaradei was all set to go to India for a visit,
combined with a holiday in Kerala and Goa. I was to go with him on 20
December 2003 to Delhi, but the US and the British PRs broke the news
about Libya to him on 19 December and informed him that a Libyan envoy
would visit him the next day to brief him on the historic agreement. The
director general told me that he would still go to India on 21 December
and return in two days. I learnt when I reached Delhi that he had post-
poned the visit altogether. Instead, he went to Libya, where Gaddafi him-
self told him about his efforts over the years to acquire nuclear capability
and his recent decision to dismantle it altogether in return for a good
conduct certificate from the West. Having settled the Lockerbie case and
the French case, Gaddafi had decided to get all sanctions against Libya
removed and the nuclear issue stood in the way. The director general sent
a team to examine the material and equipment and came to the conclusion
that the Libyan programme was at a ‘nascent’ stage, but agreed to verify the
removal or elimination of the material. The United States was not too
pleased that he characterised the Libyan programme as not too significant.
Ken Brill, the US PR, told me that the director general did not know
enough to reach this conclusion.
The Libyan episode served to undermine the credibility of the NPT as
well as the IAEA. A system of safeguards based on reporting of activities by
member states by their own volition could not be relied upon. Libya had
reported nothing and the IAEA, therefore, knew nothing. Many recalled
that even in the case of Iran, it was some dissident Iranians who had
discovered the massive programme that Iran had launched. The United
States involved the IAEA in the Libyan episode for the sake of form, but
wanted to keep the involvement to the minimum. The director general
made no secret of his frustration and, as if to appease him, John Bolton,
the US under secretary for disarmament, and his British counterpart made
a brief visit to Vienna to reach an agreement that the United States would
destroy or remove the Libyan material and that the IAEA would verify the
action. Subsequently, when the White House announced the conclusion of
the Libyan operation, the IAEA was not even mentioned. The IAEA issued
its own report that the IAEA inspectors had sealed the equipment
before the material was removed and that the IAEA would have access to
it whenever necessary.
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 225

The old fears of the ‘Islamic Bomb’, with Pakistan at the centre of re-
lated research revived with the discovery of Pakistani hand in Iran and
Libya. Pakistan moved from an outright denial to an acknowledgement
that individual scientists might have parted with designs and technology
for personal gains. A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani bomb and a
national hero for many years, was dismissed and kept under house arrest,
as though an individual could pass on nuclear secrets to several countries
without the knowledge of the military government. ElBaradei himself said
in Davos in January 2004 that the ‘black market’ in nuclear design and
technology had emerged as a new challenge, giving credibility to the
theory that Pakistani government itself was not involved. He claimed that
scientists from other countries, including Malaysia and Germany, might
have been involved. The US alliance with Pakistan to fight terror was the
only reason that the United States did not drag Pakistan on the floor of
the IAEA Board as a criminal proliferator.
The A. Q. Khan story became curiouser when he made a public confes-
sion on Pakistan television that his personal greed was the reason for his
sharing nuclear secrets with Iran, Libya and North Korea. President
Musharraf announced that he had pardoned Khan for his transgressions in
view of the fact that Khan was a national icon for what he had done for the
development of Pakistan’s nuclear capability. He even allowed Khan to
enjoy the wages of his sin. But President Bush himself told the world: ‘the
picture of the Khan network was pieced together over several years by
American and British intelligence officers.’ He went on to suggest several
measures to be put in place in order to counter the kind of network that
Khan and his associates had operated. As for Pakistan’s role in the sordid
drama, President Bush was happy that ‘President Musharraf has promised
to share all the information he learns about the Khan network, and has
assured us that his country will never again be a source of proliferation.’ It
is quite possible that the nuclear assets of Pakistan are now under lock
and key with US supervision. The seven proposals outlined by Bush were
(1) strengthening of the Proliferation Security Initiative that involved
physical interdiction of contraband material, (2) adoption of measures by the
UN Security Council to criminalise proliferation, (3) disposal of Cold War
weapons, (4) supply of fuel to nuclear reactors in countries that renounce
enrichment and reprocessing, (5) restriction of supply of nuclear equipment
226 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

only to those countries which have signed the Additional Protocol, (6) setting
up of a committee of the IAEA Board to deal with safeguards and verifi-
cation and (7) suspension of states under investigation for proliferation
violation from the IAEA Board. Interestingly, as the New York Times
pointed out quickly, Bush did not call for universalisation of the NPT.
Parallel proposals made by ElBaradei, written a week earlier but pub-
lished after the Bush speech, seemed to echo the US sentiments, but
Elbaradei was more specific about a treaty-based export control system
rather than a voluntary one. He also pointed to the possibility of tough-
ening the NPT regime.
The Ides of March 2004 were critical for Iran and Libya as the board
took up the reports on them. The Libya report was a fait accompli for the
board. The beginning of the Libyan saga sounded like a crime thriller when
the British PR Peter Jenkins told a group that one of the sons of Gaddafi
surfaced in London and contacted the head of the British Intelligence to
say that he had news for Prime Minister Tony Blair. Soon enough, Blair was
on a plane to Washington, giving the impression that he was consulting
President Bush on Iraq. The decision to hold secret discussions with Libya
came out of that meeting in Washington and only a handful of people in the
United States, the United Kingdom and Libya were aware of the negotia-
tions. By the time the story broke in Vienna, the minutest details of the
operation were already worked out and what was left for the IAEA was
only to bless what was already agreed between the three countries. The
director general’s report made it appear as though Libya announced its
decision out of the blue and the IAEA did its duty afterwards, but the whole
world knew the sequence of events.
The finding of the IAEA was that Libya, starting from the early eighties
and continuing until the end of 2003, had imported nuclear material
and conducted a wide variety of nuclear activities, which it had failed to
report to the agency as required under safeguards agreement. It went on to
enumerate a number of specific failures, for each of which Libya had under-
taken remedial action or had agreed to do so. Libya’s policy of full trans-
parency contrasted with the policy of Iran to reveal only the minimum
necessary information on its own programme. The report also mentioned
the ‘network’ of suppliers of sensitive nuclear material that had helped
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 227

Libya to build up an impressive base to manufacture nuclear weapons and

sought the assistance of the international community to expose the
network. No country was mentioned even though ‘the tip of the iceberg’
was already spotted in Pakistan.
More than anything else, the board was embarrassed by the Libya
report. There was nothing that the board could do except to approve what
the Libyans had cooked up with the United States and the United King-
dom. Initially it appeared as though there were differences between Libya
and the other two on the question of a report from the board to the Secu-
rity Council that Libya was, in fact, in breach of the obligations under the
safeguards agreement over an extended period of time. At a briefing given
to the ambassadors of the member states of the board in Tripoli, Libyan
authorities sought help to ensure that the board took no decision to report
Libya to the Security Council. This was strange in itself, as Libya had
already written to the Security Council in December 2003 that it had
abandoned the path of acquiring nuclear weapons. Moreover, Libya had
nothing to gain by not reporting to the Security Council, if it really had a
change of heart. When the matter came to the NAM chapter, we agreed
to ask that the matter should remain within the ambit of the board in
response to the Libyan request in Tripoli. But we heard from the United
Kingdom that, at a high-level meeting in London, Libya had agreed to a
draft resolution that included a reference to the Security Council ‘for
purposes of information only’.
The Libya UK US draft resolution showered praise on Libya for its
exemplary step in surrendering its nuclear wealth to the United States
and the United Kingdom, but at the same time, it established that Libya
was in violation of its obligations and proposed a report to the Security
Council. Most members of the board were uncomfortable with one part
of the draft or another, but as it was presented as an agreed draft from the
countries involved, it was approved with minor modifications to the text.
The most important concern articulated, among others, by China and
India was that the Libyan formula went against the principle of multilat-
eral verification. The other was the implication that as long as a country
rolled up and eliminated its nuclear capability, its past actions would be
forgotten. Iran felt uncomfortable as it appeared as though the way for it
228 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

would be to ‘do a Libya’ to escape censure. Egypt wanted to talk of the

Libyan action as having contributed to the nuclear-weapon-free zones in
Africa and the Middle East. The sponsors questioned whether Libya was
really a part of the Middle East, but acquiesced in the amendment. The
Libyan case was a fait accompli, and the board decision was meant only
to record the case for posterity. The role of the IAEA was more in form
than in substance.
The Iran saga continued through the March and June 2004 meetings.
As Iran began answering questions about its nuclear programme, more
and more issues surfaced and found their way into the director general’s
report. Iran’s tactic was to give the barest minimum of information to the
questions raised by the agency, but inevitably certain leads were picked up
by the agency, which raised more questions. The new answers seemed to
contradict the information provided earlier, but Iran appeared uncon-
cerned that it had given partial or false information in the first instance.
The two issues that remained unresolved were the source of traces of
highly enriched uranium found in a laboratory and the reason for devel-
oping P2 centrifuges, which were unnecessary for power production.
The wider question of the source of supply of nuclear material to DPRK,
Iran and Libya also continued to be investigated. Iran’s answers to these
questions remained incomplete as the June Board adopted yet another
resolution, calling for greater cooperation on the part of Iran with the
agency to resolve the remaining issues. The director general’s report to
the June Board had made it clear that the matter could not be closed
unless the remaining questions were answered and, therefore, none other
than Iran favoured closing of the matter. The United States joined the EU
in putting forward a mild resolution and the NAM countries diluted it
further to reach a consensus. With the situation in Iraq deteriorating, the
United States thought it prudent not to open another front in the
Middle East. The Iranian capacity to muddle up the situation in Iraq must
have been a factor in their calculation.
As my term as the governor for India drew to a close, I had intended
to slow down my pace, but the last two months became hectic as the
chairman of the board asked me to chair an important working group on tech-
nical cooperation. Over the years, the agency had been charging 8 per cent
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 229

of the cost of the projects executed under the Technical Cooperation

Programme from the recipient states as assessed programme costs (APs).
But during the budget discussions in 2003, when an additional allocation
was made for safeguards, the APC was suspended temporarily as a measure
of reducing the burden of developing countries on the understanding that
the matter would be considered by the June 2004 Board with a view to
reinstating, abolishing or finding an alternate mechanism for it. My work-
ing group was entrusted with the task of formulating a recommendation
for the board on the APC. The secretariat had formulated a number of
options, and after examining them, we were supposed to come up with a
concrete formula. The donors were adamant about reinstating the APC
and the recipient states were equally firm about abolishing it. I managed to
work out a compromise by which the payment was reduced to 5 per cent.
In return, the recipients agreed to pay the charges in advance of the
execution of the projects. Many weeks of negotiations were necessary to
accomplish this, as the donors wanted the regional projects to be covered
and the recipients wanted their ‘in kind’ contributions to be counted
against their share. The debate was essentially about the principle of cost
sharing, which was conceded by all. But the arrangements were an interim
measure to be reviewed in 2006.
Many characterised the agreement I worked out as my legacy, but I
preferred it to be called an uneasy compromise. India’s legacy, I said, to the
IAEA was old and rich, and I was but a link in the long chain. I referred to
the Ramayana and the Mahabharata panel in the boardroom and the bust
of Homi Bhabha outside as the symbols of that rich Indian legacy. I said
that the legacy would continue.

Ambassadors to the UN offices in Vienna must be the embodiments of all

virtues, as the United Nations’ efforts to fight the evils of the world are
concentrated in Vienna: clandestine nuclear activities, narcotic drugs and
crimes, including terrorism. Then there is the UNIDO that promotes
industrial development in developing countries. The UN Office on Drugs
230 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

and Crime (UNODC), headed by an under secretary general, services the

two Commissions on Drugs and Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.
The programmes of the UNODC are mainly funded by voluntary contribu-
tions and, therefore, are donor driven in most part, even though the execu-
tive director too has a role to play in determining the work programme. The
UNODC has an office in India, but as we do not seek project assistance from
donors, there are no major projects in India. But our involvement in the
UNODC in Vienna is considerable in terms of developing the appropriate
strategies for dealing with drugs and crime.
Whispers about mismanagement and corruption in the UNODC under
the Executive Director Arlachi, an Italian professor and politician, greeted
me on my arrival in Vienna. His German deputy, who was fired by Arlachi,
came out with a series of revelations that found their way into the European
press. Arlachi did not find much support from the ambassadors, as he had
not bothered to cultivate them, but some of us had an open mind and
urged restraint while the secretary general went into the allegations. The
investigation by the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the UN
Ombudsman, did not back the corruption theory, but pointed out instances
of wasteful expenditure such as the hiring of a marine adventurer who
sailed around the world with a message against drugs and crime. The
expenditure on the project was said to be about a million dollars. A
decision was taken to terminate Arlachi’s contract, but he carried on for
another year, while his successor, Antonio Costa, another Italian, this time
a banker, was being selected. Costa came with a good reputation and
goodwill and went about reforming the UNODC.
After my first intervention about the reform, in which I suggested a
committee of permanent representatives to advise him on policy, Costa
wrote to me, seeking my help in setting up an advisory board. But the
donors, who had a cozy relationship with the executive director, were not
particularly enthusiastic and Costa himself was quick to abandon the idea.
Costa bristled with ideas, but did not seem to have a system of follow-up,
a tragic flaw in his management style.
The finance and home ministries, which dealt with the Commissions on
Drugs and Crime Prevention, respectively, sent large delegations to the
sessions of the commissions, but left it to us in the mission to handle them.
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 231

On the drugs front, our main concern was the falling market for legally
cultivated opium. Together with Turkey, we worked for a consensus on the
need to lift opium stocks from the legal producers every year. New producers
like Australia and the United Kingdom also claimed a share of the market.
Iran wanted to sell the stocks that they had seized at airports. But the
international community largely met our concerns, even though our
primitive methods of opium harvesting and the potential for diversion into
the illegal market caused some complications.
The only UN institution in existence before 11 September 2001 to
tackle terrorism, the Terrorism Prevention Branch (TPB), was located in
Vienna as part of the UNODC. Once the Security Council established the
Counter Terrorism Committee (CTC), the TPB became an adjunct of the
CTC. Pakistan and Iran, which did not like the TPB because of a database
it created of terrorist organisations, including some from Iran and Pakistan,
raised the issue of duplication and tried to destroy it. We managed to keep
the TPB alive with additional resources, but its role got confined to tech-
nical assistance as a result of the turf war between New York and Vienna.
Intergovernmental negotiations on a UN Convention Against Corrup-
tion kept us busy for two years, but the speed with which it was negotiated
and adopted was a record of sorts. I chaired the Open-ended Expert Group
to establish the parameters of the negotiations and completed its work
effortlessly. The work of the expert group and the recent experience in
Vienna of the negotiations on the Transnational Organized Crime speeded
up the process of negotiations on the convention. The most important
chapter in the Convention on ‘Return of Assets’ was to be negotiated under
the chairmanship of Switzerland, but the perception of Switzerland as a
haven for illegal assets was a sure recipe for disaster. Switzerland carried no
credibility. The chairman, the ambassador of Colombia, came to me rather
sheepishly and asked whether I could step in as the chairman of the group.
I myself found the going tough, as there was really no meeting ground
between the developed and the developing countries. The key to the
solution was found when the developed countries indicated that certain
categories of illegal assets could be returned without much trouble. I
grasped the opportunity and slowly proceeded to expand the categories and
eventually shaped a compromise that was accepted. The Arabs challenged
232 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

the formulation in the Plenary, but even they were convinced after a
full day of discussions that the package could not be improved. The
Convention Against Corruption was adopted in Merida, Mexico, where
India praised the convention, but did not sign it.
The UNIDO was on the verge of demise when an independent commis-
sion recommended its abolition in the early nineties. Its budget got slashed
when the United States, Australia and Canada left the organisation. But a
young and energetic former Minister of Argentina, Carlos Magarinos,
breathed some new life into it when he took over as the director general.
I arrived in Vienna on the eve of the end of his first term and he was a
candidate for a second term. Even though an African candidate challenged
him, I sensed that he had a good chance of winning. His record on India
was also exceptionally good. My strong support for him led to a virtual
consensus in the Asian group in the Industrial Development Board, and
Magarinos won his second term. I worked with him on several issues and
helped him to register many successes in the reform of the UNIDO. He
reciprocated my support in several ways, particularly in developing a
good country programme for India. I accompanied him to Kerala to
participate in a ceremony to mark the inauguration of a centre to
develop small hydel projects. His fiancée, Belen, accompanied him on
this trip and returned pregnant. Magarinos had something to treasure
from his trip to Kerala. Magarinos was a wheeler-dealer in many ways
and played games with the secretariat as well as members, but his
contribution to the UNIDO was substantial.
We felt that, as the UNIDO had regained its role and reputation, the
time had come to try to get the United States and others back into
it. We moved a resolution in the board to initiate discussions with non-
members, including former members. The concerned countries showed
some receptivity to this initiative. I joined the Italian PR on a mission to
the United States to discuss the possibilities. The United States ruled out
its return to the UNIDO in the short term, but agreed to work with it on
projects, particularly in post-conflict situations. Interestingly, one argument
we heard on the Hill against the UNIDO was that it might create compe-
tition for the US goods in the developing countries. Nothing could be more
far-fetched than this. How can a small investment in technology transfer
 QUEST FOR BALANCE 233

in the developing countries challenge the massive industrial machinery of

the United States? I felt that it was necessary to remove such misgivings
by lobbying public opinion within the United States. It cannot remain for
long outside a UN agency that is considered essential for the industrial
development of developing countries.

My tenure in Vienna came to an end, together with my career in the Indian

Foreign Service, on 30 June 2004. From nuclear issues to drugs and crime,
there were a variety of issues to deal with and I immersed myself in them
with gusto. Many of these issues did not interest the Ministry of External
Affairs, as they belonged to the other ministries and departments. But in
Vienna itself, there was recognition of my contribution and India became
a crucial delegation. Every agency in Vienna looked up to us for leadership
and banked on us to find solutions to intricate problems. I had what I called
a ‘dream team’ in the embassy. Hamid Ali Rao, the DCM, with whom I had
worked before, kept a low profile, but gave me a solid support. Suchitra
Durai, whose marriage to another colleague R. Swaminathan delighted all
of us, had the right mix of intelligence and enthusiasm. Hemant Karkare
was competent and loyal. Ramesh Deshpande of the Department of Atomic
Energy was active and helpful. The head of chancery, young Tanmaya Lal,
was shy, but solid. The Vienna-based staff, most of them Keralites, proved
to be the backbone of the embassy. The mission was free of the petty squab-
bles and problems that normally plague similar establishments. The mis-
sion I inherited had reminded me, as I said in a letter to Foreign Secretary
Lalit Mansingh, of the Fifth Act of a Shakespearean tragedy, but, with a
swift clean-up and deft handling, the place was set right.
The Vienna Chancery was a blot on an elegant city and a disgrace to
India. Having been neglected for many years, it had become an eyesore.
Mercifully, the ministry let my office move out to new premises, but it took
me my full term and more to complete the renovation work. I had planned
to complete it before leaving, but I barely managed to start the actual work.
It was a classic case of procedural delays, as no one questioned the need to
234 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

undertake the work and the funds were approved fairly early. Considering
the kind of questions asked and the conditions imposed, it is a wonder that
we were able to complete the renovation process even in three years. I did
not move to the new premises, but I was glad to bequeath a new office to
my successor as my legacy.
 Chapter Six
Back to the Backwaters

We had decided many years ago that we would return to Kerala after my
retirement from service, like some of my senior colleagues, K. P. S. Menon
and Thomas Abraham, did. I saw no reason to live in Delhi without any
official position, particularly, since Kerala offered a quieter, greener setting,
with a more moderate climate. By the time we were ready to come home,
Kerala had become acknowledged as ‘God’s Own Country’, because of its
scenic beauty and level of social and cultural development. It is difficult
for foreign service officers to define their hometowns, but we have always
had a sense of belonging to Kerala and we are delighted to be back home.
We are also able to take care of my mother in her old age. A Malayalam say-
ing has it that, ‘whatever you may accomplish on top of the coconut tree,
the applause is only when you get back to the ground safely.’ We are enjoy-
ing the applause.
I encapsulated my foreign service experience in a letter to my col-
leagues on the day of my retirement in the following words: Two military
coups, two expulsions and two broken limbs in an armed attack are not the
stuff that diplomatic dreams are made of. But there was abundant recom-
pense for them in the 37 years that I have completed today in the IFS. I
walked in and out of the White House and the Kremlin, worked in the
United Nations in New York, Geneva, Nairobi and Vienna, broke bread
with the high and the mighty, encountered celebrities in various fields,
presented credentials to more than 10 heads of state and, more than any-
thing else, spoke for a billion people of India on a variety of issues. My
three stints in the United States in crucial positions still constitute a
236 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

record. No other career could have offered me the kind of experience that
the foreign service did.
As I leave the service, the overwhelming thought is one of elation and
gratitude that my family and I have withstood the demanding professional
and personal challenges the service presented. This is no mean achieve-
ment, considering that the casualty rate in the foreign service is compara-
ble to that in the fighting forces. Strong physical and mental faculties are
absolutely essential for diplomats to survive and succeed. More importantly,
on account of my mother’s faith and prayers, an invisible hand guided us
through our trials and tribulations and kept us out of serious harm even in
difficult situations.
I joined the foreign service in 1967 to fulfil a fond dream that my father
cherished. I developed my own dreams as the years passed. Lekha and the
children developed their own aspirations. I have a choice today of either
declaring success on the basis of my modest achievements or of lamenting
failure on account of my unfulfilled aspirations. All said and done, it is
merely a matter of attitude. I prefer, therefore, to cherish the opportunities
I got rather than regret the missed ones.
The foreign service I leave tomorrow is more attractive than the one I
joined 37 years ago. Gone are the days when English schools for children
were a nightmare, the medical scheme was restricted and home leave pro-
visions were complicated. Hard stations and poor foreign allowance do not
go together anymore and housing has improved. Promotion prospects have
not suffered to the extent that was anticipated. The foreign service has
become less attractive not because it suffers in comparison with the other
services in terms of legitimate earnings but because it, rightly, has fewer
avenues for illegal enrichment.
The opportunities that the service offered to my children will remain a
lasting legacy. The frequent changes of schools and the environment may
have taken its toll, but the education they gained from life in several coun-
tries and continents has made them true citizens of the world. They have,
at the same time, retained their Indian identity even more than some chil-
dren brought up within the country itself.
One area where change has been painfully slow in the foreign service
is the posting policy, which continues to be highly personalised and
 BACK TO THE BACKWATERS 237

patronage-ridden. Postings should be on the basis of science rather than

arts. A scientific method, based on strict rotation is possible and desirable.
The recent tendency to be flexible about gradation of posts in the process
of selecting heads of mission detracts from the importance of promotions
to various grades. The performance assessment system too is antiquated
and needs refinement. A point system is more efficient than a descriptive
system in making an accurate assessment of the officers. The painful
process of obtaining financial sanctions even for projects that are patently
essential remains a serious handicap for our missions abroad. The delays
do not contribute to economy in expenditure for which the cumbersome
procedures were originally designed. Instances of colossal waste of money
in property deals on account of such delays are legion. My project for the
renovation of the Vienna Chancery is a classic case in which simple
bureaucratic hitches, rather than points of dispute, delayed it for three
years and more. Instead of completing the project before leaving, I am
leaving as the work begins.
The role of the foreign service is in projecting and implementing policy
rather than in shaping it. But in our own way, we contribute to policy-
making in imperceptible ways. Our foreign policy has evolved over the years
as a collective response to the changes in the world. Each of us, therefore,
feels comfortable with the policy even if there may be differences about
strategy. It is rarely that our diplomats have felt aggrieved enough about
policy to protest about it.
The public opinion in India has begun to believe that India is on the
threshold of being a developed country and a major power in the world.
Many in India consider permanent membership of India in the UN Secu-
rity Council a short-term goal. The foreign service knows better than oth-
ers that the reality of the world is somewhat different. India’s views are
respected, but they are not yet decisive in world affairs. Our traditional
constituencies have withered away as we have moved on to pursue our own
interests rather than the aspirations of any group of countries. The gap
between Indian aspirations and world realities will pose the greatest chal-
lenge to the Indian diplomats in the years to come. Diplomatic activism
can succeed only if it is backed by solid economic and military strength of
a kind that has the capacity to help or harm the world. I am afraid we have
238 WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

not reached there as yet. Ironically, the peak of international popularity

that India had reached in the middle of the twentieth century is yet to be
matched by it in the twenty-first century.
I am glad that it is from Vienna that I bid farewell to the foreign serv-
ice. The traditions of the city are strong enough to renew faith in the art
of diplomacy. Moreover, it was good to see that our status as a non-NPT
country does not prevent us from playing a major role even in the ‘nuclear
watchdog of the United Nations’, as the IAEA has come to be called. We
are in a minority of the three, but we are being treated increasingly as one
of the eight when it comes to nuclear matters. The IAEA turns to India
when difficult issues need to be resolved even though we are not part of the
regime that IAEA jealously safeguards.
I wish my younger colleagues the very best in the years to come. You
should be proud of a service that has withstood the challenges of a chang-
ing world without losing its idealism and spirit of adventure.
INDEX

A Antharjanam, Lalithambika 16
Arab League 100
Abdullah, Farooq 115, 119 Arlachi 230
Abe, Nobuyasu 218 Armenia 39
Abraham, Rev. Fr. C. A. 17 Armitage, Richard 213
Abraham, Thomas 45, 235 Armstrong, Louis 179
Ackerman, Gary 147, 149 50, 157, 158 Army Navy Country Club 174
Afghanistan 55, 97, 119, 162 Aryabhatta, the first Indian satelite 44
Africa 35, 176 Asrani, Arjun 28
‘Agenda for Development’ 107 Atlanta 111
‘Agenda for Peace’ 107 Atomic Energy Commission 204
Aggarwal, Dinesh 171 Aulakh, G.. S. 147
Agnihotri, Bhishma 171 Australia 68, 102, 182, 184, 190,
Ahamed, E. 119 217, 223, 232
Ahmed, Shamsher 142 Austria 76, 98, 202
Ahtisaari, Marti 90 Aziz, Lt. Gen. Mohammad 159
Akram, Munir 115
Al-Qaeda 162
Albright, Madeline 128 29, 140 B
Alexander, P. C. 185
Algeria 86, 96 Baba, Tupeni 187
Alirajpur, Surinder Singh 35 Babu, Harikrishna 16
Alliance Party 187, 188 Bajpai, Shankar 56
Almullah, Nabila 213 Banerjee, Amitav 94
Alps Mountains 76 Banerji, S. K. 25, 27
American Consultative Group Bangladesh 83, 92
(ACG) 147 149 Bangladesh war 31
Amma, Janaki 29 recognition of government 31
Anachronism 183 Bavadra, Timoci 185, 187 89,
Anjali, Radha 202 191 93, 196
Annan, Kofi 102, 109 BBC 54, 68
Ansari, Hamid 112, 116, 120, 121 Beijing 53
240 INDEX

Berlin 110 Cape Town 127

Berlin Mandate 110, 111 Carnegie Foundation 138
Berne 101 Carter Centre 111
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre Carter, Jimmy 50, 128
(BARC) 156, 205 Castro, Fidel 87 88, 100
Bhabha, Homi 204, 205, 229 Central Bureau of Investigation
Bhagavad Gita, the 8 (CBI) 43
Bhandari, Ramesh 87 Central Intelligence Agency
Bhatia, Sabir 169 (CIA) 132
Bhojpuri 181 Chakravarty, Nikhil 40
Bhutan 21, 28 35, 53 Chandra, Naresh 123, 126 35, 137,
bilateral and multilateral 141 42, 148 49, 155, 158 59,
assistance for 31 162, 170 71, 174, 176 77
flora and fauna of 33 Chandran, Ramesh 173
modernisation of 33 Chandrasekaran, Achamma 171
Tamil culture into 35 Changanacherry 12
Bhutto, Benazir 172 Chatterjee, Swadesh 135
Birenbaum, David 129 Chaudhury, Mahendra 187 88,
BJP 129 30, 135, 151, 171 72 197 98
Overseas Friends of the BJP Chauhan, Prithvi Raj 130
(OFBJP) 152, 172 Chavan, Y. B. 42
Blair, Tony 226 Chidambaram, Dr 204 06, 212
Bofors investigations 101 Chidambaram, R. 134
Bonn 53 Child labour 2
Bose, Netaji Subhas Chandra 29 Chopra, Deepak 169
Botswana 70 Clinton 125 26, 128 30, 133, 135 37,
Bowles, Chester 23 145 46, 157, 159 67, 169, 170,
Brazil 109, 143 174 78
Brezhnev, Leonid 42, 45, 47 48 CNN 51
Brill, Ken 212, 224 Coelho, Vincent 23, 27 28
British colonialism 94 Cold War 90, 95, 106 08, 111, 115,
Brownback, Sam 146, 155 56 163, 225
Brownback amendment 157 Colombo 95
Brussels 222 Colonialism 138, 182
Bukhari 30 Columbus 199
Bureaucratic hierarchy 25 Commission on Drugs and Crime
Burma, see Myanmar 58 Prevention 230
Bush, George W. 222, 225 26 Commission on Sustainable
Development 122
Committee on Programme and
C Coordination (CPC) 101, 102
Commonwealth 23, 53, 64, 69, 83, 99,
Caicos 94 193, 197
Cairo 111, 203 election of secretary general 80
Cambodia 53 Lusaka Summit 79
Camp David Accords 87, 92 93, 100 Melbourne Summit 194
Camp, Donald 169 Nauru’s application for
Canada 20, 199, 216, 223, 232 membership of 82
 INDEX 241

Commonwealth Fund 81 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Commonwealth Games 176 (DPRK) 213, 216, 228
Commonwealth Heads of Demonetisation 198
Government Meeting Denmark 214
(CHOGM) 79, 82 Denuclearisation 95
Commonwealth of Independent Deo, Aravind 45 46
States (CIS) 101 Desai, Morarji 44, 46 48, 50,
Communism 100 79 81, 109
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as prime minister 145
(CTBT) 133, 139 41, in USA 50
143 44, 146, 163, 165, 170, in USSR 46, 47, 48
174, 209 Kanti Desai, the son 79
Confederation of Indian Industry Desai, Nitin 109
(CII) 72, 149, 201 Deshpande, Ramesh 233
Conference of Parties 110 Devare, Sudhir 59
Convention on Physical Protection Dhar, D. P. 41, 44, 126
of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) Dhawan, Y. R. 25
207 08 Diego Garcia 95
Convention on ‘Return of Diplomatic activism 237
Assets’ 231 Diplomatic community 36
Copenhagen, social development Diplomatic ghettos 38
in 111 Diplomatic life 77
Corruption 21 Directorate for Servicing the
Costa, Antonio 230 Diplomatic Corps 36
Counter Terrorism Committee Disney World 57
(CTC) 231 Divakaran, C. 16
Cowsik, Shyamala 127, 147, 155 Dixit, Mani 69, 101
Croatia 75 Dole, Bob 148, 156
Cuba 56, 86 88, 95, 97, 100, 216 Doshi, Kiran 69
Cuellar, Javier Perezde 98 100, Dowdswell, Elizabeth 122
106, 121 Dubey, Sushil 87 89, 97
Cultural diplomacy 63 Durai, Suchitra 233

D E

Daley, Matthew 140 Eapen, Joseph 16

Damodaran, Ambadi 40 Earth Summit 109 10, 122
Daniel, William 16 Economic Times, The 173
Das, B. S. 30, 33 Economist, The 153
Das, Tulsi 180, 181 Ecuador 111
Dasgupta, Shekhar 101 10, 196 Egypt 87 88, 93, 100, 105, 107, 118,
Davos 101 210, 222
Dayal, Virendra 99 Einhorn, Bob 132, 140
Dechen, Ashi 33 Elarabi, Nabil 107
Defence Research and Development ElBaradei, Dr Mohamed 78, 206, 207,
Organisation (DRDO) 215, 224 26
156 57 Eliot, T. S. 15
242 INDEX

Engaging India 125, 140 racial relationships in 192

Ershad, General 92 Sikh temple torched in 195
EU-3 221 23 Taukei movement in 189
European Union (EU) 75, 217 218, Fiji Hindi, see Bhojpuri 181
222, 228 Finland 90
EXIM 156 Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty
Express India 173 (FMCT) 140 41, 143 44
Foreign Secretary
Dubey, Muchkund 101, 106
F Haider, Salman 71, 126 27
Kaul, T. N. 25, 32, 55
Fabian, K. P. 103 Mansingh, Lalit 233
Faleiro, Eduardo 119 Mehta, Jagat 45 46, 48 50, 52 53,
Falklands war 100 80 85, 88
Federal Bureau of Investigation accused of being a misogynist 52
(FBI) 152 Chinese invasion of Vietnam 51
Federation of Kerala Associations in Padma Vibhushan Award 53
North America 199, 200 Raghunath, Krishnan 72, 127,
Fenn, Nick 61 131, 142
Fenn, Sue 61 Rasgotra, M. K. 56, 59, 97
Fernandes, George 131, 133 Saran, Shyam 49, 69 70
Fiji 6 7, 52, 61 62, 64, 66, 100 02, Singh, S. K. 56, 100, 196
137, 179 95, 196 98, 200, Venkateswaran, A. P. 64, 184,
202 187, 193
civilian coup in 197 France 2
coalition government in 188
conflict in 183
constitution of 183 G
democracy in 102, 189
feudal system in 182 G-77 110, 123, 209
Fiji Golf Club 187 Gaddafi 224, 226
India House 190 91, 202 Gandhi, Indira 25, 33, 39, 44, 47,
Indian leadership in 182 83, 193 53 55, 59, 92, 95 97, 102 03,
Indians in 182 126 27, 185
India’s policy on 184, 193 Gandhi, Mahatma 135, 181
Labour Party 184 85, 187 88 Gandhi, Maneka 174
Labour Party-NFP coalition in Gandhi, Rajiv 63, 109, 193 94, 197
187 Gandhi, Sanjay 41, 127
marketplace in 182 Gandhi, Sonia 73
military coup in 189 ‘Gang of Four’ 96
fortunes of Indians 190 Ganilau 185, 192
multiracialism in 183 Ganju, Janki 146
National Federation Party Gehlot, Kishen 73
(NFP) 183 Geneva 2, 65, 94, 102, 122, 203 04,
political role of Indians in 192 235
Polynesian-Melanesian race in 184 NGO in 102
predominant in the political life George, Cherry 70
of 191 Georgia 39
 INDEX 243

Germany 58, 79, 110, 116 17, 214, Hegde, Prasanna 43

221, 225 Helms, Jesse 135, 172
reunification of 110 Hemachandran 16
Ghadia, Lalit 152 Heptullah, Najma 119, 196
Ghali, Boutros Boutros 105 08, Hindu mythology 7
111 12, 115 Hindu, The 173
Gharekhan, Chinmaya 101, 104, Hindustan Times 173
116, 120 21 Hoffburg Palace, Viena 2
Gilman, Benjamin 135, 154 Hollum 140, 144
Giri, V. V. 30 Hotmail 169
Glenn, John 155 Hughes, Max 217
Glenn amendment 156 Human habitation 1
Global Environment Facility Human Rights Commission 115
(GEF) 109 Hussein, Saddam 103 04
Global Organisation of People of
Indian Origin 200
Goel, Praveen 64 I
Gokhale, Ashok 31 32
Golob, Ignac 74 75, 100 IAEA 79, 203, 205, 207 16, 220 26,
Gonsalves, Alfred 80, 84 228 29
Gore, Al 167, 169, 175 agency responsible for the
Goyal, Raghubir 173 NPT 205
Great Indian Novel, The 109 Assessed Programme Cost
Great October Revolution 47 (APC) 229
Greenwood, Jim 149 contribution of atomic energy to
Gromyko, Andrei 44 peace 205
Gujral, Inder Kumar 128 30, 177 mechanisms of 207
as ambassador 36, 41, 42, 43, 44 ‘nuclear watchdog of the United
as external affairs minister 101, 103, Nations’ 238
114 15, 119 Operational Safety Review Team
as minister of information and 208
Broadcasting 127 Illickal, Lily 77
as prime minister 73, 125, 136 Illickal, Mathew 57
his vision of India-US relations 126 Illueca, George 91
Guggenheim Museum 56 IMF 156
Gujral, Sheila 42 Inderfurth, Rick 129, 130, 132, 136,
Gurirab, Ben 91, 9 140, 161, 164, 176
India 66, 79 80, 82 84, 86, 88, 90 92,
94 103, 106, 109 17, 119,
H 123 74, 176 87, 189 91,
193 13, 216, 218 19, 224,
Habibullah, Wajahat 155, 170 227 28, 230, 232 33
Haider, Jorge 202 anti-US elements in 145
Hall, Ingrid 219 Chinese aggression of 1962 14,
Haniffa, Aziz 150, 173 133, 136
Havana 56, 86 89, 93, 121 emergency rule in 44
negotiations in 89 hijacking of IC-184 162
Havana declaration 88 independence of 182
244 INDEX

India (cont.) India-USSR relations 42, 44,

Indian immigrant community 49 50, 126
Girmityas 181 India-Burma relations 59, 61
grievances against the- Indian Administrative Service (IAS)
administrative system 8 9, 16 17, 19 20, 22, 68
in 199 Indian Audit and Accounts
Indians in Austria 202 Service 23
Indians in Fiji 180 81, 183, 191, Indian American community 151
194, 196 97 Indian American community 137,
Indians in Germany 202 149 51, 157
Indians in Kenya 200 01 Indian American Forum for Political
Indians in Myanmar 198 Education 137
Indians in USA 199 Indian Atomic Energy Commission
Indians in Vienna 201 205
Mandranjis 181 Indian Border Roads Organisation
ordeals of immigration 181 29
issue of harassment of Christians Indian bureaucracy 65
in 172 Indian Express 173
labour from 181 Indian Foreign Service (IFS) 2, 9, 19,
nuclear tests of 1998 118 22, 35, 43
Pokhran test 132 performance-assessment system
policy on overseas Indians 193, 237
197 process of obtaining financial
practice of hiring of lobbyists sanctions 237
146 role in diplomacy 76
public opinion in 237 role of 237
reservations on nuclear tests India League 39
172 Indian Military Training Team
safety-related inspections of (IMTRAT) 30
nuclear facilities 208 Indian National Congress 17, 130
US activities in 156 Indian Ocean 94 95
US assistance to 147 Indian Police Service (IPS) 16
India Abroad 150 52 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and
India Caucus 135, 149, 157 Cooperation 44
formation of 153 Indonesia 96, 120
India Coffee House 15 Intergovernmental Negotiating
India Globe 173 Committee on Climate
India League of America 137 109 10
India-China relations 133 Intermediate College,
India-Pakistan relations 130, 136, Thiruvananthapuram 9
159, 166 International Centre for the
India-US relations 126, 133 34, Promotion of Enterprises
136 37, 149 52, 160, 167, 170, (ICPE) 76
173 74, 177, 178 International Commission of Jurists
impact of Kargil Spring on 161 (ICJ) 102
Talbott-Jaswant Singh talks 140, International Herald Tribune 60
144 46, 163, 165 International Monetary Fund (IMF)
understanding of 148 157
 INDEX 245

Iran 97, 212 17, 221 22, 224 28, Joseph, K. 24

231 Joseph, O. 202
Teheran 222
Iran-Iraq war 96 97
Iraq 96, 103 05, 206, 216, 220, 226, K
228
evidence of nuclear weapons Kabul 121
activity in 206 Kakodkar, Dr Anil 205, 212
sanctions against 105 Kaleeswaran, M. 24
Islamic Bomb 225 Kalotra, Jayant 153, 174
Israel 160, 209, 210 11, 217 20 Kampuchea 31, 97
Istanbul, habitat in 111 Karkare, Hemant 233
Iyer, Major 34 Karthikeyan, D. R. 41, 43
Iyer, Sankara 15 Katju, Vivek 196
Iyer, Swaminathan 173 Kaul, P. K. 154
Izvestia 44 Kaunda, Kenneth 81, 83, 84, 85
Kennedy, Edward 154
Kennedy, Jackie 56
J Kenya 52, 62, 71 73, 77, 202
Kerala 1, 3, 8, 10, 16, 20, 23 24,
Jain, Vijay 60 29 30, 33, 48, 57, 63, 67
Jammu & Kashmir 125, 136, 147, 155, ‘God’s Own Country’ 235
158 66, 173 immigrants from, to USA 57
human rights situation in 102 Kayamkulam 1
Line of Control (LOC) 158, 159, Marxist Government in 16
161, 162, 166 Onam festival in the
Pakistani intrusion into Chettikulangara temple 4
Kargil area 158, 159, 160, 161, religious harmony, a unique
162 feature of 8
Pakistani support for terrorism in US residents from 57
136, 159 Keshavan, Narayanan 149
Russian veto on 115 Khaleeli, Akbar 22, 97
situation in 107 Khan, A. Q. 225
United Nation military observer Khokar, Riaz 148
group in 108, 115 Khurshid, Salman 72
violence in 166 Kiribati 66, 68
Janata Party 44 Kirkpatrick, Jean 99
Japan 2, 7, 23, 25 30, 33, 55, 58, 61, Kissinger, Henry 148
63, 67, 69, 72, 114, 115, 116, Klestil, Thomas 203
117, 118, 214, 223 Kochar 185
culture and rituals 27 Komitet Gosudarstvennoi
Indian diplomats in 39 Bazopasnosti (KGB) 36
Japani language 27 Koshy, C. K. 16
Naganuma Gakko, 27 Kosygin 47
Jenkins, Peter 226 Kouri, Raoul Roa 100
Jesudas, K. J. 45, 202 Koya, Siddique 181, 183, 184
Joan of Arc 20 Kremlin 36, 45, 235
Johnnie Walker 37, 38 Kremlin diplomacy 36
246 INDEX

Krishna, S. M. 119 Malaysia 216, 225

Krishnan, G. 16 Malik, Preet 87
Krishnan, Natarajan 43, 95, 97, Mandela, Nelson 73
120 21, 145 Mara, Ratu Sir Kamisese 183 88,
Krishnan, Ramanathan 28 196 97
Krishnaswami, Sreedhar 173 Market economy 182
Kuala Lumpur 176 Moscow 2, 28, 37, 38, 39, 42 46, 49,
Kucan 75 64, 126, 127, 204
Kuini, Adi 190 Moscow Olympics 43
Kunadi, Savitri 114 Moscow State University 35
Kuwait 103, 213 Mauritius 69 70, 99
Iraq’s invasion of 103 McDermott 158
liberation of 103, 104 McGuinty, Katy 130
Kuznetsov 36 Mehra, O. P. 43
Kyoto Protocol 110 11 Mehta, Zubin 202
Menon, N. C. 173
Menon, K. P. S. 39, 48 49, 104,
L 235
marathon speeches on
Laden, Osama bin 162, 164 Kashmir 49
Lahiri, Dilip 64 Menon, Murali 45
Lahore 157, 158 Menon, Prabhakar 19
Lal Bahadur Shastri National Menon, Vimala 16
Academy of Administration, Merkel, Angela 110, 111
Mussoorie 8, 16, 20, 32 Mexico 232
Lal, Tanmaya 233 Middle East and South Asia (MESA)
Latin America 56 205, 212, 213
Lalithambika 17 Minty, Abdul 105, 215
Lama, Dalai 14 Mishra, Brajesh 55, 58, 86 88, 95,
Lasso, Jose Ayala 111, 112 115, 119 20, 131, 171
Laxman, R. K. 86 as UN Commissioner for
Lena, Maria 202 Namibia 58
Lenin Mausoleum 40 permanent representative in
Lewinsky, Monica 174 UN 86
Libya 155, 223 28 Mishra, Shyam Nandan 80 81, 83,
Lini, Walter 67 85 86
Ljubljana 74 76 Mohanachandran 16
Lusaka 79 80, 84 86, 90 Moi, Daniel Arap 71, 72
Money economy 182
Mony, V. S. 68
M Moussa, Amre 93, 100
Mukherji, Jaideep 28
‘Made in India Show’ 72 Mukherji, Pranab 72
Madhavan, A. 80, 82 Multiculturalism 184
Madrid 60 Multilateral diplomacy 55, 85 86
Magarinos, Carlos 232 Multilateral diplomats 89
Mahabharata, The 109, 229 Multilateral forum 85
Malawi 82 Multilateral work 86
 INDEX 247

Multiracialism 183, 186 National Federation Party (NFP)

Mulye, Ramesh 87 183 85, 187 88
Musharraf, Parvez 157 59, 164, National Human Rights
167, 225 Commission 99
My Life 161, 164, 174 Nauru 66 68, 82
Myanmar 58 59, 61 64, 185, 193, Nayar, K. P. 129
198, 202 Neelakantan, K. K. 15
Indians in 62 Nehru, Pandit Jawaharlal 9, 39, 62,
Rangoon Golf Club 62 68, 76, 80, 82, 119, 135, 181,
Rangoon Theatre Club 61 193
Network of South Asian Professionals
(NETSAP) 137
N New Caledonia 66
New York 2, 35, 43, 52, 55, 61, 66,
Nadi 195 69 71, 74 75, 86 91, 94,
Nair, A. M. 29 96 97, 99 02, 104 05, 108 09,
Nair, C. N. S. 16 113 16, 118 19, 121 29, 133,
Nair, C. P. 24 139, 147, 168, 176, 178,
Nair, G. Gopalakrishnan 20 199 200, 203 04, 210, 213, 217,
Nair, Dr K. Rajandran 20 220, 226, 231, 235
Nair, G. Ramachandran 16 New York Times 133, 226
Nair, Justice Madhavan 24 New Zealand 68, 72, 102, 182, 184,
Nair, M. V. Ramankutty 19 189, 190
Nair, P. M. 16 Non-Governmental Organisations
Nair, Ramakrishnan 16 (NGOs) 110, 111, 164
Nair, S. S. 82, 83, 84 Niger 206
Nair Service Society 12 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)
Nair, Sree 171 56 58, 64, 74, 76, 86, 88, 95 96,
Nair, Sudhakaran 15 100, 117, 121, 128, 183,
Nair, Surapalan 16 215 216, 222 23, 227 28
Nair, Vanaja 20 Delhi summit 97
Nairobi 2, 32, 69 73, 114, 122 23, Havana Summit 86
125, 127 28, 200, 235 Non-nuclear weapons 207
violence in 72 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 14,
Nambiar, Vijay 87, 94, 97 31, 50, 142, 145, 205, 207 10,
Namibia 58, 89, 90 92, 96 215, 218 19, 223 24, 226
Council for Namibia 92 Noorani, A. G. 102
illegal occupation 96 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
Nandan, Satya 187 (NATO) 75, 108
Naqvi, Ali Sarwar 211 North Korea 96, 99, 155, 225
Narayan, R. L. 43 Norway 59
Narayanan, K. R. 74, 165, 199 Nuclear cataclysm 160
Nath, Kamal 119 Nuclear power 205, 209
National Aeronautics and Space Nuclear Safety Convention 208
Administration (NASA) 179 Nuclear weapon states 205
National Defence Museum 31 Nuclear weapons 14, 131, 205, 207 10
National Defence Academy (NDA) India’s acquisition of 212
172 Libya-UK-US draft 227
248 INDEX

Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in South Papua New Guinea (PNG) 66, 67

Asia 50 Parasuram, T. V. 173
Nujoma, Sam, militant freedom Patel, Vinod 187
movement of Namibia 90 Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE),
1974 44
Penny, Mary 65
O People’s Republic of China 49 51, 53,
66, 69, 98, 106, 109, 111, 136,
Oak, M. V. 48 138, 160, 163, 227
Office of Internal Oversight Services aggression against India, 1962
(OIOS) 230 14, 133
Organisation of American States Peru 98, 99
(OAS) 123 Philadelphia 171
Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Philip, Chellamma 15
Countries (OPEC) 110 Pickering, Thomas 128, 129, 131, 132,
Otunnu, Olara 98 133, 139, 140
Overseas Private Investment Pillai, G. Kumara 15
Corporation (OPIC) 156 Pillai, A. S. Narayana 13
Oza, Bhupat 28 Pillai, Thettalil Parameswaran 7
Pimputkar, M. G. 21, 22
Plutonium, guidelines for holding of 211
P Poland 79
Ponnappa, Leela 175
P-3 (Permanent members of the Portugal 120
Security Council) 222 Powell, Colin 206
P-5 104 06 Prabhakaran, Velupillai 3
Padmarajan 16 Prague 204
Pakistan 49 50, 53, 95, 102, 115, Prasad, Alok 142, 175
117 18, 120 21, 125, 129, 131, Pratap, Anita 202
133, 136, 138 43, 146 48, Pravda 44
155 64, 166, 172, 174, 178, 207, Press Trust of India (PTI) 173
209 11, 213, 216, 218 20, 225, Puri, Col. Prem 60
227, 231 Purushottam, S. V. 56
demise of democracy in 167
Ghouri missile testing 130
Kashmir issue 125 R
lobbyists hired by 148
nuclear assets of 225 Rabuka, Lt. Col. Sitiveni 187,
development of nuclear 189 94, 196
capability in 225 Racial discrimination 193, 194
UN military observer group in 108 Racial harmony 183, 184
Palestine 89, 100 Rajan, M. S. 23
Palestine Liberation Organisation Rajghatta, Chidanand 173
(PLO) 93 Rajiv Gandhi Foundation 73
Pallone, Frank 135, 149, 153 54, Raju, P. M. 19
157 58 Ram, Amar Nath 30
Panama 91 Ramachandran, C. 34
Panicker, Rev. Fr. Geevarghese 18 Ramachandran, M. G. 45
Paniker, Ayyappa 15 Ramachandran, Major N. 7, 9
 INDEX 249

Ramachandran, Rani 20 decision making of 118

Ramakrishnaa Ashram 8 expansion of 115, 117
Ramayana, the 229 resolution 687 104
Ramcharitmanas, the 180 Sen, Aloke 64
Ramphal, Sridath 80, 82 85, 99 Sethna, Dr Homi 204
Ramzy, Ramzy Ezzeldin 217 Settlement of disputes 98
Ranganathan, C. V. 8, 25 Shah, Prakash 100 01, 112,
Rangoon, see Mynmar 120, 122
Rao, Hamid Ali 233 Sharif, Nawaz 126, 159 62, 164
Rao, P. V. Narasimha 70 71, 99, 101, Sharma, Harish 187 88
106, 112 Sharma, Kamalesh 114
as prime minister 129 30, 139, Sharma, Kapil 138
145 46 Sharma, Rakesh 47
Rathore, Rajendra 64 Shaw, Bernard 20
Ravi, Vayalar 119 Sheehan, Michael 162, 164
Ravindranathan, C.P. 185 Shekhar, S. 38, 40, 42, 43, 204
Ray, Siddhartha Shankar 116 47, Shelvankar, K. S. 39 41, 126
152, 154 Shetty, Major K. J. 34
Red Indians 199 Shoukry, Sehmi 210
Reddy, Jairam 183, 187 88, 192 Shuttle diplomacy 192
Reddy, Krishna 153 Shyamalan, M. Night 169
Republic of Korea (ROK), 220 Sibal, Kanwal 154
Rhodesia 82 Siberia 42
Richardson, Bill 130 31, 139 Sinai, Peter 39, 40, 49, 64, 97
Richmond 131 Sinai, Rowena 40
Riedel, Bruce 160 61 Singapore 86, 117
Rome 204 Singh, Babu 186
Russia, see USSR Singh, Charan 54, 80, 84 85
Singh, Gurjit 70
Singh, I. P. 60, 80
S Singh, Jaswant 139 42, 144 46,
151, 162
Sait, Yakub 8 Singh, Khushwant 174
Salehi, Ali 216 Singh, Mohini 22
Salim 98 Singh, Natwar 83, 193
Sandhu, Taranjit 155 Singh, Nawal 21
San Francisco 58 Singh, V. P. 197
Sanskrit 181 Singh, Vijay 186
Santhakumari 15 Sinha, Amar 170
Sasi, I. V. 57 Sircar, Major 34
Sathe, Ram 53 Slovenia 74 76, 100
Saudi Arabia 121, 213 Social Development Summit,
School for International Studies, Copenhagen 112
Sapru House 22 Social Service League 8
Scindia, Madhav Rao 101 Sokomanu 67
Security Council 2, 49, 55, 89, 98, Solanki, Madhav Sinh 101
103 06, 108, 111, 114, 116, 121, Solarz, Stephen 136 37, 148, 153,
128, 206, 215, 22 23, 225, 227, 177
231, 237 Solomon Islands 66 67
250 INDEX

Som, Himachal 196 classmates

Somalia 95 Gopi, 8
Soman, D. S. 35 Madhavan Nair 8
Somasundaran 57 Madhu 13
Sonam, Ashi 33 Parthasarathi 8
Soni, Vidya Bhushan 196 Sait 8
Sood, Rakesh 142 Thomas 16
South Africa 89, 105, 143, 215, Zachariah 8
216 in East Asia Division 25
South Korea 63, 69, 96, 99, 114 inspired by Joshua 10
South Pacific 35 investigation of Mohini Singh’s
South Pacific Forum 68 misdeeds 22
South West Africa People’s ‘Kargil Spring’ 160
Organisation (SWAPO) Khosla Commission 29
90 92 leadership-training course in
Soviet Union 37, 42, 44, 46 47, Darjeeling 16
55, 67 Lekha, the wife 20 21, 28, 34, 45,
Soviet troops in 54 62, 64, 67, 69, 70 71, 73, 77,
Speight, George 197 127, 175, 196, 236
Springer, David 134, 146 47, Madhusudanan, the younger
149 50 brother 5 6, 18, 73
Sri Lanka 3, 86, 92, 94 95, 113, NAM tours 91
150 narrow escape from a criminal
Ambassador Fonseka 95 case 11
Tamil Tigers 3 Parameswaran, Kochu Pillai, my
Srinivasan, Kris 15, 69, 114 father 2 3, 6 7, 9, 16, 19
Sreenivasan, T. P. reborn to survive 69
a voyage of discovery 24 school education 8
Chellamma, Narayaniamma, the Seetharam, the younger brother 6,
mother 3, 5 6, 8 13, 58, 69, 70
childhood 4 5 Sreekanth, the younger son 43,
choice of a foreign language 23 56
college education Sreenath, the elder son 28, 34, 43,
Harvey Memorial Prize 14 45, 56, 131, 146, 170,
M. P. Paul Prize 14 175 76, 189
debating skills 17 student politics 17
Udarasiromani Prize 16 the Head of Chancery 40
expedition on the Indo-Bhutan tradition of the family 2
border 34 transition from a student to a
first elected position in the UN teacher 18
system 91 UPSC personality test 19
first employment 17 Statesman, The 82, 85
first experience of independent Stephen, Baburaj 173
negotiations 90 Susanbrunn Golf Club 207
first journey in aircraft 20 Suseelan, Babu 16
first multilateral conference 79 Swaminathan, R. 233
first western suit 19 Swaminathan, V. 35
Gopalakrishnan, the elder Swell, G. 59 60
brother 5, 7, 20, 71 Switzerland 231
 INDEX 251

T United Kingdom (UK) 50, 68, 81, 93,

193, 200, 209, 215, 216 17,
Taiwan 69 221 23, 226 27, 231
Talbott, Strobe 125, 129, 139 41, United Nations 2, 23, 30 31, 50,
144 46, 157, 161 63, 165 55 56, 64, 66, 69, 71, 74 75,
report of November 1998 143 79, 89, 92 93, 95, 98 01, 103,
speech at Brookings Institution 105 07, 111, 116, 118 20,
142 122 23, 128, 172, 186 87, 206,
Taliban 162, 164 213, 217 18, 235
Tata Energy Research Institute Administrative and Budgetary
(TERI) 130 Committee 89
Technical Cooperation Fund (TCF) Advisory Committeee on
207, 214, 229 Budgetary Questions (ACABQ)
Teheran 121 102
Teja, Jaskaran 42 Bhutan’s membership of 31
Telegraph, The 173 Committee of Permanent
Tenet, George 170 Representatives 122
Terrorism Prevention Branch (TPB) Committee on Programme and
231 Coordination (CPC) 101
Terzi 100 Committee on the Arms Embargo
The Sixth Sense 169 against South Africa 105
Thettalil 4, 7 Committee on the Inalienable
The Wasteland 15 78 Rights of the Palestine 92
Thimphu 29 decolonisation activities of 89,
Thirumala, Bichu 16 93, 183
Thomas, George 16 Disarmament and International
Thomas, P. 202 Security Committee 89
Thycaud, a conservative city 10 Economic and Financial
Tibet 14 Committee 89
Times of India, The 86, 150, 173 ‘Eighth Committee’ 89
Tiwari, Yogesh 203 functioning of 119
Tokyo 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 55, 58, 77 General Assembly 2, 55, 89 90,
Shimo Ochiai 179 94, 98, 107 08, 111, 115 16,
Tokyo University 29 127, 129, 139, 144, 168, 211
Tonga 66 General Assembly (cont.)
Transnational Organized Crime 231 Ugandan delegation 120
Trivedi, Vishnu 206 working group of 117
Tupou, King TaufahauI V 68 Kashmir issue at 121
Turk, Danilo 75 Legal Committee 89
Turnhalle Alliance 91 Palestine Committee 92
Tuteja, Amir 173 peacekeeping operations 13, 108
Tuvalu 66, 68 Political Committee 89
programmes of 101
Rio Plus Five and Rio Plus 111
U role of 107
Social, Humanitarian and Cultural
Uganda 98, 120, 193
Committee 89
Union Public Service Commission
united in name, but divided in
(UPSC) 9
reality 79
252 INDEX

United Nations Charter, Article 50 as prime minister 130 31, 137, 143,
105 150, 157, 161, 167 70, 172,
United Nations Commission on 174 75
Human Settlements (Habitat) in China 50 51
71, 122, 127 in USSR 44, 47 48
United Nations Convention Against Vanua Levu 180
Corruption 231 Vanuatu 66 67
United Nations Council for Varma, Prince Marthanda 20
Namibia 90 Vellodi, Aravind 49
United Nations Delegation to Venezuela 56
Bangladesh 92 Victoria, Queen 182
United Nations Environment Vidyanathan 15
Programme (UNEP) 69, 75, Vienna 2, 74 75, 77 78, 109, 111, 122,
122 23 175, 179, 203 08, 211 12, 215,
United Nations Human Rights 217 18, 222, 224, 226, 229 35
Commission 102 Vietnam 47, 51
United Nations Industrial Development Vijayasree 16
Organisation 209, 229, 231 32 Visakhan, Captain T. D. S. 34
United Nations Office on Drugs and Viswanathan, M. S. 45
Crime (UNODC) 229 Viti Levu 180
United Nations Ombudsman 230 Vivekananda 8
United Nations Secretariat 98 VOA 68
United States of America (USA) Vorontsov, Yuli 54
49 50, 53, 55, 57 58, 62, 68,
92, 95, 98 99, 104 06, 111 13,
123, 125 29, 131 36, 138 47, W
149 52, 154 64, 166 71,
173 75, 177 78, 202, 208, Wadhwa, Rita 175
212 16, 219 21, 223 28, 232 33 Waldheim, Kurt 98 99, 106
Indian diaspora in 198 Walter, Arne 202
India-lobby in 163 Wangchuk, Jigme Dorji 31 32
lobbying firms in 148 Wangchuk, Jigme Singhye 32
Massachusetts Avenue, Gandhi Warrier, N. S. 17
statue on 137 Warsaw 124
Metropolitan Museum of Art 56 Warsaw Pact countries 47
position on Kargil 159 Washington 35, 73, 124 34, 137,
Unnikrishnan, K. V. 176 139, 142, 146 51, 154, 159,
Unnikrishnan, Parayil 44 45 163 65, 169, 170, 172 78,
Unvanquished 112 203, 226
USSR 35, 37, 42, 44, 46, 55, 58, 67, Washington Post, The 177
79, 86, 92, 95, 99, 119, 126, 138, White House 2, 130, 133, 160, 168 70,
139, 143, 158, 160, 163 172 73, 224, 235
Win, U Ne 58, 61 63, 185 86, 198
World Bank 156
V World Malayalee Council (WMC) 200
World Trade Centre 210
Vajpayee, Atal Bihari 44, 47, 48, 50 51, World War, Second 29
53, 80 World Wildlife Fund 110
as external affairs minister 119 Wycliffe, John (Sunny) 16
 INDEX 253

Y Z

Yangon 74 Zambia 79, 81 84, 86

Yankee, Ashi 32 Lusaka 79, 81
Yugoslavia 74, 76, 79, 86, 96, 98, Zero real growth (ZRG) 213 14
100 Ziau-u-Rehman 82
enthusiasm of 97 Zimbabwe, framework for the
UN forces in 108 birth of 82
Author and LIC officers with Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Prime Minister of Fiji, 1986

Indian delegation to the non-aligned ministerial meeting led by Mr Madhava Sinh

Solanki, Acera, Ghana, 1991
Author addresses the UN Security Council, 1992

Author chairs the UN Committee on Programme and Coordination, 1992

Author with Mr George Saitoti, Vice-President of Kenya, Nairobi, 1996

Author and wife with Smt. Sonia Gandhi at their Nairobi

residence, 1997
Author with Ambassador Naresh Chandra; Mr Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of
State; and Mr Karl Inderfurth, Assistant Secretary of State; Washington, 1998

Indian team aboard ‘Odyssey’ before the talks on disarmament and non-
proliferation, Washington, 1998
Author with Mr Bill Clinton and Mr A. B. Vajpayee, 2000

Author with Mr Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General, IAEA, 2003

Author and wife with Maestro Zubin Mehta, Vienna, 2003

Author with Mr Thomas Klestil, President of Austria, 2003

Author on the golf course with Mr Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General, IAEA,
Vienna, 2003