HVK Archives: When Indians went visiting
When Indians went visiting - The Indian Express
Jyoti Malhotra
()
26 August 1997
Title: When Indians went visiting
Author: Jyoti Malhotra
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: August 26, 1997
Jyoti Malhotra traces the history of insensitivity with which the British
have treated Indian concerns
Long before the Queen of England's Indian itinerary became a controversy at
home and abroad, there hung a tale of British insensitivity to Indian
concerns, of bargain and pressure - and perhaps, even, a measure of
gracelessness in London's behaviour towards an Indian Head of State.
The same British officialdom, which seemed so outraged because of an Indian
Prime Minister's suggestion that the Queen drop a visit to Amritsar to
avoid the taint of critical public comment (I.K Gujral has since retracted
from that comment saying the Queen as an honoured guest was welcome to
visit any part of India), refused to extend minimum courtesy to President
R. Venkataraman beyond the call of duty.
The episode took place in l990, when the former Indian Head of State went
to England on a State visit. The British offered him hospitality at
Buckingham Palace for three days.
For personal reasons, Venkataraman wished to extend his London visit by one
day, and India requested that he be allowed to stay on in the royal
residence. Point-blank, the British refused. Venkataraman had to move to
the Indian high commissioner's residence in the city.
That was not all. In 1993, another former Indian President, Shankar Dayal
Sharma, was invited by Cambridge University to be honoured with a
doctorate. But the British insisted that the visit to England could not be
deemed a State visit, because rules of protocol demanded that another such
visit could not take place in such quick succession. Ultimately, Sharma had
to be content with an invitation for tea by Prince Charles.
So when the Indian itinerary for the Queen was being debated a few months
ago, London was very keen that her third visit to the 'jewel in the former
Raj's crown' last a stately nine days. That's when some Indian officials
with long memories brought up the treatment meted out to President
Venkataraman. After much bargaining and negotiation, it was mutually
agreed that the Queen's trip be pared down to six days.
London had also put out at the same time that the Queen was very keen on
going to the Golden Temple and Jallianwala Bagh Memorial in Amritsar. Some
say the British probably saw in it a great photo opportunity, to show her
off as the real Queen of Hearts to her coloured and white subjects back
home, to portray her as the Great Leveller.
But if that was the whole truth, Indians began to ask, why couldn't the
Queen visit the numerous gurudwaras dotting Southall and Brighton and
Birmingham?
Why begin the devotion in Amritsar? Especially when, in the decade that
Punjab burnt, in the 1980s, - and the death ton climbed frighteningly out
of the graph - Britain gave refuge to many terrorists and their
master-minds from that State.
That included Jagjit Singh Chohan, the self-styled 'president' of a 'state'
that he wanted to carve out from the heart of India, called 'Khalistan'.
When Chohan issued passports and even currency in the name of this
fictitious republic, the British turned a blind eye. Only in the late
1980s did Margaret Thatcher reverse policy, culminating in the bilateral
extradition treaty of 1991.
By the early 1990s, however, the British were beginning to shift their
Indian focus to the North-east (Kashmir, of course, remaining a perennial
'area of dispute'). When Prime Minister John Major came to India in 1993,
one of his strongest requests was the release of a British national who had
been in Indian judicial custody for a whole year then.
This British national had deliberately crossed the Inner Line in the
North-east, beyond which no foreigners are allowed to go, and had made
contact with terrorist groups in that region. He had been arrested by
Indian authorities and by the time Major made his unusual request, in any
case his time in jail was going to be up. He was released.
Major, in India earlier this year, again requested that he be allowed to go
to Kohima, Nagaland, to pay homage at the cemetery where British soldiers
were killed fighting the Japanese during the Second World War. The request
was turned down by New Delhi. Perhaps Major forgot that Indian soldiers had
fought on both sides of that battle - not only as the foot-soldiers of the
British, but also as comrades-in-arms of Subhash Chandra Bose of the Indian
National Army.
But the piece de resistance of British insensitivity in recent times must
be reserved for the May visit of Derek Fatchett the Minister of State for
Foreign and Common-wealth Relations. Even as Fatchett's programme was being
finalised, the British put out that he wanted to go to Kashmir. No Kashmir,
said India, not wanting a visiting dignitary to make inappropriate comments
about the situation in that State.
Then London said Fatchett wanted to meet Hurriyat leaders in Delhi. New
Delhi refused again. The requests did not. stop there. Desperate to meet
someone from Kashmir, they requested a meeting with Chief Minister Farooq
Abdullah. Unfortunately for them, Abdullah fell ill.
Now it was Delhi's turn to extract a promise from their guest: Fatchett
would not make any reference to British interest in Kashmir during his stay
m the Indian territory.
The British minister broke the code during a press conference on the last
day of his stay in Delhi, when he persisted with "offering" Britain's good
offices to mediate between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.
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