HVK Archives: Sonia can mess around with foreign policy
Sonia can mess around with foreign policy - The Free Press Journal
Virendra Kapoor
()
September 16, 1998
Title: Sonia can mess around with foreign policy
Author: Virendra Kapoor
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: September 16, 1998
Instead of living in the past and harping on the time when India
was in the forefront of the verbal onslaught against the white
apartheid regime in world forums, the Congress eggheads of
Panchmarhi fame would have benefited immensely had they allowed
reality to intrude upon their deliberations. For neither South
Africa nor Mandela is overly eager to befriend India.
Notwithstanding Sonia Gandhi's ill-conceived efforts to reach out
to foreign heads of State and Government side-stepping the
established channels of normal diplomatic contacts, they are not
about to close down the Ministry of External Affairs and order
the large number of personnel on its rolls to report henceforth
to 10 Janpath. The Italian-born heiress to the country's oldest
political organisation might be able to make monkeys out of
Congressmen, but it is unlikely that even she will be allowed the
luxury to mess around with the conduct of the nation's foreign
policy so long as there is a legitimate government to speak for
India and all Indians with official foreign interlocutors.
In its anxiety to score cheap points against the Vajpayee
Government, Sonia Gandhi and her fawning courtiers at the recent
Panchmarhi Durbar had grievously erred in torpedoing the long-
standing consensus on foreign policy. The Congress focus on
Vajpayee's performance at the recent NAM summit in Durban, South
Africa, and on the earlier exchanges between the BJP-led
Government and the Chinese authorities following Pokhran-II, was
ill-advised and ill-considered. It seemed as if Natwar Singh had
been able to hijack the party platform in order to stake his
claim to the foreign minister's job as and when Sonia Gandhi
grabbed power for her large and hungry brood to share in the near
future.
No thought was spared about the long tradition of bipartisanship
in the conduct of foreign policy. Nor did Congressmen pause to
ponder over the absurdity of their seeking to repair the alleged
damage ostensibly done to India's relations with South Africa and
China by the Vajpayee Government. Following the death of Rajiv
Gandhi, for the visiting heads of State and Government a call at
10 Janpath might have become de rigueur, but these courtesy calls
by themselves wouldn't have been sufficient for this former
Italian an pair in Britain to claim to have blossomed into a
great foreign policy expert overnight. Clearly, she was being led
into the quagmire of foreign relations by an ambitious Natwar
Singh whose volubility is matched only by the vacuity of his
thoughts.
This former Indian Foreign Service official who did not have a
particularly distinguished record while in service might he
burning with the ambition to ensure his place as a shadow foreign
minister in Sonia Gandhi's Cabinet, but must he be so unmindful
of the national interest as to weaken India's voice in foreign
capitals? For by deciding to send its own ambassadors to
Pretoria and Beijing the Congress Party sends a message of
division and discord in India on this nation's foreign policy
formulations to foreign capitals and thus invites these, albeit
by implication, to exploit these differences for their own
partisan ends.
No other construction can be put on the proposed message that the
Vanaspati Maratha warrior, Sharad Pawar, is supposed to deliver
to Nelson Mandela, the Chairman of NAM and President of South
Africa, on behalf of his supreme leader Sonia Gandhi sometime
later this month. Whether or not the fact that Pawar had already
planned to be in South Africa at the head of a group of big-time
cane-growers reflected Sonia Gandhi's penny-pinching ways, Natwar
Singh, one is told, is not amused. Having worked so diligently
and so craftily on the party. boss to allow him to right the
supposed wrong done by Vajpayee to the world statesman Nelson
Mandela, Natwar Singh was rightly miffed at being bypassed when
it came to naming the ambassador to South Africa. In any case,
Natwar Singh could well justifiably turn around to accuse Sharad
Pawar of bowing even less of foreign policy than Prime Minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee! Really, woe betide a nation which has no
Natwar Singh to represent it in world forums.
And, pray, what was Vajpayee's alleged affront to Mandela at
Durban? It has been an article of faith with the Indian foreign
policy establishment for over four decades that Kashmir is a
bilateral dispute to he resolved by India and Pakistan through
peaceful negotiations. If someone ups at a multilateral forum to
question that formulation admittedly rooted in the well-founded
premise that India can have nothing to gain by internationalising
Kashmir - will it not be incumbent on the Indian representative
to nip that effort in the bud? Vajpayee was guilty, if as all, of
ticking off Mandela ever so politely for his wholly unwarranted,
nay, gratuitous reference to Kashmir in his inaugural address as
the newly-installed chairman of NAM.
It maybe that Mandela is in the habit of saying atrocious things.
In the past, on his frequent visits to foreign countries he is
known to have embarrassed host-governments by his unfortunate
choice of words and his expression of inappropriate concerns.
Why, not long ago as a guest of India while being ensconced in
the comfort of Rashtrapati Bhawan, Mandela had openly endorsed
the Mandal reservations just when anti-Mandal agitators were
immolating themselves on the streets of the Capital. Of course,
his being a foreigner does not bar him from having an opinion on
Mandal reservations or other issues that may be exercising the
minds of Indians. But his being an official representative of
South Africa imposed on him certain constraints which in turn
enjoined on him the need to speak in measured and non-
controversial tones and to steer clear of all matters impinging
on the sovereignty of the host nation. Mandal was our domestic
affair; we didn't need a Mandela to resolve it for us.
Likewise we do not need the services of Mandela to sort out the
mess constantly sought to be created in Kashmir by Pakistan's
ceaseless interference. Were we to accept Mandela's admittedly
innocuously worded offer to mediate in Kashmir and let it go
unchallenged at the NAM summit, floodgates would have opened for
Kashmir to dominate all multilateral forums in the future. Under
the aegis of a Mandela-led NAM, Kashmir would have a field day.
Pakistan couldn't have hoped for a better turn of events.
Jawaharlal Nehru in his eagerness to win brownie points in world
councils had committed a grave blunder by agreeing to hold a
plebiscite in Kashmir. Now someone laying claim to his legacy by
dint of her marriage to his grandson appeared to be putting
Mandela's alleged status as a great leader ahead of Indian
interests in Kashmir.
The point that Mandela was a world statesman was well taken. The
point that he had struggled long and hard to break the back of
the apartheid regime in South Africa was well-documented. That
he was now the leader of the NAM and the President of South
Africa was well known. Yet none of the above gave Mandela any
right to tinker with Kashmir. Having taken the position that
Kashmir was our own bilateral matter which no one, not even
Mandela, could seek to interfere with, Vajpayee would have failed
in his duty had he not stopped the NAM Chairman in his tracks
when he uttered the unutterable 'K' word. But clearly it was
hard for the Italian-born heiress to the crumbling Congress
edifice to appreciate the Indian sensitivities on Kashmir
although she seemed to have no difficulty in perceiving the
supposed hurt to Mandela caused allegedly by India's successful
insistence on a retraction and an apology.
Instead of living in the past and harping on the time when India
was in the forefront of the verbal onslaught against the white
apartheid regime in world forums, the Congress eggheads of
Panchmarhi fame would have benefited immensely had they allowed
reality to intrude upon their deliberations. For neither South
Africa nor Mandela is overly eager to befriend India. Instead,
they would rather walk that extra mile to court the rich West.
They, want dollars and not empty rhetoric about world peace on
which was premised our foreign policy for close to three decades
after Independence. Hard-nosed foreign policy aimed at pursuing
at all times the objective of national interest has little or no
room for vacuous sentimentality. National interest doesn't
sanction a new variant of the disastrous 'Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai.'
Nor does it permit the policy of appeasement, er, sorry, Gujral
Doctrine to influence this nation's foreign policy. A new foreign
policy paradigm contours of which were unveiled in Pokhran and
recently in Durban alone can serve this nation's interests in the
coming millennium.
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