 "Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with US President John F Kennedy at the White House in 1961")
A LIFE IN DIPLOMACY
Author: Maharajkrishna Rasgotra
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 699
Pages: 437
A book's opening paragraph is often a measure of its worth. Maharajkrishna Rasgotra offers a fluid description of how Jawaharlal Nehru embodied India's foreign policy: '…his voice was the voice of an India that the modern world had not heard for two hundred years'. This is a memoir with depth and mastery that will endure as portrait of India's foreign policy in the first 50 years of Independence. The format is interesting; the author's experiences are studded within a broad-brush panorama of Indian diplomacy.
In keeping with the book's wide optic, the first three chapters are devoted to issues such as the creation of the Indian Foreign Service. Especially revealing in this is a description of the way the ministry of external affairs carried out ad hoc recruitment in 1948-49 of nearly 50 young people from the armed forces, academia, former princes and others, and the checkered performance of our first ambassadors, notably Krishna Menon, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, K M Panikkar, and S Radhakrishnan. The author offers succinct, sharp pen-portraits of these and other Indian diplomacy pioneers. The memoir proper begins with the fourth chapter titled "About Myself", covering his childhood, recruitment in the Service and training in the UK.
In Washington, DC Third Secretary Rasgotra cultivated a friendship with the State Department India desk head, who in July 1953 told him that the US was about to initiate major arms supply to Pakistan. Reporting this to embassy seniors, he was disbelieved, as none of them had heard of such an epochal development; they agreed only to briefly mention it in the embassy's monthly political report, fortuitously going out to New Delhi a few days later. At the ministry of external affairs an alert desk officer saw its importance, and the information travelled all the way to Nehru. The moral: junior officials sometimes come upon key developments; hierarchies should use them well for information collection.
Nepal was Rasgotra's next assignment (1954-57), as second secretary, in effect the deputy to Ambassador B K Gokhale. Summarising those experiences the author offers lessons on how India should deal with small neighbours: that the small will fear even the good work done by the large power; one must reach out to the people; not begrudge the small state accessing other sources for aid; and accept that the "yam between two stones" (in Nepal's self-description) will play one stone against the other. Returning to Kathmandu (1973-76), Ambassador Rasgotra faced Nepali contemns, in part their reaction to the integration of Sikkim into India. But I wonder if the ambassador fully heeded those lessons (I was then a director in the ministry of external affairs' Northern Division).
Among the book's gems: an account of the working of the United Nations Fourth Committee at New York, where in 1958-62 Rasgotra led a campaign to facilitate the independence of the quaintly named "non-self governing territories" (NSGTs); Nehru's September-October 1960 month-long stay for the UN session and the high drama of world leader encounters (including Nikita Khrushchev's shoe thumping incident at the General Assembly); the abortive efforts by China, Indonesia and Pakistan in 1965 to organise a second Afro-Asian Conference, to follow on Bandung 1955; and his energetic pruning of the Indian High Commission in London in 1972-73, from an absurdly inflated staff strength of 1,400 to 415 (this mission was larger than the ministry of external affairs, some 25 years after Independence).
The author's account of his years as foreign secretary (1982-85) compels attention. Fascinating insight is provided on how Indira Gandhi's July 1982 visit to the US came about, overcoming the blocking actions by her key advisers; the prime minister's thinking on resuming dialogue with China; talks with Pakistan in August 1982, followed by President Zia's November 1982 visit; and developments in relations with the SAARC states, notably Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. As one of two Administration Division Joint Secretaries in 1982-83 (the other was Lalit Mansingh), I reported directly to Rasgotra, without an additional secretary or secretary rank official to act as a filter. Most personnel issues relating to ambassadors much senior to me were settled across the table, with no formal noting or even his signature. This reflected his trust, decisiveness, and no-nonsense style.
A number of basic lessons on relationship building shine through this rich narrative. First: the importance of personal initiative, acting through cool self-assessment, in the setting of the country of assignment, to implement national policy. Second: building and trusting one's team. During Indira Gandhi's November 1981 Paris visit (during which she decided to appoint him foreign secretary) I asked a visibly relaxed Ambassador Rasgotra how he was so cool in the midst of a prime ministerial visit; 'We have planned well. Now the arrangements are on autopilot', was his reply. Third: the value of cultivating a wide network of friends and allies, both abroad and at home and sustaining relations with them over time. Fourth: the value of domestic diplomacy, consisting of measured actions in one's home country that support foreign policy actions.
The book raises some issues that will be contested, such as an alleged Kennedy offer to Nehru (undated, but by inference perhaps in the second half of 1961) to conduct a nuclear test in India. But that adds spice, without distracting from its huge historic value. Quite an achievement for an author at 91!
The reviewer is a former diplomat, now a teacher kishanrana@gmail.com
