Until he blotted his copybook in the last 48 hours by playing fast and loose with the nation’s complex diplomatic positions in a bid to keep his job, Natwar Singh had every reason to be proud of his record as India’s foreign minister.When he took over as India’s top diplomat in May 2004, a job he had coveted for so long, Natwar Singh had an unenviable reputation as man badly out of touch with the changing contours of India’s foreign policy. But as he finally bowed to the inevitable today by stepping down as external affairs minister, there was no way of ignoring Natwar Singh’s role in engineering major breakthroughs in India’s troubled relations with the United States and Pakistan. While his stumbles on dealing with the Volcker report—that named him and the Congress party as beneficiaries—cost him his job, he appears to have won a promise, for whatever its worth, to regain his position in the Foreign Office once his name is cleared. Despite his own diplomatic experience from a different era—Natwar Singh himself used to make this point openly—he showed that rare capacity to rethink many of his past assumptions in grappling with a very new world. For all the accusations that he was a Cold Warrior from the past, Natwar Singh’s record is that of a realist who put India’s national interests right on top. But clearly, his position as India’s foreign minister had become untenable as he allowed speculation that he was prepared to revise India’s position on Iranian proliferation in order to gain support from the Communist parties. At a time when India was involved in some sensitive negotiations, the last thing the government could afford at the helm of the Foreign Office was a bitter man fighting for his political survival by shooting from the hip. The sensitive diplomatic issues at hand included the implementation of the agreement on atomic energy cooperation with the United States, the Kashmir talks with Pakistan, the boundary negotiations with China and the very delicate manoeuvre at the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iranian proliferation. India has a crowded diplomatic schedule in the next few weeks—from the SAARC summit this weekend to the first ever East Asia Summit in December. In between, there is the summit-level engagement with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and a Commonwealth Summit in Malta. With the Prime Minister now directly in charge, a measure of calm is expected to quickly return to Indian diplomacy. The government will surely find ways undo some of the damage from Natwar Singh’s undiplomatic remarks in the last two days. Although he failed to read the writing on the wall in the last couple of days, Natwar Singh was eager to learn on job in his early days as foreign minister. When his remarks on the centrality of the Shimla Agreement in Indo-Pak relations in the summer of 2004 created a furor in Islamabad and threatened to wreck the incipient peace process, Natwar did not let personal pride come in the way furthering ties with Pakistan. He led from the front some of the bold departures in India’s policy towards Pakistan including on Kashmir. But it was his leadership of the hard fought negotiations with the Bush Administration on civilian nuclear energy cooperation last July in Washington that will be long remembered as Natwar Singh’s enduring diplomatic contribution. At a moment when the Indian delegation was deeply divided on finalising the terms of the nuclear deal, Natwar Singh had both the vision to see the high stakes in ending India’s nuclear isolation and the decisiveness to bring the talks to a closure. Although he appeared to have lost them in the last few days, Natwar Singh brought some easy charm and sharp wit to tide over many difficult moments in India’s recent diplomacy. As he regains his composure, Natwar Singh, given to literary and diplomatic reflection, will surely find ways to contribute to the nation’s foreign policy debates in the coming days.
