Overseas Enemies

L M Singhvi's broad brush with diplomacy during the PV Narasimha Rao and Deve Gowda years8212;he was a former High Commissioner to the UK d...

L M Singhvi8217;s broad brush with diplomacy during the PV Narasimha Rao and Deve Gowda years8212;he was a former High Commissioner to the UK during the 8217;90s8212;did not stop him from hoping he would be President. Meanwhile, his close association with the BJP took him to the top job of the High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora8212;a committee ostensibly set up to strengthen the linkages between Mother India and her forgotten tribes now scattered across the globe. So for the last 18 months, Singhvi 038; Co have been junketing across the globe speaking to the converted and the faithful primarily overseas chapters of the Sangh brotherhood.

A Pravasi Bhartiya Divas has now been planned for January 9 to commemorate the day Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from spending 27 years in South Africa, and India intends a huge splash. Singhvi is exhorting Indian ambassadors worldwide to send in the Indians. A major target is the US of course, for which NRI audience the BJP-led audience is under immense pressure to announce a partial 8216;8216;dual citizenship8217;8217; scheme. Except that it has once again fallen between the two stools of ambassador Lalit Mansingh and ambassador-at-large for Persons of Indian Origin Bhishma Agnihotri. That there8217;s no love lost between the two is old news. What8217;s new is that Mansingh has washed his hands of sending contingents of Indians for the Pravasi Divas, insisting it8217;s Agnihotri8217;s baby. Agnihotri8217;s arguing the reverse. Maybe Mother India will have to do without her prodigal sons and daughters after all.

Facing MEA8217;s Music

Guess who fell foul of the MEA just under a fortnight ago. The well-known singers Farida Khanum and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a nephew of the dear departed genius who goes by the same name. Their crime : They are citizens of Pakistan. New Delhi8217;s infamous old litany, 8216;8216;no dialogue with any Pakistani citizens until cross-border terrorism comes to an end8217;8217; reached ridiculously new heights with the two singers across the Radcliffe Line. Still, the MEA had to contend with the magazine group which had invited them for their annual music festival in the shadow of India Gate. So they are said to have found an absolutely perfect bureaucratic way out of this unseemly mess. They delayed permission for the visas so long that both Khanum and Fateh Ali didn8217;t have the time to buy their air tickets and make the long tedious journey via Dubai.

Pakistan8217;s Chief Justice Sheikh Riaz Ahmed was more fortunate. He had met Chief Justice B N Kirpal in Jaipur for a SAARC law conference a couple of months ago, where Kirpal had invited him to attend a SAARC Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in the capital last week. Since Kirpal wanted him here, the MEA couldn8217;t really refuse. Its excuse for the exception? The SAARC charter allows judges from the regions to travel into each other8217;s countries without a visa.

China In Our Backyard

There8217;s a former finance minister in MEA and a former EAM in Finance, but New Delhi8217;s still petrified about taking on the brave new world of economic diplomacy. The free trade and regional investment pact inked with the ASEAN yesterday in Cambodia has such a back-breaking rider to it8212;both sides will decide after ten years whether they want to go ahead with this arrangement8212;that regional leaders are either snickering behind India8217;s back or are just too overwhelmed about the timeline to comment. It8217;s been about ten years since the Soviet Union broke up and look how the world has changed!

Still, Commerce minister Murasoli Maran8217;s proposal for a 8216;8216;long-term8217;8217; pact at a Brunei meeting some two months ago had the ASEAN nodding its collective head. Problem is, New Delhi learns too slowly. Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, when he came to town nearly three years ago, proposed a bilateral free trade treaty. Then when PM Vajpayee went to Singapore in April this year, the Indian side announced the euphemistic 8216;Closer Economic Cooperation Agreement.8217; A joint study group is still meeting8230; Meanwhile, China8217;s taking several great leaps.

A Room, Please

Minister of state for external affairs Digvijay Singh and Harsh Bhasin, India8217;s unannounced high commissioner to Pakistan, share one thing in common. They8217;re both looking for rooms to sit in. Singh8217;s got these silky peach curtains in his office that would look more at home in a woman8217;s boudoir in 19th century France. But he8217;s tolerating them in the hope that he8217;s going to shift out to better pastures8212;in this case, to the office of the other MoS in the MEA, Omar Abdullah, whose status within the ministry remains a mystery. Abdullah has this wonderful corner at the other end of South Block, and the talk is that Digvijay Singh will take over his kingdom as well as his office when he finally goes.

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Meanwhile, there8217;s Bhasin, moving from room to empty room in the ministry, ever since he was called back from his teaching assignment in New York in June. Now Bhasin8217;s acquiring a personal stake in dialogue being resumed with Islamabad: He just got evicted by Nirupama Rao who moved from her old role as spokeswoman into her new incarnation as additional secretary, personnel, into the room he was occupying. Unfortunately for him, India8217;s old chant on cross-border terrorism8217;s coming in the way.