Muchkund Dubey: Nehruvian diplomat, champion of right to education

He will be remembered as much for his illustrious career as a top diplomat, who not only represented India but also the aspirations of the Global South, as for his pursuit of social development, education and justice

The Vice foreign minister of China being received by Muchkund Dubey at Hyderabad House. (Express Archives)

Written by: Suhas Borker

6 min readJun 28, 2024 11:14 AM IST First published on: Jun 27, 2024 at 02:08 PM IST

Muchkund Dubey, president of the Council for Social Development (CSD) and former foreign secretary, passed away in New Delhi on June 26. He was 90. Dubey is survived by his wife, Lalita, and his two daughters, Medha and Madhu. He had been admitted to Fortis Escort Hospital, New Delhi, in early June and died of pulmonary and cardiac complications. Despite his frail health in the last few years, he had kept himself to a punishing schedule of academic work.

Dubey will be remembered as much for his illustrious career as a top diplomat, who not only represented India but also the aspirations of the Global South, as for his pursuit of social development, education and justice.

Dubey belonged to the 1957 batch of the Indian Foreign Service and was brought up in the Nehruvian mould and the Bandung spirit. He had the unique and unenviable distinction of serving as foreign secretary to three prime ministers. When Muchkund took over as the foreign secretary from S K Singh on April 20, 1990, V P Singh was the prime minister. Then came Chandra Shekhar on November 10, 1990, followed by P V Narasimha Rao on June 21, 1991. This was a politically volatile period at home. The international scenario was also witnessing dramatic changes with the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union. From the era when the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was the main instrument for promoting Indian foreign policy to the times of pragmatism when “Nehruvian idealism” and “moral posturing” came under severe attack, he remained committed to his values and ideals. Muchkund was a raconteur par excellence and recalled with his inimitable laugh how he had shepherded a multi-party group of top Indian leaders at Windhoek to the “torch in the night” independence of Namibia in March 1990, waiting with child-like eagerness to meet the iconic Nelson Mandela, who had been released from prison a month before.

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For 30 years after his retirement from foreign service in 1991, Dubey was a scholar and public intellectual. He was a professor of International Relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University for eight years and president of CSD from March 1995 till he passed away. Whenever one visited his chamber at CSD, one found him completely immersed in his academic work, his table loaded with a huge pile of files, papers and books. Whether it was meeting and guiding scholars from across the country, chairing seminars and brainstorming sessions at the Council or writing papers, monographs and books, he was a workaholic with a very short temper who would not suffer mediocrity in any way. In June 2017, Lalan Shah Fakir ke Geet, his book on the Bengali mystic poet and social reformer, was launched in New Delhi. Bangladesh’s Information Minister and Chairman of the Bangla Academy had specially flown in from Dhaka for the event, an indication of his close relationship with a country where he had served as India’s High Commissioner between 1979 and ’82.

Indian foreign secretary Muchkund Dubey and Pakistan foreign secretary Tanvir Ahmed Khan shaking hands before talks. (Express Archives)

Dubey’s work on education encapsulated his belief that quality education was a basic right for all children irrespective of caste, class, gender and religion. He remained a firm advocate of the Common Schooling System. He argued that it was not a utopian concept but the foundation of a developed country. He was the chairperson of the Common School Commission of Bihar which submitted its report in 2007. Until his last days, he lamented the lack of political will to implement the Common School System and was agonised by the subversion of the Right To Education.

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Dubey was the chief consultant for a trilogy of political documentary films that I had been commissioned to make for the Ministry of External Affairs on the history of NAM, South-South Cooperation and a 7,600-km-long road journey from New Delhi to Hanoi. He was forthright on camera with his contrarian views, but at the same time, he aided the filmmaker in negotiating the not-so-diplomatic labyrinthine corridors of South Block.

In early 2010, there was a move by friends of CSD to name the lane on which its building, Sangha Rachana, stood after the founder, Durgabai Deshmukh, as her karmabhoomi. But a money bag got wind of the idea and had the lane named after her father. Muchkund and his associates could not take it and a PIL was filed in the Delhi High Court. Though they did not win the case, he saw to it that CSD never recognised the new name of the lane in any way.

In his last year, a battle royale was fought to install a lift at the CSD building, so that Dubey could access his chamber which was on an upper floor but unfortunately the permission for the installation from the local authorities did not come in time. Yet, he would make it a point to visit the Council or India International Centre every day to meet with his associates.

Muchkund Dubey stood out as a beacon of justice, equity and integrity and shall be sorely missed.

The writer is the convener, Working Group on Alternative Strategies and trustee, India International Centre, New Delhi