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What is a life well lived? In my darker moments, I could argue that there can be no such thing
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because all lives end in death and then nothing before has any meaning. But seriously, how
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does one define a life that is worth living, that one can look back on with satisfaction?
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When I was young, my notion of a good life had everything to do with goals. I wanted
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to achieve ABC, then XYZ and I thought that would make my life a good one. With age, I've
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learned that the joy is in the journey, no matter what the destination is or whether
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you even get there. I want to wake up every morning looking forward to the day and having
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goals gets in the way of that. We remain stressed about the goals we have yet to achieve. I'd
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rather just enjoy the things I do, take pleasure in small joys.
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Now many people will also define a life well lived by speaking about what one has done
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to make the world a better place. This is nebulous and hard to quantify. Anyone who
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has worked at any job or has bought things or sold things has made others better off
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because all voluntary transactions are a win-win game. In fact, I'd argue that just by surviving,
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you make the world a better place, unless you're always on Twitter.
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Now a part of me is skeptical about the rest of the world. I've quoted that famous line
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from Kashi ka assi before, bhar me jaye duniya, hum bajaye harmoniya. I want to play my harmonia
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and the question then is, how can I make sure that I get the most satisfaction from my life?
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And here, I'm struck by something that my guest in this episode says in the second half
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of our conversation, that her idea of happiness is to have something to do, to keep the mind
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concentrated. I love that thought. Do something you want to do and stay busy doing it. The
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happiness is in the doing.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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science. Please welcome your host Amit Varma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen. My guest today is Nirupama Rao, who retired a few years
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ago as Foreign Secretary of India and has had a rich life in which she topped the civil
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services exam in 1973, chose the foreign service, traveled the world, played an important role
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in India's relationship with China, America, Russia and Sri Lanka, and always remained
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curious about the world and passionate about her interests. An amateur musician as a kid,
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she started learning opera seriously after crossing 50 and went on to be the driving
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force behind the South Asia Symphony Orchestra, which brings talented musicians from the region
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together. She's also written a book that's just out called The Fractured Himalaya, India,
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Tibet, China, 1949 to 1962. Nirupama has been a diplomat herself, of course, and an expert
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on China. And in this book, she combines a practitioner's hard-nosed point of view with
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a historian's rigor. I've done many episodes on India's relationship with China before
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this and read many books on it, but I learned a lot that was new for me from this fantastic
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book. Please do add The Fractured Himalaya to your collection. In our conversation though,
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I was more interested in talking about her life. So that's what we do. When someone
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with so much energy and humility lives such a rich and eventful life, there are plenty
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of life lessons for people like us to learn. So I love this conversation and I learned
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from this conversation and I'm sure you will too. But before you listen to it, let's take
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a quick commercial break. And oh, by the way, this was recorded before Russia's invasion
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of Ukraine, which is why we don't mention it at all.
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Do you want to read more? I've put in a lot of work in recent years in building a reading
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habit. This means that I read more books, but I also read more long-form articles and
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it says there's a world of knowledge available through the internet. But the problem we all
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face is how do we navigate this knowledge? How do we know what to read? How do we put
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the right incentives in place? Well, I discovered one way. A couple of friends of mine run this
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awesome company called CTQ Compounds at CTQCompounds.com, which aims to help people up-level themselves
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by reading more. A few months ago, I signed up for one of their programs called The Daily
#
Reader. Every day for six months, they sent me a long-form article to read. The subjects
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I discovered went from machine learning to mythology to mental models and marmalade.
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This helped me build a habit of reading. At the end of every day, I understood the world
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a little better than I did before. So if you want to build your reading habit, head on
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over to CTQCompounds and check out their Daily Reader. New batches start every month. They
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also have a great program called Future Stack, which helps you stay up-to-date with ideas,
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skills, and mental models that will help you stay relevant in the future. Future Stack
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batches start every Saturday. Also, check out their Social Capital Compound, which helps
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you master social media. What's more, you get a discount of a whopping Rs. 2,500, 2,500
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if you use the discount code Unseen. So head on over to CTQCompounds at CTQCompounds.com
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and use the code Unseen. Up-level yourself. Nirupama, welcome to The Scene and The Unseen.
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Thank you so much, Amit. Great to be here. I've listened to your podcast for a long time
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and admired it very much.
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Thank you. That's so kind of you. And one of the reasons I was looking forward to recording
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with you is that some of the subjects that you're an expert on are subjects that I've
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done many episodes on. I've done episodes on foreign affairs. I've done episodes on
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China. But you bring a unique perspective to it as an actual practitioner in this field.
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You've been in the Indian Foreign Service for all these years. In fact, you joined the
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Indian Foreign Service in the year I was born. And your book, The Fractured Himalaya, has
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so many interesting sort of insight perspectives on a subject that I thought I broadly knew,
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but still I learned something from it. But as we begin, what I'd really love to do is
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start by talking about your childhood. Where were you born? Where did you grow up? What
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were the early years like?
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Thank you, Amit. The fact that you mentioned that you were born in the year I joined the
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Foreign Service really makes me quite dated, as you can well imagine. To tell you about
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my childhood, I had a perfectly normal childhood, a happy childhood, I would say. I am the daughter
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of an army officer. My dad actually joined the Indian army during World War II. He kind
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of quit college. He was an intermediate college in Calicut, and he just decided one day that
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he didn't want to continue his studies and joined the army in those days as what was
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called a Viceroy Commissioned Officer, which today would be called a JCO, Junior Commissioned
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Officer. So he served during World War II, basically in the subcontinent in places that
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are now in Pakistan and also the rest of India. And he got his commission as a lieutenant
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the year, I think, he married my mom, which was 1949. And I was born in December 1950.
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And my early childhood, till the age of five, was spent in Bangalore. We lived in, well,
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pictures of that time when I see, I realize what a different place Bangalore was. And
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we lived in a very, I think, leisurely sort of environment in what is now Cambridge layout
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in Bangalore. The rumor has it that this was an old bungalow that Winston Churchill stayed
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in. But you know, I've heard this from many people that I stayed in a bungalow that Winston
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He must have moved around a lot.
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Absolutely, when he was posted in Bangalore at the end of the 19th century. So, but Bangalore,
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as a city, does have a history that goes back into the colonial times when really it was
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garrisoned and became a part of the British stronghold in South India and what they call
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the Carnatic in those days. So I grew up here, I started school here. And then after that,
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my father was posted in Pune, as it was called, now Pune. And from there, we went to Lucknow.
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I studied in Lucknow for a few years. And then we ended up in Wellington in the Nilgiris.
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And I finished school in Coonoor. Coonoor is kind of a twin city to twin town to Wellington.
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So I finished school there. My ambition from the age of 12 was to become a diplomat. And
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why you may ask it was because an uncle of mine, my mother's brother, was in the Foreign
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Service. And he had served in occupied Japan, as it was called, soon after World War II.
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As you know, the Americans were there for a few years. And my uncle happened to serve
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in Japan. And he would come back and tell us stories about his life there. And he brought
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back a lot of little collectibles that were all arranged very neatly in middle class households
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where they keep all these decoration items in a kind of a glass case. And as kids, we
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would look through the glass and look at pictures of Mount Fuji and pictures of Japanese women
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in their kimonos and little knickknacks. So that fascinated me. That got me thinking about
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the world beyond what I was accustomed to. So it kind of kindled the curiosity about
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wanting to know about places that I could only imagine, I could only dream about. There
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was no scope or no question of traveling abroad in those days. As you know, air travel was
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extremely expensive. It's not like affordable as it is today. It wasn't affordable. And
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in any case, my parents couldn't have afforded that kind of lifestyle.
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So we lived a very simple life, actually. My mother was a homemaker. And she was a,
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we managed with whatever little we had. We were three girls, three daughters. I didn't
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have brothers. And we were brought up in an army environment, which was quite cosmopolitan
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because the uncles and aunties were not just from Kerala. I mean, I belong to Kerala. The
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uncles and aunties came from all over the country. And that kind of also, I think enabled
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me to grow up with that kind of fan Indian perspective because I hadn't lived in Kerala
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and I used to go there for holidays. I used to love going to our Tharavad, the Tharavad,
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the matrilineal Kerala family, the Tharavad house and listen to my grandmother speak about
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the history of the Tharavad, which is the matrilineal joint family. So I had a perspective
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about Kerala. I was a voracious reader in English, basically, although I was tutored
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in Malayalam and I can read and write Malayalam, but I don't read in Malayalam. Let us say
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that English is a language which I've been familiar with from my childhood. So I was
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a voracious reader. I remember just have my nose buried in a book while my sisters were
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playing or I wasn't much of an outdoors person, I must confess, a bit of a couch potato reading
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all the time and good student. And I would say my mother would always categorize me among
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her daughters as the most persevering, most persevering. So that was me. And that's the
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way I grew up. Yeah. I mean, just thinking of everything you described, it seems to me
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that if there is a recipe for someone who is going to be a career diplomat later on
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and travel the world, this seems a start of a great recipe because one, you have the army
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background where you're not, you know, closeted in a particular place or a particular whatever,
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but you're meeting people from all over and you're open and you're talking to them and
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you're at ease with them. And second, the love of reading. And you mentioned elsewhere
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that you loved history books as well. So second, the love of reading. So you're already in
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the world of the imagination, traveling. And at the same time, you have an open mindset
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because you're meeting people from everywhere. And there is kind of that self-confidence.
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And by the way, air travel in my time also was exorbitant. I mean, I think till liberalization
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and the economy opened up, I don't think, you know, and my dad was an IAS officer, but
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even for us, it was, you know, not something that we experienced much. I'm struck by an
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interesting matter of the timeline that you mentioned that at the age of 12, you decided
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you wanted to be a diplomat and your uncle's knickknacks and the kind of glimpses that
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you got of exotic life are part of that. At the age of 12 was also when we lost the war
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to China. So in your young imagination as a 12 year old, what was your sense of what
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just happened there? What was the sense of the people around you? Like, was it just viewed
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as a national humiliation or were there sort of narratives to kind of explain it away or
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cover it up or whatever?
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For an 11 year old, 12 year old to listen to the accounts that my parents would often,
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you know, when at the dinner table speak of what was happening on the border with China.
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And my father was attached to the Madras regiment. You know, the Wellington is the Madras regimental
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center. And if you visited it, I think the Madras regimental center and its huge barracks
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square to my mind should be a UNESCO World Heritage Site because it is a so well preserved
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example of British Victorian architecture. You know, the humongous size of that barracks
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square and the colonnade of buildings surrounding it. Even now, when I go there and I try to
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visit the MRC, as it's called, I try to go to that barracks square and kind of think
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about my childhood and, you know, the various army related sports events and things we saw,
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the parades we saw there. So the Madras regimental center, as you know, was also, it also had
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soldiers who we lost in the war with China, particularly on the eastern front, what is
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now Arunachal Pradesh and where, you know, we fought some disastrous campaigns in the
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Tawang sector, the battle of Namkachu for instance, and the way the Chinese came pouring down.
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So to a child, I mean, I would hear accounts of how the Chinese came, you know, multitudes
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of them came down the mountain literally. And the child is imagining all that. I had
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a dentist, you know, I used to go to a dentist for, you know, when you're growing up, I wore
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braces when I was growing up. So my mother would take me to the dentist and this old,
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he was an aging man. I think his name was Dr. Mathias. And he would, you know, it was
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such a painful treatment. And when he would kind of give me an injection in my gum or
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something, he would talk about Chinese torture, you know, how the Chinese used very, very,
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you know, barbaric methods of dealing with their opponents and prisoners. So, you know,
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one was terrified literally of what, you know, was happening in the country. And, you know,
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people were donating their gold jewelry and my mother and others were, you know, giving
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their little contribution to the national effort. And one, of course, heard on the radio,
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we heard Prime Minister Nehru speaking to the nation. So I remember hearing all those
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broadcasts. My father was a news junkie, literally, he would constantly be listening to the radio.
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And I would sit with him and listen to the news broadcasts. And that kindled again, my
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interest in current affairs and what was happening in the world around me. My father, in many
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ways, you know, even though he hadn't completed his college degree and all, I think he was
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quite a man with quite a vision, I think, you know, first of all, we were three daughters,
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as you know, in those days. And when you had girls, I mean, girls tended to be confined
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to a certain definition of how little girls should be. But in the case of my parents,
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I think they just encouraged us to embrace the world. You know, it was there was nothing
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we could not do. We were never told that, you know, this is not for you or you don't
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even follow a dream like this. We were encouraged to follow our dreams. So we, my sister and
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I were very interested in music. My mother, who had never had a music lesson in her life,
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would listen to us and correct us where we were going wrong. She had an instinct, I guess,
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for it. And so we were encouraged at the age of 15, my parents encouraged because I was
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interested. They bought me a Spanish guitar to, you know, to play along with my singing.
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And so even as we were encouraged to do well in our studies, we were also, you know, they
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had an open mind, let's say, about us having such hobbies, singing, playing an instrument
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and being, you know, well rounded people, knowledgeable about the rest of the world.
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So I must credit my parents really for having that vision and not telling us that, you know,
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when you're 18 or 19, you're going to get married. And, you know, that's our responsibility
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ends there. Never. There was never a question that we were going to have careers. My father
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wanted all of us to be medical doctors, physicians. But I told my parents when I was 15 or 16,
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when I joined college in Bangalore, actually, pre-university, that I wanted to do humanities,
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that I didn't want to do science. I didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to be a civil
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servant. I wanted to be a diplomat. And they said, fine, if that's your dream or your desire
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or your preference, then go with it. And there was no obstacle placed. You know, they told
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me I used to cycle to college. I'm thinking, I mean, those days for your parents to say,
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your child can cycle three kilometers, four kilometers to college every day. You're in
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traffic. I mean, they were not that overprotective in that sense. Sometimes if you're too overprotective
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of your children, then I think it doesn't prepare them for life ahead. So I think they
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just took all those right approaches to dealing with us.
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Yeah. So, you know, obviously, anyone listening to this would immediately think of, you know,
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how lucky you were to have the parents that you did, for more than one reason. You know,
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when I look back even on my growing up and most of you know, as much so in yours, I realized
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that our vision of the world is so constrained. Like, unlike today, where there is the internet,
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we're getting news and ideas and entertainment from everywhere. That's not the case back
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then. You know so little about the world. So I'm imagining if you grow up in a cloistered
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environment where you're told, okay, you get to 18, you get to 21, you get married and
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that's it. You're kind of stuck there because you don't even have the information to rebel
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in an intelligent way. And you know, you've mentioned that didn't watch TV till you were
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21 because obviously, there's no TV. You know, you're listening to radio once in a while,
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you're getting little snatches of news. And one of the things that I'm very curious about
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with all my guests, and because I've been partly because I've been thinking about how
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in my own case, that process was haphazard and random is how does one form of view of
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the world? You know, when we're growing up, how do we look at the world? What are the
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values that we imbibe? At one level, of course, we take values from our parents and our peers
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and all of that. But how do we form a framework of looking at the world? Like in your case
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also, you know, you were born in the same India that I was born and that's the same
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India that we're living in today. But in one sense, these are all different Indias. You
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know, India back then was a completely different place. It was, I would imagine, though perhaps
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I'm romanticizing it, that there must have been the exuberance of a new nationhood. At
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the same time, it's an incredibly poor nation, obviously. At the same time, you don't have,
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you're still dealing with traumas. You're dealing, you know, the nation's dealing with
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the trauma of partition. But at the same time, for many years after partition, you know,
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people travel between borders. It wasn't such a hard kind of boundary as it has now become.
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So what was your sense of India? What was your sense of, you know, Nehru had his idea
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of India. But what was it, how did you begin to sort of think of your country, think of
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the world? And do you remember any key moments while growing up, you know, in your teenager
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school as you started, where that deepened? You know, like, what were the significant
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layers that kind of got added on to that, where you see another aspect and another aspect
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When you come to think of it, I would pinpoint 1957. I was six years old. And my parents
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brought, my father brought home some brochures and some illustrated material about the centenary
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of the Sipoi Rising, 1857. And I saw pictures of, you know, the Sipois, our soldiers being
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punished, being hung, you know, literally drawn and quartered by the British because
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they had participated in the rebellion, shot pictures of being, you know, them being, you
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know, at least the description said shot from cannons, although we didn't see pictures of
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that. So that got me, I was perpetually asking questions. My mother would say of all the
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three daughters, I was the one who would always plague her with questions. Why? You know,
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what had happened? How did this happen? So then, you know, I began to, my imagination
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was kindled by, you know, this was something that had happened long before I had been born.
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And my fascination with history and with dates and things, you know, when I was about five
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or six years old, I had this kind of capacity, which went away by the time I was seven. If
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somebody asked me what was 5th June, 1920, what day was it? And I was able to tell you
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what day it was. I had some facility to calculate it. I was actually calculating it in my head.
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It was not like out of the blue that I was saying it. So my parents' friends would like
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come home and literally line up and ask me questions. And my parents bought a hundred
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year calendar. It was a kind of a brass thing, I remember. It must have been made in Murshidabad
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or something with a little bit of decoration. You could turn a little knob and be able to
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identify what day some year, some month in some year was. So they were constantly playing
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that game with me, asking this little six-year-old girl, what was the day on this date and this
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year? And I would say it correctly. I don't know what that facility was, but it went away
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after two years. After that, I couldn't do it. You know, when you talk of, you know,
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people talk, psychologists talk of some influence from, you know, God knows, before birth or
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during birth or whatever. So that got me very interested in history. And when I was about
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seven years old, my parents, who were in Lucknow, took us on a trip to Agra and Delhi to see.
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So, you know, I would ask about the Mughals. Of course, we lived in Lucknow, so seeing
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the residency ruined because of what had happened during the rising of 1857. I mean, in my brain,
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these pictures were constantly being created about, you know, how fascinating our past
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was or how intriguing and what was this India and then train journeys. I didn't travel by
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air till I was about 16 or so, but train journeys, you know, taking the Grand Trunk Express from
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Lucknow, you know, connecting somewhere in Jhansi, I think you connected to the Grand
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Trunk Express and you went for two days, you traveled to then Madras and then took the
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Mangalore Mail to my hometown in Kerala. So, you know, the conception of India as a vast
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country and the changing scenarios as you travel by train, especially when you cross
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the Vindhyas, you know, the tunnels were fascinating to a child like me and the greenery, the beautiful
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greenery of the Vindhyas. I still remember that as you as a train went through that section
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of the journey. So, you know, the idea of North and South and Central India and the
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history of our country and the fact that my parents were there to answer my questions
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and they were, my mother particularly, you know, had, was a graduate, the first university
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graduate in her family. She fought with my grandfather to go to college. And that's another
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thing that fascinates me, you know, between the early 1900s, let us say, and by 1947,
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something did happen which was good for Indian women. I don't know whether it was the freedom
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struggle or, you know, what was, you know, the opening to the world because information,
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the radio, all that had come, although, you know, I don't think my mother grew up with
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the radio in the house. There was no electricity. So, there was no question of having a radio,
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but she was well-read and she went to college and so she was there to keep telling me, opening
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my eyes to a lot of things, perhaps, you know, kind of guiding me to look here, to look there,
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and my father with his love of current affairs and politics. So, my idea of India really
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grew out of all that and my fascination with the country and I had identified myself very
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clearly as Indian, you know, that it was not like I was a Malayali or, you know, I came
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from a particular sec part of Kerala, not like that. I was just what I was, an Indian
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So I have, you know, you mentioned those charming train journeys and I have a sort of something
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that comes out of a related observation, like a few episodes back, Amitabha Kumar, the writer
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and I were talking about how, you know, there was a time where we would write long letters
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to each other and that's no longer the case. Now, everything is sort of very transactional,
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one-line emails, WhatsApp messages, are you free on Friday? I hope you're feeling better,
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but not those longer charming details where, you know, you're putting a part of your soul
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into it almost. And it strikes me that what you said about trains is analogous to it in
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the sense that from my childhood, I remember traveling in trains all over the place and
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you got to see such a cross-section of the country. You would see the textures of everyday
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life, the train would stop, there's a chaiwala outside, different kinds of people you don't
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actually encounter otherwise, you're blind to otherwise, are kind of mingling with you
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and it's like these little temporary communities in these beautiful spaces. And today, again,
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for someone who hasn't traveled by train for many, many years, probably my fault, it kind
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of seems that we have boxed ourselves in, at least people like me have boxed ourselves
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in more and more, where you are in your air-conditioned apartment or your air-conditioned office,
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you get in an air-conditioned car, you get into an air-conditioned plane, and we have
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kind of closeted ourselves away from the real. And I won't even say the real India in a sense
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because there are so many real Indias, but just in that sense that, you know, it's become
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constrained, like in a way, the internet, the kind of intellectual globalization that
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brings in has freed us and given us vast expanses. But at the same time, in our physical spaces,
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we have constrained ourselves to the extent that we may pass through a beautiful tunnel,
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for example, and not notice that it's a beautiful tunnel, and not look around and marvel at
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what is there. So, you know, over the years, and you know, a big chunk of your life was
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at a time where ubiquitous distractions like smartphones and all of this weren't there,
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and you actually had to look around and find your entertainment and amusement around you.
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So what are your sort of observations on this and these changes in lives? Like, all of us
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can agree, yeah, it's, of course, a net positive, so many more people are empowered, and such
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richer lives can be lived in terms of we have so much access to all the books, all the music
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in the world. But at the same time, maybe something is lost in terms of just noticing
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things around you and being mindful of them. So what are your thoughts?
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I completely agree with you. And you know, the just the art of writing, let us say, I
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mean, I'm not talking of the style or the content, that's, that is something you're
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gifted with, or you're endowed with, perhaps, but just the art of writing. And I remember
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my mother, the way, and we had teachers in school also, who emphasize so much about how
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you wrote your handwriting on paper, how you formed your letters, how you kind of you know,
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picturized literally a sentence. So your handwriting had to be perfect. And we were, of course,
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we had elocution classes, you know, the way you spoke was very important, because I went
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to, I mean, I don't know whether, you know, this is a qualification, but I went to a convent
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school where all this was, was emphasized constantly, it was a Catholic school. And,
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you know, we all grew up at the age of eight or nine, we were kind of closet Catholics
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in some ways. But it didn't influence us, of course, as we grew out of it, you know,
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we stayed, I mean, I've been I'm born a Hindu. And, you know, that's the way I've stayed.
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But but yes, I went to this, I was exposed to this. And I think that exposure to that
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missionary education, you know, they, I'm sure that this is a, I mean, there's lots
#
of controversies raised around it. And people have very strong views. But in my imagination,
#
and in my opinion, I think it, it enabled me also, to have, you know, to be able to
#
talk about the seen and the unseen, literally, literally, it was one was able to gauge all
#
that and form one's independent opinions. And, and, you know, religion then didn't become
#
a defining factor. While you're in school, you went to school to study to be able to
#
write well to speak well, to enrich your knowledge, that really was the education that we got.
#
And yes, I never saw a television till I was 21 and came to Delhi to write my UPSC exam,
#
stayed at my uncle's place. And they had a little TV. It was quite, you know, fascinating.
#
You know, those days, Doordarshan had news programs, it had something for youth, they
#
had some youth related programs, and they had a lot of film music, you know, picturized
#
the songs, I'm trying to remember what that program was called. It'll come back to me.
#
There was a program in my time in the 80s called Chitrahar.
#
Exactly. Chitrahar. It was called Chitrahar then also. And so, so it was just the radio.
#
But if you ask me whether one's childhood was handicapped by the by the lack of this,
#
all the technology that we have today, and access to information in a globalized world,
#
I think we were still globalized because you know, the magazines that my parents, my parents
#
subscribe to magazines like the Illustrated Weekly of India, my mother would subscribe
#
to Femina, for instance. And in those days, you could also, you know, in the library,
#
we used to go to the in Wellington, I remember the Staff College, the Defense Services Staff
#
College Library was open to my father also. So as children, we could access it, borrowing
#
books from there, going there at least once a week, walking there to just read the magazines,
#
the Time, the Newsweek, Life, Saturday Evening Post, all the American magazines were also
#
available in India, at least in the libraries. And we were completely, I was, I used to love
#
going through those magazines and reading about and then I remember the assassination
#
of President Kennedy in November 1963. And my father hearing it on the radio and telling
#
me what had happened early in the morning, after November 22, November 23. And so that
#
also kind of, in a sense, it had an impact on me, the assassination of the President
#
of the United States, it was a historic event. And by I was about just turned 13, turning
#
13 at that time. So, so I think and then a few months later in May 1964, Prime Minister
#
Nehru passed away. So these were all, I think, in a sense, events that impacted an impressionable
#
young mind. So information was not sparse or not, you know, unavailable to us. I think
#
if you had an inquiring mind, yes, it's not like now, of course, where you're living in
#
this, this, you're submerged, you have this information overload. I don't think we had
#
an information overload. But it was not as if we were cut off from sources of information.
#
If you had the means, I mean, we were fortunate that my parents at least could afford, they
#
were, we were not otherwise we were not, we couldn't, you know, be, we didn't have any
#
luxuries in while growing up, but certainly access to books and information. My parents,
#
I think, had taken this decision that they would, we would not want for that. Books and
#
magazines and things were given to us to read and to, and to ingest. So that I think made
#
You're making me very nostalgic because all these names are, you know, like Illustrated
#
Weekly, Life and is bringing our memories from the past. I remember at one point, there
#
was a special issue of life, which reproduced in these small little boxes, all the covers
#
of life so far. And that was almost in a sense, just looking at them, you felt a story there.
#
You felt like history unfolding in different ways, you know, the, and all of that. What
#
I was referring to was not in terms of the negative aspect of not enough information
#
being available, but the positive aspect of being more sort of, more mindful of things
#
around us and just the quality of sort of noticing. Like I did an episode with the writer
#
Sarah Rai, grew up in the sixties and seventies as well, sixties and fifties. And at one point
#
when she was talking about her childhood, the details that she was coming up with was
#
so beautiful and evocative. And I was like, I just felt so jealous. And I said that, how
#
do you remember things so clearly? And she said, Amit, we had nothing else to do. We
#
had to look at things because it was kind of nothing else to do.
#
That's right. Talking about that, I remember the movies, you know, in the army, they have
#
these regimental cinemas. And in Wellington, where my father was stationed, there was this
#
wonderful movie theater that was called Kilimanjaro. You know, Kilimanjaro is this mountain in,
#
as you know, I think in Kenya, if I'm not mistaken. And so where was this Kilimanjaro
#
and why was it snow covered? You didn't associate snow in Africa, but yes, Africa has these
#
beautiful mountain ranges. And why it was called Kilimanjaro, I still don't know. But
#
this, the Madras regimental center in Wellington had a movie theater called Kilimanjaro. And
#
we used to go there to watch movies once a week. Again, everything was done walking.
#
My parents bought a car when I was 12 years old. And my father, my mother particularly
#
wanted to learn to drive. So she learned to drive. And so she was quite a feisty woman.
#
And she wanted to do these things. And I remember, so we, the car, we would drive in the car
#
to Kerala because Ram, Coonoor, Nilgiris, Wellington, my hometown in Kerala is about
#
a hundred miles away. It's not very far, but it took about five hours, six hours to drive
#
down because of the Ghat road and all that. So when she would drive in our hometown, and
#
I'm just talking how Kerala has changed. Those days, Malapuram, the place I was born in,
#
Kerala is the place where we have very large population of those we call maplas, the Muslims
#
of Kerala call maplas. So these little mapla boys, I remember when she used to drive the
#
car, there would be a kind of train of little boys chasing the car because they'd never
#
seen a woman driving in their lives. Those images come to mind. So talking about movies
#
and going to the regimental, you know, again, the opening of the mind, I remember seeing
#
my first cowboy movies, Western movies, which I loved actually, in these regimental cinemas.
#
And some of the cinemas were not like Kilimanjaro, not a regular theater, but it would be, you
#
know, the 16 mm projector being operated by somebody and the projector would constantly
#
break down, electricity would go or, you know, the projector, the reels needed to be wound.
#
So somewhere in the middle of the movie, there would be a gap. And sometimes the projector
#
wouldn't work after, you know, that. So we had to go home having seen half a movie. But
#
that really made you wonder what is what happened, you know, after the sequences we saw. And
#
so life was like that. Life was punctuated by a lot of these things, but pleasant punctuations,
#
I think. I mean, I don't remember a time in my childhood where there was sadness or too
#
much grief, of course, once grandparents passed away. And of course, there was the sadness
#
associated with that. But otherwise, you know, life had a certain rhythm to it and a certain
#
tempo and a certain harmony. I felt a certain, you know, it was like a symphony that was
#
beginning to play and which was it sounded very pleasant. And mind you, we never traveled
#
abroad. I'd never been abroad. And but, you know, in these small contortments, army contortments
#
where one lived, one was imagining the whole world, I felt.
#
Marvelous. And I guess another kind of punctuation was sort of moving from place to place. And
#
I'm fascinated where you spoke about growing up in Lucknow, like looking at your later
#
work. And we'll talk about your music much more after that. You point out how you were
#
into music as a kid. You got the Spanish guitar and you would sing along with it. And then
#
you know, as you joined the Foreign Service that took a backseat, you got back to it,
#
you know, when you hit 50 and all that. And it seems to me that there was a lot of that
#
influence was Western influence. You know, you tried learning opera when in your 50s,
#
you got drawn to that. And I'm going to ask you more questions about that. But and I'm
#
also struck by the fact that you're in Lucknow at one point in time and you're at Aurangabad
#
at another point in time. And Lucknow, for example, is, you know, so rich in a particular
#
kind of Hindustani culture, all of that. So tell me a little bit about how these influences
#
kind of mixed with each other in your life, like, you know, apart from the influences
#
that one might infer from, you know, the orchestra you put up and all of that, what were your
#
other sort of things that you know, what were the other influences that you were so?
#
Well, Lucknow, as I remember it, you know, we lived in the cantonment Lucknow cantonment
#
on a road that was called Kasturba road. So Kasturba is the, you know, wife of Mahatma
#
Gandhi. So that's that's another I remember opening one's eyes to her life and understanding
#
more about her. So we lived on Kasturba road in an old colonial kind of house, which wasn't
#
that great. We had a huge compound, but no garden really, it was too big for any any
#
gardener to tend to. And we Lucknow, my images of Lucknow, since I was eight, seven years
#
old when I went there, and nine years old when I left, was going to school in a Tonga.
#
Used to all of us, maybe seven or eight kids would pile into a Tonga. And we used to trouble
#
the Tonga driver incessantly poor man, I think we stretched his patience too much. But he
#
used to take us to school. I went to Loreto convent in Lucknow. And I remember some of
#
my friends from there and my parents, of course, I wasn't exposed really to to the Lucknowie
#
culture perhaps maybe, you know, in that army cantonment, my parents themselves had not
#
lived. I mean, my mother certainly had not lived in North India before. So we used to
#
go to some of the Kerala Samajam functions. I remember there was a Kerala Samajam in as
#
in Lucknow, so meet a lot of other Malayalis there. So Onam would be celebrated. But my
#
parents took me to a lot of the monuments in Lucknow. I remember seeing the Imam Bara,
#
beautiful, beautiful historic site, and understanding a little more about Awadh, about the Nawab
#
culture, Nawabi culture. But not too many insights into that. I suppose when you're
#
seven or eight, there's not much unless, of course, we had had Hindustani music classes
#
and all, but we didn't have. In fact, to be very frank, I don't think my parents could
#
have afforded that also. Like they couldn't afford, for instance, a lot of my friends
#
and children of other army officers. I knew many who were learning the piano. There was
#
no question we couldn't afford a piano. And so then we couldn't have piano classes. So
#
later on, when I was about 18 years old in Bangalore, we studied Carnatic music. We had
#
a teacher come home and studied Carnatic music for about a year, a year and a half. And then
#
of course, we moved to Aurangabad. We didn't follow it up. So I have some basic background,
#
foundational exposure to Carnatic music as a result, but not to Hindustani music, except
#
to listen to the Binaka Geet Mala and things on those days Radio Ceylon. Radio Ceylon had
#
a big influence in our lives because both English and Hindi music, Western and Hindi
#
music, we used to listen to. And so we grew up with all the songs from the films and Hindi
#
films of the fifties and sixties. And Mubale Azam was a huge newsmaker those days. And
#
I remember seeing the movie and loving it. So not unaware, not ignorant of the Hindustani
#
traditions, but not, I would say, to be frank, not immersed in them also. Learning Hindi
#
in school throughout, of course, from the age of seven till I finished my bachelor's
#
degree, I learned Hindi.
#
And you know, I've mused in the past that all airports everywhere are really one country
#
outside of their country, because all airports are pretty much the same, the sanitized, air
#
conditioned, slick places with their shopping malls and all that. And you could just, you
#
know, all airports are like, you know, so set out, set apart from whatever the surroundings
#
are and all that. In a similar sense, I wonder if it could be said that cantonments are all
#
really one country within a country, that it's a uniform culture and all of that.
#
Absolutely right. I think cantonments are a world unto themselves, at least they used
#
to be. Even Aurangabad, I mean, when we were there, it's not the big city, bustling city
#
it is today. It was not that. But the cantonment was a kind of little, you know, bubble that
#
was there. All the roads are neatly laid out and, you know, the garrisons and the little,
#
you know, centers and barracks and the sentries. And it's a completely different world. And
#
then you moved out of the cantonment and it was, again, these many worlds that was one
#
was being exposed to. I agree with you, but airports and even when we were growing up
#
were very different places. They were little airfields, literally. And when I went to Delhi,
#
I went to, you know, I had a all India scholarship, university scholarship, which covered all
#
expenses, including hostel. You had to write an exam, all India exam. And I got through
#
and I got a scholarship to Delhi University. And I went, my parents, you know, dispatched
#
me by air. It was a kind of a little gift to me to have and to Delhi going. I remember
#
them coming right up to the plane to say goodbye. You know, can you imagine today? It's unimaginable.
#
So it was a caravel. I remember a caravel aircraft. I wonder where there are remnants
#
of them today. But the flight would stop in Hyderabad. There were no nonstop flights to
#
Delhi. It stopped in Hyderabad and then Delhi. So, but very different, went to Palam, land
#
in Palam and again, a very different experience. But that was my only exposure to travel by
#
air until I went to Japan when I was 19 years old as part of a youth delegation to visit
#
Expo 70, which is another big watershed in my growing up years.
#
I also wondered as you were describing your childhood. And again, I'm just kind of thinking
#
aloud that are there essential qualities that we carry as individuals which stay with us
#
our whole lives? Like on the one hand, I can look back at the 20 year old me and say that,
#
hey, I'm a completely different person now, completely different. But on the other hand,
#
I can figure out the certain qualities which have just always stayed with me and been essential.
#
For example, lack of discipline, daydreaming, I think those have stayed constant. Now in
#
your case, it strikes me that one, you are a methodical thinker. You mentioned that you
#
were a topper and I think you topped the civil services exams also, and that you've kind
#
of been a topper. It's evident from your wonderful book that you are, you know, methodical, you're
#
rigorous, you know, as rigorous as any historian and the way that you've weaved together so
#
many narratives from so many different sources and done that so well. So when you look back,
#
say at the 15 year old, Nirupama Menon. So, you know, how would you describe that girl
#
today? And what aspects of her do you recognize that she's me? And what aspects of her do
#
you think I can't believe I was like that?
#
Well, positive and negative aspects, I think, I mean, I don't know if you'd call it negative,
#
but certainly, well, I regard it as a minus that I'm a bit of a loner, right? As even
#
growing up, I was a loner. I mean, I would not be playing with the rest of the children
#
on the playground. I'd be kind of standing apart and looking at them. I was, I'm extremely
#
sensitive by nature. I mean, I'm sort of influenced by the environment around me. I can be very
#
happy by it. And I can be very sad by it. Because even today, if I hear or see news
#
that is, to my mind, sad or unfortunate, the tears will come to my eyes. So I tear up very
#
easily. And that's from childhood. I've been like that. So extremely sensitive by nature.
#
And that, I think, the positive side of it is being a loner and being very sensitive
#
is that I'm, my mind, I mean, you know, the imagination within me is constantly sort of
#
generating images that I think help me as a creative person. I'm not an artist, but
#
it influences my writing. So my poetry, for instance, although I haven't written much
#
poetry of late, my music and the love of history, which I, which was inculcated by my parents
#
and also because I was interested in it from a very, very early age. So these things have
#
stayed with me. And you mentioned meticulous. Yes. And that I really attribute to my mother
#
because, you know, she would constantly recite these lines to me. You must be knowing it.
#
A good, better, best, never let it rest until the good is better and the better best. So
#
this was what was being drilled into me. And, you know, we're a young child, you know, all
#
we have children and, and you see how little things like that can really embed themselves
#
in your mind. And you talked of China. I forgot to mention this in 1962. I was aware of, you
#
know, the Tibetans coming into India from 1959 onwards, because this uncle of mine who
#
was in the foreign service was an LO to the Dalai Lama when he came to, into India the
#
first time. So my uncle was escorting the Dalai Lama to Missouri in early 1960 by train
#
and the train came through Lucknow. I don't know from where it was coming. And my parents
#
were informed. My uncle must've told my parents about it. So they took me to the railway station
#
in Lucknow to meet the young Dalai Lama. So I still have an autograph book with me signed
#
by his holiness on 14th February, 1960. What day was it? Valentine's day. What day of the
#
week was it? This is lost to me. That, that capacity is lost. If I was the six year old
#
Nirupama Menon, I would have probably been able to tell you, or even seven year old.
#
So I remember that meeting, that going and walking into the compartment, train compartment
#
and meeting this, this young presence, literally, I wouldn't say man, young presence, you know,
#
in those, in the robes of the Tibetan monk and young and very pleasant. And I just have
#
the signature. I have his signature on that autograph book till this day. I still possess
#
it and show it proudly to people. So these were the things I think that have stayed with
#
me, this imagination. And I have a certain restlessness within me. I'm a kind of, I'm
#
constantly questing, I feel. So even during the pandemic, there's never been a day that
#
I felt bored or, you know, felt that I have nothing to do. What am I going to do? I'm
#
imprisoned within the four walls of this home. Somebody who's been so used to traveling and
#
moving around. I've never felt that. So this capacity to adjust to different rhythms, I
#
think has stayed with me from my childhood. So that's talking about the 15 year old Nirupa
#
Menon. I think some of these things haven't changed. I really don't know, looking back,
#
you mentioned that you're not the person you were when you were 20 years old. You know,
#
at the age of 70, sometimes I think I'm still the person I was when I was 20 or 21. Because
#
I'm still, I feel that every day there is something new that I have learned, I'm learning
#
or did not know about. And that, I think, keeps the flow of life, I think, always very
#
compelling, very interesting and very absorbing.
#
Yeah, no. In fact, one of the things that sort of struck me about you as I was kind
#
of watching your videos on YouTube and reading up on all the things that you've done is that
#
I just envy your energy, right? Like there are days where I feel that, you know, so much
#
time has passed and I just feel lazy, lackadaisical, especially through COVID. There have been
#
times where you don't really want to do anything, man. You just want to, you know, you kind
#
of lose motivation. And I see you doing so much, writing this wonderful book, you know,
#
working on your orchestra, as you've done in the last few years. And I'm very envious
#
of that. But leaving that aside, before we go into the break and then before we resume
#
your career after that as a diplomat, which I have so many things to ask you on that.
#
Just one broader question, which has kind of struck me in the conversations that I've
#
had with people of a similar age to age to mine is how we look at time per se. Like when
#
I'm 20, you know, someone who's 25 feels like an old man to me, right? And I think that,
#
you know, five years feels so long, 10 years feels so long. It is absolutely insane. And
#
then suddenly you blink and the years pass and here I am in my late forties. And I'm
#
like, where did 20 years go? And this also then begins to affect how we look at history,
#
that we look back on history then. And earlier when we are young, it seems something that
#
happened 150 years ago, say the 1857 mutiny. That seems so far back. It's like ancient
#
history, right? But then when you've seen decades pass in your own life, it doesn't
#
seem like ancient history anymore. And there is a sense that there is this, on one hand,
#
there is this inexorable progress that is happening through history. But on the other
#
hand, a lot of it is shaped by accident and happenstance and just kind of random events.
#
So how do you think about time, both in the context of what happens in the world stage,
#
what happens in history, what happens to humanity, and also in your own life? Like how does one
#
look at time? Like have you, for example, stopped and reflected about how you kind of
#
want to spend each day? You know, like one of the natural progressions that people make
#
as they go through life, and certainly I think about it more and more, is that so much of
#
our time is just wasted? That is there a way that I can be more mindful and get more out
#
of this and so on and so forth? So what are your sort of thoughts on this?
#
Well, I can only speak from my own experience that I tend to throw myself into what I'm
#
doing with complete, I hate to use the word devotion, but certainly absorption, complete
#
absorption, which then makes me oblivious, perhaps a little about the world around me.
#
So there is a detachment, I feel, that I've always had, a detachment. And that detachment
#
is not, perhaps I could have been, I am in some senses, I think, quite meditative. When
#
I was growing up, my mom would always say that I would always be dreaming about something.
#
It was like I had this far off look in my eye, which many children, perhaps it's not
#
normal when children do that. I mean, they're always wondering whether they can go out and
#
play or meet their friends or have what they call now a play date or a sleepover. That
#
was not, I was constantly, there was something going on in my head. I don't know what made
#
me like that. I think I was this sensitivity, this dreamy quality. So that, in a way, perhaps
#
sometimes severs me from too much chaos. Like I'm somebody, like when I was studying for
#
exams, for instance, you had to revise, you had to prepare like three, four weeks ahead.
#
You had to make a timetable and start preparing. But I would constantly be studying or revising,
#
as they would call it in our time, revising with music blaring around me or people talking
#
in the midst of some, I would be there. I would not be locking myself in a room. So
#
I don't know what it was, this detachment at one level, but at the same time, this ability
#
to be, to balance the noise around me or the chaos around me, because India, as you know,
#
is so much noise you always have around you, whatever it is, whether it's family or whether
#
it's when you're traveling or generally the atmosphere is, it's not silent. It's not quiet.
#
But here I was a very quiet person inside, but outside the ability to sort of, you know,
#
hear the chaos around you, but somewhere around there was a barrier that it was not going
#
through and I was able to still do my thing, as it were. So that, I think, is a quality
#
that has enabled me to survive, in a sense. My recipe for survival has been that, you
#
know, on the one hand, a detachment, but on the other hand, an attachment also to what
#
is going on around me. So that's all I can say.
#
Recently I had Mrinal Pandey on my show and she spoke about her mother, the famous writer
#
Shivani, and she said that when Mrinalji was a kid, she would see that, you know, they're
#
all eating together and there's Halla Gulla all around. But at some point, Shivaniji will
#
just start writing. And when she starts writing, you know that she's surrounded by three noisy
#
kids, there might be other things happening, but she's writing, she's focused, she's in
#
her world, nothing can get out of it. Which, on the one hand, I envy a lot because I find
#
it so hard to do. Any noise disturbs me. I need to kind of cocoon myself of the exact
#
opposite of what you said. And on the other hand, I also wonder if that becomes something
#
that is a necessary survival quality for Indian women in a broader sense. You know, because
#
with men, we have the privilege often that we can shut ourselves up. I can go and lock
#
myself in my study and say that five hours, I'm going to sit and write.
#
Nobody's going to question you.
#
Nobody's going to question me. Most women have to deal with a much more chaotic texture
#
of life around them, where, you know, the maid might have come and you got to supervise
#
or something else is happening and there's something else in the house. And by the time
#
lunchtime is over, dinner time is here and all kinds of other crap is happening. So do
#
you feel that in a sense that this is, you know, on the one hand, it's a good quality
#
to have if it comes naturally, but do you also feel that for Indian women, especially,
#
or perhaps for women everywhere, it's a necessary survival mechanism because you will never
#
get the kind of me time that men are able to have.
#
I completely agree with you on that. The other day, I remember I was in a webinar on my book
#
actually. So, and I was a speaker. So, you know, I had to sort of make sure that the
#
wifi was working properly and the doors were closed and there was no noise. But in the
#
midst of the webinar, and luckily I was not speaking, somebody else was. And so my husband
#
and son had gone out for dinner and they come home and the spare set of keys of the house
#
was missing or was not there. So my husband sort of comes there and he starts dangling
#
that key in front of me and says, where's the other keys? I didn't even know where it
#
was, but I had to answer as a woman, you know, a man would have said, okay, please go away.
#
I'm not, you know, I think we women are much more perhaps conditioned or, you know, the
#
way we evolve that kind of genetic code within us, you tend to be much more patient, I feel.
#
Much more patient. You can't afford to be impatient. You can't afford to show that,
#
you know, you're not going to answer such a question, even if it's your husband asking
#
you. So I think husbands and wives also deal differently with each other because we as
#
women tend to be much more patient. I think the load, the load bearing capacity of a woman,
#
although physically a man is much stronger, I think the load bearing capacity of a woman
#
is much more. Which is really sad. And, you know, I think
#
about the layers, extra layers that women carry. And one, of course, is the layer in
#
terms of just what a more dangerous world it is for them, the dangers of the male gaze
#
as it were. Like, if I go out for a walk at midnight, I don't have to think about anything.
#
I enter a lift with five people. I don't have to look around to see who the other people
#
are. Women carry that layer. But more than that, another layer that they carry is this
#
layer of, you know, they have to labor more than men always in kind of situations. And
#
I wonder whether in your career as well, I mean, we'll speak about your diplomatic career
#
after the break and obviously you were that rare women diplomat, though now I think almost
#
30% of the IFS is women. But at the same time, has this layer always been there? That the
#
people around you may respect you and treat you as an equal and on the surface everything
#
is fine. But there is that hidden dynamic that kind of comes into play. You know, you
#
mentioned early in your diplomatic career that people would say, oh, it's tough for
#
a woman to be a diplomat because what if you have to receive someone at a station at night?
#
Or what if you have to be posted as an ambassador to Ghana, for example? Will you be safe there?
#
I mean, I just said that at the top of my head, you didn't. And many women might not
#
even think about it as an extra layer. It's just normalized, right? So what are sort of
#
what are sort of your thoughts on this? Because on the one hand, you would be an inspiration
#
to women everywhere because you've had an independent career, you know, obviously fortunate
#
in your parents and in your choice of spouse and all of that. But you've had a completely
#
independent career, you top the civil services, you became a successful diplomat and ambassador
#
and you became so active after your retirement, you're doing all of this. So one would say,
#
OK, you're the role model. You're the woman who kind of beat the beat all of this. But
#
at the same time, you know, it would have been harder for you than it would have been
#
for a man. So tell me, tell me a little bit about your thoughts on this.
#
Well, it's definitely, although I never sensed the hardness of it all or the difficulty or
#
the complexity of it all, because one was just living through this, you see. So as I
#
said, you just, you know, you're you're in this environment and you're kind of you're
#
a trekker. You're a you're a journey woman. You are exploring. You know, it's like a map.
#
I always think of the of a map of life, which when you're born is a very, very small scale
#
map with very little detail, except you're born and you're growing up. But as you grow
#
up and as you venture forth in life, the map becomes more and more detailed, all the places
#
you've been to, all the experiences you had. And by the time you're 60 or 70, this map
#
is wonderfully detailed. It is it is a large scale map with precise entries, lats and longs
#
about where you've been and what you've seen and what you've experienced. So that's how
#
life has become. And when you look at that map now, you understand this this location
#
or this particular entry on the map, how difficult it was to access or or what the barriers you
#
had to encounter in order to get there, you realize, begin to realize. And that at this
#
stage of my life, when I look back, I realize, you know, the mountains I had to climb and
#
the adversaries I had to encounter. But at that time, when you're actually doing it,
#
when you're actually rowing your boat, as it were, you're only engaged, your energy
#
is all focused on that. So the ability to focus, I think, is extremely important. And
#
I don't get distracted easily. I think that has really helped me. And I have this I have
#
a great passion for perfection, which is, I think, which is sometimes an impossible
#
dream, because life is not like that in any. So sometimes I think, yes, a sense of, of
#
perhaps disappointment does come to you that you've not been able to do things the way
#
you would have liked to do them. But not in most cases, I wouldn't say that I when I go
#
look back, I think I'm generally happy. And I feel thankful to Providence for, you know,
#
enabling me to do all the things I've done. But yes, it's as a woman, like when I wanted
#
to join the Foreign Service, when I qualified in the civil service exam, and I had topped
#
it and in both the IAS and the IFS, because those days, there were two lists for these
#
two top services, the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Foreign Service, it's different
#
now. So I had my I was, and I liked the way the UPSC would refer to you at that time,
#
the name on top was Kumari Nirupama Menon. So I was Kumari Nirupama Menon, just to show
#
that you were not married. And so so Kumari Nirupama Menon could have joined the IAS and
#
gone to Kerala, which was my home state. Because those days, your position on the list would
#
give you that, you know, advantage, let's say, I could have gone to Kerala. So all my
#
relatives, my uncles and aunts, and even my parents encouraged me saying, why don't you
#
take the IAS, because you'll go to your home state, and it's nice for you. A girl, you
#
know, should can be within a home environment, it'll be much easier for you as you move up.
#
But I was adamant, I'm a very stubborn person by nature. So I had decided I was going to
#
join the Foreign Service, like I decided I wanted to do humanity. So my parents, that's
#
what I wanted. I'm not changing my mind. But, but fortunately, for me, they never forced
#
my hand on anything. Okay, that's your choice. But it's not going to be easy. I mean, they
#
did tell me, because, you know, you would have to serve abroad. And I think every parent
#
would like their daughter or ultimately to settle down. And they felt there would be
#
problems there. Because unless, you know, had a spouse who was also able to go with
#
you where where you would were posted, preferably if he was from the same from the Foreign Service,
#
it would have helped. But that's not the way life turns out. And as it turned out, yes,
#
I complicated my life in the beginning already by, you know, my spouse was in the IAS from
#
the Karnataka carder. And our first postings, I remember, he was in a place called Kopal,
#
which is in northern Karnataka. At that time, you know, access to Kopal was very difficult.
#
Today, it's a district headquarters. Those days, it was a subdivision. So he was in Kopal,
#
and I was in Vienna. I mean, I cannot think of more, you know, it was like I was at one
#
side of the world, and he was on the other side. And we couldn't communicate. There was
#
no email, there was no, you had to write letters, as you said, and once in a while, a trunk
#
call, an international trunk call. And I can't tell you how complicated that would be. Because,
#
you know, in Vienna, you had to contact the operator in London, who would then connect
#
to Delhi. And then in Delhi, nobody knew where Kopal was. I mean, the place Kopal, even today,
#
if I asked anybody, where is Kopal, if you were from Delhi, you wouldn't even know unless you're
#
from Karnataka, perhaps you'd know, or maybe from Telangana, you would perhaps know, but, or
#
southern Maharashtra, Sholapur, and other places. So the operator in Delhi would connect you to
#
Bhopal, because they never heard of, and then the Bhopal operator would say, who do you want
#
to speak to? And there was no, the number I would give was not, you know, anywhere in the Bhopal
#
directory. So even communication was so difficult. So as a woman, I think I did encounter, especially
#
among some, not all, some male, you know, higher ups in the service, you know, I don't think they
#
were very, perhaps I would put it as empathy, you know, perhaps if you have a daughter of your own,
#
you would perhaps understand it, but empathy about how situations like this where, you know,
#
you had a young, they would call us lady officers, not woman officers, those lady officers,
#
what situations they would be in, because as you know, in the foreign service, still a certain
#
stage in the history of our foreign service, women, once they got married, had to quit the service.
#
You know, you had to submit your resignation with the information that you were getting married,
#
and a lot of real talent was lost to the service as well. By the time I joined the service,
#
that was not, that requirement was taken away a little after I joined the service, because when
#
I applied for the UPSC, in the UPSC form, I had to confirm if I was applying for the foreign service,
#
that I was unmarried. You couldn't apply, even apply for the exam, you couldn't write the exam.
#
You had to be Kumari, exactly. So this Kumari joined the foreign service as a result. But yes,
#
I remember being told, for instance, when I once expressed a desire to be posted in Islamabad,
#
as a young officer, one senior officer telling me, it's really not a place for a woman to go.
#
He may have been, you know, motivated by perfectly good intentions. But I'm saying there are certain
#
mindsets that can women, can women go to the airport at midnight to receive somebody, or can
#
they be posted in some remote area where, you know, it'll be difficult to provide for security,
#
all that, you know. But today, if a woman officer were to say, I want to go be posted in Afghanistan,
#
nobody can stop you really. Many councils saying that it's going to be difficult, but ultimately,
#
you can't say you can't go anywhere because you're a woman. So things have really, really changed
#
in that sense. I would say, you know, when I joined the service, I don't believe there were
#
any women in the service who were given, you know, who were asked to head what we call a territorial
#
division, dealing with the neighborhood, let's say on Pakistan or Bangladesh or even China. But by
#
the time one kind of grew up in the service, that was changing. You know, I became the first woman
#
officer in the foreign service to head the East Asia division of the ministry. We dealt with China,
#
and you know, so things changed. I think attitudes have changed, have certainly changed for the
#
better. And there's much more sensitivity to the needs of women officers. And in a sense, providing
#
that level playing field, which is most important. Let's take a quick commercial break. And when we
#
are back from the break, we'll talk much more about your diplomatic. Have you always wanted
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Welcome back to the scene in the unseen. I'm chatting with Nirupama Rao. And we've just got
#
to the part where, you know, you entered the diplomacy, topped both the IAS and the IFS.
#
But before that, when we took the break, you were telling me about how you first discovered
#
computers and you discovered computers because you liked algebra. It's a, you know, such a
#
fascinating story. So do go through. So the story really begins in the mid 60s when I was still
#
finishing school. And in our, in our school at in the 11th standard, as it was called, you had to,
#
there were certain optional subjects and I chose algebra and my friends chose typing. And those
#
days, you know, it was all typewriters, manual typewriters. So my friends during lunch break
#
would go into this little room where they had the typewriters to practice their typing.
#
And although I was doing algebra, I would go with them, trail along and watch them,
#
you know, operate the QWERT keyboard and the way you had to place your fingers, you know,
#
your little finger on this key and your ring finger on the other key and the middle finger
#
and the index finger, the thumb. So I learned that technique, how to type blind. I mean,
#
not looking at the keyboard, but looking at the paper as you were typing. So I had to
#
so I had learned that and I used to practice that. We had an old typewriter at home,
#
which I used to practice on. So by the time I entered college, I was pretty good with typing.
#
I, I couldn't do the numbers, the numerals, which I had to still look, but the letters I
#
could do blind. I could, and I did it pretty fast. So when computers, when, you know, in the 80s
#
in Delhi, Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister in 1984 after the assassination of his mother.
#
And here was this young prime minister who was all into computers, who was talking about this,
#
you know, digital universe that was completely unexplored to people like me. So we were
#
encouraged, we were encouraged, not, not, it was not made compulsory, but we were told that if we
#
wanted to start using computers, we, the ministry would provide us with, with the machine as it was
#
called. And so I, I opted to ask for a small desktop computer because I was dealing with the
#
China border. And at a stage where we were, you know, I was actually, my office was turned into
#
a map room. We had maps of the border. And my task was to set up that map room and to become
#
more knowledgeable about the Sino-Indian border, because the historical division of the ministry
#
of external affairs had become largely defunct by then. Most of the experts from Dr. Gopal's
#
generation, the wonderful experts on the boundary, they were all retiring or they had passed away.
#
And there was no foreign service, as we call a direct recruit, a foreign service officer,
#
who had specialized in this. So I was kind of offered the possibility of kind of becoming
#
an expert on the subject, or at least specializing in it, because I was not interested in taking a
#
foreign posting at that time. My husband was in India and my son was very young. So I wanted to
#
stay in Delhi. So I stayed in Delhi for eight years, just specializing on the Sino-Indian border,
#
and ended up as head of the East Asia division. As a result, it was the time when we had the
#
Sumderong Chu incident, the problems with the Chinese. Rajiv Gandhi went to China in 1988.
#
So that's the background against which I started doing learning, not learning. Nobody taught me
#
how to operate a computer. I mean, the awning and awning, yes, maybe somebody had to tell me how to
#
do that. But as far as learning to word process, which is essentially what one does, most of us,
#
we are not programmers or software experts, but I learned to operate the computer to essentially
#
write, to do my notes, to put together information, to prepare indexes and things. So it was an old
#
ancient word processing software called WordStar that I started with. And then we moved on to Word
#
Perfect. And then, of course, MS Word. By the mid-90s, it had become MS Word. And so that was
#
my introduction to computers. I remember seeing a laptop for the first time was when we were told
#
that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi used a laptop. And we were going to China in 1988. And that's
#
when I first saw the laptop that some people were using. So that's how I got introduced to computers.
#
And I've never, I felt comfortable in that world. I felt I liked the automation. I liked the idea
#
that it made your work more efficient, easier to manage and keep in one place, even if it was a
#
floppy disk or the way of storage was very different, as you know. The whole system today
#
looks so completely unrecognizable when you think of those early, almost prehistoric days,
#
when we started using computers, like people like me, bureaucrats, for word processing, basically.
#
Basically, as a word processor, not the most efficient use of a computer, but certainly,
#
you became familiar with the technology. And I find many people of my generation,
#
I mean, people born in the 50s, are still a bit overwhelmed by the thought of using a computer.
#
So using the computer at a young age, I started when I was about 34 years old or so, just
#
relatively young, I think anybody would say. And that sort of helped me to go into email use and
#
navigating the web, once you had browsers, by the mid 90s by Netscape, and then Google,
#
of course, started. And this whole universe opened up for you. So I transitioned, let's say,
#
from the world of my childhood to the digital world of today rather smoothly. I don't think
#
there was any, it was an interesting journey, but not a formidable journey for me.
#
And you've brought so many memories back, like I remember when I graduated from college in 94,
#
I worked for a year in an advertising agency for a few months in an advertising agency in
#
Delhi called HTA, which is now J Walter Thompson. And in our whole department, and that was India's
#
number one ad agency, I was in the Pepsi group, my group handled Pepsi and a few other accounts.
#
And on the whole floor, I think we had three computers. And one of them was a Apple Macintosh,
#
which only the main art director got access to. And the rest were two Windows computers,
#
which the operating system was MS DOS. So you had to type those commands. And we use WordStar,
#
if I remember correctly. And it was such a big deal. And later, I remember in 95, I came to
#
Bombay, I worked in channel V for a while as a scriptwriter. And we didn't have computers to
#
write our scripts on the entire place at one computer, which was with the public relations
#
department. And they were so possessive about it. And then there were two sort of girls who ran the
#
department, one of them became a VJ later. And I remember all the fights we used to have where I
#
was like, in your off time, please let me use your computer. And in that year, I was, you know,
#
staying in a flat in Chembur with three other friends. And all of them knew that Amit really
#
wants to buy a laptop. But of course, he is not, he doesn't have too much money. So we what can we
#
do? And then, you know, one of my friends heard about the sale of computers and laptops church gate
#
may jugga hai wahan pe there is a sale organized on this date. So we like take an early train to
#
get there early. And my budget was 30,000, which was not enough to buy a good laptop in those days,
#
because they were more expensive. And I remember we kind of land up and we landed up too late,
#
all the affordable stuff was gone, and so on and so forth. And the reason I bring this up was,
#
my dad passed away last year. So I went recently to you know, we sold his bungalow. And I went
#
recently to clear it off all his old things. And in his study, he had 1000s of books, which
#
I managed to find a good library to donate to. And while I was there, while I was packing and
#
unpacking things, I found a couple of really old laptops from the 90s, or maybe the 80s, right?
#
Now, I remember my contemporary memories of that time are that laptops are, they seem so sleek to
#
me. But now when I looked at the same laptops, which would have seemed sleek to me then,
#
they were like bulky and massive and really ugly. And, and of course, I had to throw them away,
#
because what does one do one can't hang on to old artifacts. I also found like a huge walkman,
#
you know, a huge walkman from back in the day, which was kind of so massive. So it's interesting
#
that all of this stuff does around us, we take it so much for granted, like it's the air around us.
#
But when we are without it, it's almost like a fish does not notice the water.
#
No, you're right. Absolutely. But for me, I look back, you know, as that first computer I used in
#
1985, it was like a rite of initiation, I think, you know, yeah, you kind of you go in and then
#
you realize how where that journey is lead, like the map I told you about, you know, it's like
#
you're plotting new destinations, thanks to that little box in front of you, literally, literally.
#
Today, when I think of things like digital humanities, which has become a huge thing,
#
you know, and I realized that I think I may be wrong that even to till this day,
#
when you look at the Sino Indian border, and you look at during the 60s, the kind of information
#
50s and 60s, early 60s before the war, the information we put out the white papers,
#
and the report of the officials, the officials of the two sides, I talk about it in my book,
#
met in 1960, and they had usually lengthy discussions. Nobody I think to this day,
#
I may be wrong, but I mean, please correct me if I am, but I think it would be wonderful
#
to start a digital humanities project on indexing the Sino Indian border and the maps are all there
#
and we have good, you know, cartographic knowledge and the evidence is there, but for a scholar,
#
for a young demographic introduced to the subject for the first time, wouldn't it be nice if,
#
you know, digitally, if you type Galwan, for instance, you got all the whole list of what
#
happened in Galwan from 1961-62 onwards, or in Hot Springs, or in, you know, Konkala, or Chumar,
#
or Deptsang, that would be so useful. You know, today you have to be a complete expert.
#
There'll be one or two people who will be able to perhaps reel off all the details, but information
#
to me should be accessible. That is the primary foundational requirement for knowledge and it's
#
only when you have that knowledge that you can really be enlightened. Yeah, and the thing is,
#
the knowledge exists, the tools exist. Now it's up to someone to build those repositories. Maybe
#
someone listening to this can, you know, come up with a way of kind of getting that done.
#
Wonderful things can happen. It should be quite easy, I'm sure. It shouldn't be difficult. It
#
just requires, I think, a technical mind with working with somebody who has knowledge.
#
So let's talk about diplomacy. And interesting, like you gave this excellent speech called
#
A Life in Diplomacy, which I'll link from the show notes, which I really enjoyed listening to.
#
And at the start, you spoke about how female diplomats are kind of a new thing. You speak
#
about how, you know, the women in diplomacy would be the wives of ambassadors or ambassadresses,
#
as you call them. I had to figure out how to spell that, you know, it's very complicated.
#
The ambassadress could be a formidable lady, usually.
#
Yeah, and you quoted from sort of NYT 1902, talking about how in parties, the ambassadress
#
is more important than the ambassadeur. And quote, sometimes she is a touchy person,
#
stop quote. You cited a speech from the British House of Commons in 1933, where, you know,
#
the speaker said, quote, the special virtues of women are singularly ill adapted to diplomatic life,
#
stop quote. And basically talking about how women have intuition and sympathy,
#
and they're both fatal to diplomacy, which is a classic stereotype. And the thing is,
#
when we actually look at the great mistakes made in foreign policy through the decades
#
and centuries, they're all made by men. And they're often made by men who've either shown
#
too much intuition, like I think, you know, that was perhaps a Neruvian thing,
#
but we can come back to talking about it. You know, that reminds me when we, you know,
#
you talk of a glass ceiling, that women, you know, should break the glass ceiling. But have
#
you heard of the glass cliff? So the glass cliff is, you know, women are usually pushed into
#
positions of responsibility when men know that there is the possibility of failure is very,
#
very large. I mean, there are, I've read about this and I can from experience also just say that.
#
So, you know, women tend sometimes to kind of then stereotype, ah, you know, it was a woman,
#
you know, like intuition and, and sympathy are fatal to diplomacy, the things you, you know,
#
men have these certain definitions of what success should mean. But the glass cliff is
#
worth studying because, you know, when you're put in a place close to a glass cliff, because you
#
could fall off that glass cliff, the challenges that women face, I think, are quite great.
#
And it struck me actually, while, you know, you were citing that British house of common speech,
#
that intuition, sympathy, and it struck me that actually, and at the risk of stereotyping in the
#
other direction, it struck me that qualities which you're more likely to have in women are actually
#
essential and useful for diplomacy. And two qualities which struck me is women are less
#
likely to let their ego get in the way and women are more likely to listen better, like just in our
#
everyday lives. And once I started noticing this, I can't help noticing this all around me in terms
#
of how often women get interrupted. Right. And it's just, so this was kind of one. So is there
#
something to that? Or am I just stereotyping in the other direction? No, I think you're right.
#
And I find that in group discussions also, very often the woman in the room will come in towards
#
the end a bit hesitatingly, although she may have a lot to say, which is substantive and meaningful.
#
But I think it's just the way we're not, it's not the programming. I don't think it's something to
#
the conditioning. I think in the world you've grown up where, you know, women, girls are,
#
little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. And, you know, you're seen
#
rather than heard, you know, the usual concept of the kind of modesty and the humility that you
#
should radiate. I think we are conditioned that way, not that we're programmed. I think if women
#
are programmed in a way, it's to be resilient. I think we're extremely resilient. I talked to the
#
load bearing capacity. After all, we give birth and, you know, just that is such a, you know,
#
it's not easy. And I don't think a man could go through that kind of experience. So I think
#
that qualities of resilience and perseverance and yet, you know, patience and, you said,
#
the capacity to listen, the capacity to absorb, the capacity to take a more 360 degree view.
#
And not, you know, not have too much of a shotgun approach, you know, quick to draw, you know,
#
hand on the holster, not, we don't have that kind of approach, which means that we get interrupted
#
because sometimes just the fact that this quietude that surrounds us gets misinterpreted. And people
#
think that you have nothing to say, or even if you have something to say, once you've spoken a few
#
words, you can be cut off, you know, cut the mic off kind of that is still, I think, quite prevalent.
#
It's not just in India, it's across the world. I think it's not something that is just native to
#
us. It's there. So women, I think, have to struggle harder. Definitely, definitely, we have to,
#
you know, we may look calm on the surface, but underneath the water, we are constantly paddling,
#
Pretty much all the female friends I have talk about this common thing that happens to them in
#
meetings or gatherings where if they get to speak, they'll say something and then somebody will
#
cut them in and the conversation will continue. And then a man will say the same thing, maybe
#
paraphrase it a bit, and they'll be like, plodded. So what a good idea. What a good idea, Ajay.
#
That's true. That's true. Absolutely. Absolutely. That is something that I don't think
#
changes very easily. And, you know, so we have to, I think, be much more aware of this.
#
And when we are, you know, our output, therefore, has to be so much more careful,
#
so much more precise, so much more passionately perfect, if we have to be noticed, I think.
#
The bar is higher, therefore. There's a fascinating experiment, like you mentioned,
#
that in meetings, you know, women will talk at the end or they won't talk much. And there's
#
a fascinating experiment carried out by Philip Pletlock. And I heard about this in an episode
#
of a show I produced, Brave New World, where he was a guest. And the experiment basically was this,
#
that you gather a group of people together for a meeting, and then everybody gives their views on
#
the subject, but anonymously, right? And then everybody's views are shown to everybody, but
#
they don't know who said what. And then they have to revise their views based on everything
#
they have read. And the experiment basically found what you would expect, that the quality
#
of decision making just went up massively, because you had to be open to everything once
#
you anonymized the views. The other question that I sort of want to ask before we, you know,
#
again, you know, get back to chronology and the linear retelling of life, as it were,
#
is about confidence. That, you know, there have been studies that, there was a recent study I
#
linked to in a recent episode, I linked to it again, which really speaks about how women lack
#
so much confidence compared to men, in the sense that they did this experiment where within a firm
#
there was a job opening for, you know, a particular this thing. And there, you had to, there were 10
#
parameters. And you, if you felt you made enough of them, you had to apply. And the women would not
#
apply if they met five or six or seven, they'd have to, if they met all 10 only, then would they
#
apply. While the men they meet two or three, they'll just apply Bindas, just put it in, right?
#
And the point is, as we know, that just the more you apply, the better your chances of all of these
#
things. And there is therefore that, I think the article was correctly called the confidence gap,
#
you know, that comes into play. Was that confidence gap ever an issue with you? Like, did you feel at
#
any point that there is some kind of imposter syndrome, that, you know, did you have self-doubt
#
about maybe I should have taken the IAS and gone to Kerala? You know, what, am I really cut out for
#
this? So were there moments where that happened? Yeah, that is something, you know, I don't, I'm
#
missing that gene, I think, that I don't regret what I've done. Maybe it's this, I was perhaps
#
born with it, the sense of being absolutely convinced that this is what I have to do.
#
And the ability to take risks, which is usually a masculine trait, but I have that. I mean, I think,
#
like when I went out on Twitter, when I was Foreign Secretary, nobody was on Twitter,
#
no bureaucrat, no senior bureaucrat, at least. And I just felt this was a medium that was
#
interesting, that showed a lot of promise and potential and scope, you know, for better
#
communication and conveying to the rest of the world that, you know, a bureaucracy can be responsive,
#
can be alert, can be, you know, not just reactive, but proactive. And I just felt I had to adopt that
#
medium. So I signed up and opened an account and I started tweeting and people around me were sort
#
of out of consternation and eyebrows raised. But today everybody uses it. Everybody and their aunt
#
is using Twitter. So this, I think, it's like, I just feel if I have to do something, I'm
#
absolutely convinced people around me, especially my near and dear ones, call me stubborn and
#
opinionated. And, you know, people who can be frank with you, your near and dear will speak their
#
minds. But I'm like that. I can't change. And so that, I don't know, that may not be an exactly
#
stereotyped feminine trait. So I'm sure a lot of women have it. But in the world, when you define,
#
you classify, you have these very narrow categories of women and men and female behavior. I think
#
these things straddle both sexes. I don't think we are, you know, confined to one category of
#
behavior. Like, I just feel I can take a risk if I'm convinced that it needs to be done and
#
I'll just do it. And that's how it is. That's the way I am. And in a sense, one risk was something
#
that you alluded to earlier, where, you know, you joined the Foreign Service at 73. And, you know,
#
your husband is part of the same batch. He's in the IAS. And you make that very interesting decision
#
that you will get married, even though, and none of you will give up what you're doing,
#
even though it is understood that then you will be apart most of the time. Right. And as you pointed
#
out, he went to Colom, I think you said. Kopal. I'm so sorry. See, this is how obscure the place
#
clearly is. That is true. It is truly. But no, I'm sure somebody from Kopal wouldn't say that,
#
of course. Of course not. Yeah, yeah. Where you stand depends on where you sit, as they say.
#
So, yeah, so one part of this Kopal went to Kopal and the other part of this Kopal went to Vienna.
#
And you've mentioned that there were times where you managed to be posted in the same place, like,
#
you know, in Delhi in the 80s, where you were with the foreign officer and he was with the PMO and so
#
on and so forth. But in general, then, you know, how was it to kind of make that decision? And how
#
was it to then sort of live that life? Because I'm thinking in terms of how distance can sometimes be
#
a good thing. You know, it just strikes me that, you know, two people, if they're together all the
#
time, can take each other for granted. You know, so do you feel that was it frustrating sometimes
#
that, oh, my God, especially that trunk call thing that you mentioned from Vienna, you are trying and
#
eventually reaching Bhopal after 50 stops in the way. And so was it frustrating sometimes? And do
#
you also feel that, you know, maybe it had a positive kind of impact in the sense that the time
#
that you do spend together, you therefore cherish it more, you're more mindful, you can see each
#
other not as just instrumental parts of one's comfort zone, but as actual people who are doing
#
interesting things. Well, yes, when we started out, it was extremely difficult. I mentioned the
#
Kopal Vienna thing. And then we had to stay apart for long, long periods. So I had to take leave and
#
come to Karnataka or he would take leave. He took one year off and came to Vienna.
#
So those kinds of adjustments had to be made, which the higher ups in the service, whichever
#
bureaucracy, they were not exactly, I mean, I think eyebrows would be raised. I mean, are you
#
really serious about your careers? Why are you doing this? And you know how these attitudes can
#
be very entrenched in any office environment. Then you, you know, there's the usual stereotype,
#
oh woman, woman officer, lady officer, not really serious about her job. You know, she takes leave
#
and she just goes off. So we had to encounter all that, you know, and each time, you know, you had
#
to sort of climb your way up to restore that kind of confidence that you wanted. I mean, I think as
#
a woman, you want that respect. I think all of us want that respect and respect for your dignity,
#
respect for your sincerity and your commitment, which was never for me. I felt that should not
#
be questioned. I mean, that, that commitment I think was always there, but sometimes one had to
#
do this because of family reasons. So the early years were difficult for that reason, because you
#
there were these again punctuations, you know, that you had to accept where you would be away
#
from your seat for about seven, eight months in a row because you had taken leave and then come back
#
and wait for an assignment. And you would be posted somewhere, maybe in some backwater,
#
which one accepted because, you know, you wanted to get back into the system.
#
So, you know, I've had to, all these ups and downs were there. It was not like, you know,
#
one was always doing China. One was always doing Sri Lanka. One was all, you know, doing as spokesman,
#
you know, communication. So it came much later. The early years, I think, were not easy at all.
#
I think the real break I got was this, because I had to stay in Delhi for long, a long period,
#
this, this opportunity to work on the Sino-Indian border. That was a big break in my service,
#
I think, in this big break in terms of getting that recognition and that respect. And then on,
#
I think, it became easy, but not in the first years. I think one had to constantly prove
#
oneself, literally. When I heard you talk about diplomacy in one of the talks that you gave,
#
I was struck by a phrase that you used that normally journalists use, where you said that
#
I got to witness the first draft of history. And I find that so fascinating, because in a sense,
#
you get to witness parts of the first draft of history before it actually
#
takes place. You know, so tell me about what your early years were like. Like, of course,
#
you went to Vienna, and you made yourself learn German over there, and kind of threw yourself
#
into that. And later you mentioned that, you know, you got the Southern Africa became part of your
#
beat, and you interacted with people from the ANC, you know, when you were 27, when you're young,
#
and you're interacting with people who have done such incredible things.
#
Yes. Right, precisely. Getting, you know, that it was a year of anti-apartheid, 1978, I think,
#
or 1979. And I was involved in that, the programs that India wanted to put up. And meeting people
#
on the Indian side also, you know, are quite legendary, who have passed on today, but were
#
very active at that time. There was a Mr. I think it was Harisharan Chhabra, his name was. He used
#
to publish something called the Africa Diary, Africa Journal. And it was quite a standard
#
reference material for India and Africa. There were people like Mrs. Shanti Sadik Ali, you know,
#
who was from our freedom struggle years onwards, who had made quite a name for herself, very
#
respected figure. She was involved in this anti-apartheid programs that we were putting
#
out. International year, it was called anti-apartheid. And India was very active. You know,
#
we had a very prominent role in leading the struggle against apartheid and racial
#
discrimination. You know, we were really one of those frontline countries in the UN
#
and internationally in very number of multilateral fora, academically, diplomatically.
#
So our Africa policy was very focused on this emphasis on equality, non-discrimination,
#
inclusiveness. And so for a young officer, I think it was a wonderful experience. And from then I
#
went on to deal with Nepal. And again, most absorbing, most complex relationship. And going
#
to Nepal in the early 1980s, what a different place it was. I remember they had a lot of trade
#
with China, which we didn't have. We hadn't really opened up to China at that time. So the Kathmandu
#
markets would be flooded with a lot of Chinese goods, which a lot of Indians would go to Nepal
#
to buy. And a completely different non-globalized world, I think, to be aware of all these things
#
was quite eye-opening. And then on to Sri Lanka. From Nepal, I went to Sri Lanka.
#
And I dealt with something that was not usually what a diplomat would deal with. I was dealing
#
with estate laborers in Sri Lanka of people of Indian origin, people who had been sent as
#
indentured labor in the 19th century to work on the tea plantations of Sri Lanka. And they were
#
stateless people. They were people left behind, literally. As you know, in Sri Lanka, the whole
#
Tamil question has been something that has created a lot of divisions within that country.
#
And at that time, interestingly, our focus was not on the Tamils of the North, not on Jaffna.
#
And the LTT was just a little blip at that moment. We were very focused on the question of, again,
#
this question of non-discrimination, which Indian foreign policy had really acquired a stellar
#
reputation in terms of being identified as one of the lead voices on this. So on the question of
#
statelessness, these people were stateless. They had no country, literally. They were without a
#
country. Neither India nor Sri Lanka had accepted them. They were in this limbo. And my task was to,
#
as a result of a pact between India and Sri Lanka, to process the grant of citizenship to a certain
#
proportion of these people who could then be sent back to India. So I was dealing with repatriation
#
and rehabilitation of these people. And I worked at that time with Gopal Gandhi, who was First
#
Secretary Rehabilitation in Kandy. And I was First Secretary Repatriation and Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement
#
in Colombo. So we worked in tandem. And I would go constantly. Those days, you could drive around on
#
your own. I would take my little yellow Suzuki, the same Maruti Suzuki, the same models from
#
the 80s. And I would drive alone from Colombo to Kandy, from Colombo to Talai Mannar, from where
#
the ferry was taken by people going back to India. So these migrant laborers who were given Indian
#
passports, it was called an Indo-Sri Lanka passport. It was not the normal Indian passport,
#
but the India-Sri Lanka passport for repatriation. So I would go to Talai Mannar to kind of oversee
#
the repatriation. So it was a very, it was not the usual image that you associate with diplomacy,
#
or diplomat's life, part of diplomacy, of course. But I was looking after their education. We had
#
something called the Ceylon Estate Workers Education Trust, which I was also handling,
#
so giving a little help for their education, looking at their welfare. They used to live in
#
these lines, you know, what they call lines, plantation laborers live like that. And conditions
#
were quite bad, especially for the women. And then when they would go back to India, you know,
#
you bought a train ticket. Those days, think of connectivity, we all talk of connectivity and
#
regional integration. But we were much more, I feel, integrated with our neighbors at that time,
#
because you could buy a train ticket in Colombo railway station to Chennai, to Madras, as it was
#
called. You would take the night train from Colombo to Talai Mannar, which is in the northern part of
#
the island, get off the train, and then take the ferry from Talai Mannar to Rameshwaram, about two
#
hours. And then from Rameshwaram, you got onto the train to Chennai, to Madras. And you were in Egmore
#
the next morning. So that was the kind of thing. Hardly anybody flew those days. There were flights
#
from Madras to Colombo, Chennai to Colombo. But basically, you took the ferry. And it was the
#
SS Ramanujam. That was named after the great Ramanujam. That was the ferry. It was operated
#
by the shipping corporation of India. And you had this agent of the SCI who would be in Talai Mannar,
#
a man whose name I still remember. His name was Emmanuel. And he used to handle, you know,
#
all this traffic that was going into. So what a different world. I mean, I was handling things
#
like that. So anti-apartheid, Southern Africa, then Nepal, where I had a lot of aid projects.
#
And then into Sri Lanka, where I was handling quite, I mean, it was not a very, not the kind of
#
glamorous assignments that most foreign service officers would want. They would want to do trade,
#
commerce, or they would want to do political reporting. But here I was doing something much
#
more mundane, but so satisfying. I can't tell you, I've loved doing work like that. Actually,
#
where, you know, you're working with people and dealing with perhaps people who are unsung
#
and forgotten. There's an appeal always I've had for reaching out to people like that. And that,
#
I think, was my experience in Sri Lanka. And then I came back, spent a few years, a few months at
#
Harvard, where my husband was at the Kennedy School, and then came back and started dealing
#
with China. And then of course. So I have a couple of related questions from there. Like you spoke
#
about, you know, at that age, at that young age, interacting with people in the ANC, and also,
#
you know, doing that extremely satisfying work in Sri Lanka. Now it strikes me that young people
#
often are filled with idealistic zeal on one hand, which of course must be enhanced when you meet
#
inspirational people like the people you did meet. And on the other hand, there is that sort of
#
stereotype of a diplomat's life as being one that necessarily is full of pragmatic considerations
#
and compromise. And one where you don't necessarily as a diplomat have so much agency, you know,
#
the guardrails along which you walk are laid down by whatever the stance of the government of the
#
day is, and there isn't much flexibility within that. So what do you feel about this particular
#
dichotomy? Like, can it get frustrating sometimes where your government may have a stance that you
#
don't quite agree with, you feel they're not going far enough, or they're going in completely
#
the wrong direction, but you have to be professional, you know, and is there a danger
#
that one can rationalize that to oneself, and then change oneself and lose some of that idealistic
#
zeal. And this dichotomy is one aspect of it. But at the same time, when you were speaking about all
#
the work you did in giving these stateless people a state, it seems to me that that also must be so
#
incredibly satisfying. And that would be an unseen part of a diplomat's life that you're
#
bringing change in the world. So tell me a bit about these two aspects, one that sort of the
#
clash that might happen between your individual idealism and the pragmatism that necessarily
#
comes with the job. And how many satisfying moments have you found like that one during your
#
career, where you say that, you know what, I don't care if no one notices, but I'm making the world
#
a better place. I'm doing a little bit to make the world a better place. Yeah, I did feel that when
#
one was in Sri Lanka, and partly because of the happiness it gave me also. The same thing happened
#
to me in Peru. I was in Peru, you know, when you look at it from India, you think it's like,
#
you know, it's 10,000 leagues away, literally. And literally, if you could dig a hole through
#
the center of the earth from Bangalore, probably come out in Lima, Peru, perhaps. But it's going
#
to take you a while and think of the numerous magma layers you'd have to, you'd have to negotiate.
#
But anyway, through all that magma, I was in Peru. And I felt, what am I going to do now? Because
#
it's a, you know, kind of a backwater in terms of what we do there. Yeah, we have, it's a bit of a
#
sleepy outpost and nothing to do with the country. The country is fascinating. I love, I really truly
#
love Latin America. That's the other thing. I tried to approach every place. As I told you,
#
I didn't do very glamorous assignments in the early parts of my career. And I accepted whatever
#
came my way. I was not in that way. I wasn't somebody who would go and, you know, argue with
#
my seniors that I don't deserve to go here. You know, there's a joke. One of my South Indian,
#
actually he was from Karnataka. He's no more with us. Unfortunately, a wonderful officer,
#
B.S. Prakash, Ambassador B.S. Prakash. And like many of us, when we first were recruited and went
#
to Delhi, we didn't know much Hindi. We learned Hindi in school, but we never spoke that much.
#
So he would constantly hear, he was dealing with postings of people abroad and especially staff,
#
you know, the staff, administrative staff, and they would come apparently and tell him he was
#
dealing with it. So he thought is a place somewhere, you know, we need, and it's, I think to me,
#
it's so laden with meaning. It's more than the, you know, the levity of it. I mean,
#
as a young South Indian officer, he really thought INSAF was a place. And I think many of us are
#
searching for INSAF, that place called INSAF. You know, it may be Utopia. Utopia is also a
#
place on a map. So INSAF is also a place on a map. But I never went up to my
#
superiors and said, I need INSAF. I mean, I said, I'll take whatever comes my way and make the best
#
of it. That's been my attitude in life. Whatever you give me, even if you give me a plate of
#
khichdi, I'll try and, you know, make, try and deal with it and make the experience as interesting
#
as possible. So we went to Peru and felt at the outset that what will I do here? But I found,
#
if you have an open approach and an inquiring mind, any place on earth will be fascinating for
#
you. It could be Copal. It could be, you know, Copacabana. Copacabana is interesting because,
#
you know, the girl from Ipanema and Copacabana and all that is fascinating. But in Peru, I didn't
#
know Spanish. So I decided I learned Spanish and I ended up speaking fluent Spanish, you know, in
#
about two years. And then I made wonderful friends there. I discovered the culture, the culture of
#
Hispanic America. You know, when we, we in India, we think of the United States, we think of America.
#
But, you know, in Latin America, they'll say America del norte. That is North America. There
#
is a South America too. And South America, as they say, that has, they call it in Spanish,
#
America de los indios. That is Indian America. That is Indian America literally in its entrails,
#
which we don't think of it. And that Indian America is so linked to us. I mean, apart from
#
the nomenclature, the Spaniards came there and called the Native Americans Indians. So that's
#
why in Spanish we are not referred to as Los Indios, the Indians, but as Los Indues, the
#
as Los Indues, the Hindus. I mean, all of us, whether we are Hindu, Muslim or Christian,
#
are Los Indues. So the word Hindu has so many connotations today, especially when, you know,
#
you talk of the various, you know, definitions of the word, let's say. So then I discovered this
#
whole universe out there, the music, the culture, the culture of pre-Columbian America, that is
#
before Columbus. It's called pre-Columbian. Absolutely, you know, something that I had
#
not known about at first hand. I mean, I read about it, but not in detail. And I can't tell
#
you that fascination has stayed with me, that interest. I went back to Peru a few years ago,
#
just like that on a kind of a, literally on a pilgrimage for me. I think Latin America is
#
one of those undiscovered gems for many Indians. And I think our diplomacy really needs to, like
#
the Chinese Foreign Office, they start off every year, their foreign minister starts it off with
#
a trip to Africa or Latin America. It's a kind of emblematic sort of way they approach it. And so
#
I think we in India also, the other thing I feel that when you talked of listening, and I think
#
that's extremely important. I think there's also, and this is something I was inculcated with
#
from early childhood, learn from others examples. And I think we must as Indians incorporate that
#
more into our psyches, because I think sometimes we try to live in a kind of echo chamber. I've
#
written about it also, as you know, I think that we have to get out of our echo chambers. And I've
#
tried to do that. And when I talked about risk taking, I forgot to mention that when I was
#
Foreign Office spokesman, before that, before my time, everything was very formalistic. Like you
#
gave a briefing once a week and it was, you called people into your room and there was nothing, no
#
recording, nothing, microphones. You just talked to them, answered some questions and their reporters
#
would go back and file their stories. I thought, you know, we were at the, in the early 2000s,
#
Y2K and all that. And we were at the advent of this 24 seven television had started.
#
And we didn't have social media, but everything was going live, I felt. So I felt, why don't I
#
start doing live briefings on camera? And it was something that like my getting on Twitter, it was
#
totally unorthodox. Something that, you know, you talked about as a bureaucrat, how do you do
#
things? I mean, while I never went against the party line, so-called party line, I just, I was
#
a disciplined person. I am disciplined by nature. So I don't try and do that kind of thing. I don't
#
like to break China that way, you know, and sort of shatter things, but I will always be thinking
#
of how to improve, you know, the way I'm doing things. So if I felt that doing a live briefing
#
would A, convey the image of transparency, B, it would show we were not just reactive, that we were
#
being proactive, C, that we were much more, you know, willing to share information, D, we were much
#
more confident about our positions. And finally, that we could persuade people just by doing this
#
in a more open, direct way. And I think, again, that was a practice that was followed by all
#
subsequent spokesmen and has become the de rigueur, as it were, in the functioning of most of,
#
although even till today, I always say, our bureaucrats, our diplomats, our people should
#
be much more willing to go up there and face the world and speak because, you know, India has a
#
great story to tell. It's just the way we have to, we position it to the way we project it.
#
And in the process, how we persuade people. I think we have the credibility to do that.
#
And that's, that was the approach I followed. And I think, so that's how I navigated the whole
#
journey of life, as it were, and kept my interest going and my enthusiasm and the energy, as you
#
said. Let me, let me double click on a couple of interesting things there. And one is, you know,
#
elsewhere, when you've spoken about your stint in Peru and Bolivia and South America and all that,
#
you've spoken about the commonalities, right? You've spoken about how, like us, there has been so
#
much intermingling there. You know, it's just such a khichri, a popuri, you know, whether it's
#
language or culture or everything just kind of coming in. And in many ways, India is like that.
#
And there's a kind of lived liberalism then and that where everything kind of comes in.
#
But there is also the opposite side. Now I can think of someone like you going to Peru and seeing
#
all of this and feeling at home and finding those common connections and feeling warmer
#
towards the environment and the culture around you. But many people also react in exactly the
#
opposite way. Like a lot of the strident Hindu nationalism that we see comes from NRIs. My,
#
you know, an earlier guest Amitabh Kumar spoke about how when he wrote an article about how he
#
had married a Pakistani, you know. I heard that podcast. Yeah. He got a call from this person who
#
said you are a kutta, you're a harami and all of that. And of course, NRI, right? And that's also
#
a natural impulse, I guess, that you go to a foreign place and you double down on your feelings of
#
tribal connect with whatever tribe you're from. And that can, you know, result in this kind of
#
extreme way. And I'm curious about how these two can exist together. I mean,
#
partly it's a lament because one would obviously want everyone to respond the way that you did
#
and say that, hey, we're all the same. That's also a lesson, for example, that literature teaches
#
you, that history teaches you, that ultimately, you know, circumstances are where the differences
#
are. Otherwise, we are all the same. But at the same time, there is a sort of these disturbing
#
tribal tendencies that also come up. So it's just a thought. I mean, I don't know if there's a
#
question in this, but is there something that you've thought about? I certainly have thought
#
about and I can first and foremost, having lived in the US for a number of years, it's not an easy
#
society for an outsider. We all talk about, you know, the US being this great melting pot,
#
but essentially it's a country. When you look at its history over the last 500 years, it's been
#
a country, a history, riven with a lot of conflict, a lot of assimilation in a violent sense. Also,
#
when you think of what happened to Native Americans, you think of, despite the fact that
#
their declaration of independence and all the precepts of their constitution, which have inspired
#
many countries, including us around the world. But, you know, you think of the history of slavery,
#
you think of the history of racial discrimination that continues in many parts of the country even
#
today. And you think of an immigrant, particularly from India, brown skinned, like us looking
#
different, you know, from the Caucasian majority, because they are basically a white majority
#
country. And think of the history from the 1920s, you think of people, the early Indian immigrants,
#
how they were classified, the rights that were denied to them. And it's been a long and checkered
#
history. So I always related to what it means to go and work in a country where essentially,
#
I suppose, it's an open society. And, you know, it is a wealthy, well endowed country. And a lot of
#
people from our part of the world who want to improve their lives never want to go there,
#
because it will help their children and enable them to go up in the world. But, you know, it's
#
not an easy assimilation, particularly if you come from India, where you've had an excellent student,
#
you have a great medical degree, engineering degree, but you have grown up in a sheltered
#
environment in a very traditional society. And generations of your family have lived that way.
#
And then you're just put into this and you tend to take cover, you want a certain protection,
#
you want a certain, you know, shelter for yourself, literally, from all that is going around you want
#
to succeed in that society, you do very well, you make money, you build a beautiful house,
#
your children go to the best universities, but this becomes your sucker, your shelter,
#
you come back and, you know, it's your little community of friends, many of them from similar
#
backgrounds, small towns, small cities. And it's very difficult to change. And we are a society that
#
doesn't change easily, you know, for generations we are kind of eternal India. And that doesn't
#
get out of you so fast. Your children change. And I always used to say in the US when I was
#
ambassador, I want to meet the young Indians, I want to meet the children of these immigrants,
#
because I know these, the first generation is us people like me who've grown up in the country,
#
and we can't change so easily because by the age of 15, 16, you're set, you know, as a person,
#
you may experience a lot more, as you said, but you're set basically in your ways by the time,
#
the way you speak, for instance, doesn't change. I mean, a Henry Kissinger at 95 today, 96, 97.
#
I mean, he still speaks with that heavy German accent, even to this day, because you don't really.
#
So I don't, in a sense, you know, question the fact that the NRIs don't change or they have
#
certain views. And I can be quite accommodating when it comes to that, because I've dealt with
#
people like that. And I felt basically the Indian is quite a reasonable person, provided you address
#
that, address them as equals. I think, you know, many of them, when they come to the US and try to
#
integrate themselves or, you know, work in that country, it's not an easy experience, not at all
#
an easy experience. And we're not a Westernized. I often talk about Westernization and modernization.
#
Now, Westernization is not just wearing all the clothes that, you know, especially today,
#
a younger generation has become so Westernized, even our movies and all you see. But inside,
#
are we really a modern country? Are we really sort of giving up, you know, some of the things that
#
perhaps in a way separated us were questions of difference, which perhaps in a sense, we need to
#
dial down a little if we have to integrate ourselves. In Latin America, that integration
#
between the native population and the Spanish culture that came, perhaps happened. Both these
#
cultures kind of converged. I don't think that happened with us in our culture, because we had
#
an India that stayed in a certain way. It was our protection, our shelter, perhaps, our capacity to
#
endure. But that capacity to endure when you go into another society, I think you have to kind of
#
moderate it in a way that, yes, you're proud of where you come from and what you stand for,
#
but you should be able to interpret that country to the rest of the world with much more confidence
#
and much more. You should be more comfortable in your own skin, I feel. What you said about, you
#
know, the native people and those who came after that kind of converging in South America, the
#
different people can converge, feels very poignant to me because I grew up believing that it's
#
happened in India, that we've converged. We are the khichri, you know, and some things might stand
#
out, but we are the khichri. But I now think of it and I don't think that convergence ever happened,
#
that if a Hindu ate biryani, it didn't mean that, you know, the convergence had happened,
#
that, you know, if a Muslim played Holi with you or whatever, I mean, these are facile cliches,
#
but it didn't mean that convergence had happened. And that's kind of sad. And the big learning from
#
what you just said, therefore, to all young Indians who are looking to go abroad is don't go to the
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US, go to Peru. And I would add to that, take a guava with you because then you can eat a Peru in
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Peru. I'm sorry. But Peru is the home of the potato, which aloo is our staple. But the
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International Potato Research Institute is in Lima, actually. They have thousands of varieties of
#
potatoes. That was the first place I discovered purple potatoes, in fact, potatoes of all colors.
#
Wow. And do purple potatoes taste the same? They're quite nice, actually. And you almost
#
found yourself in the middle of a terrorist attack there. Tell me a little bit about that.
#
Yes, I went to the birthday reception of the Japanese emperor at the Japanese embassy in Peru
#
in December 1996. And I stayed there for about half an hour and I had to go somewhere after that. So
#
the Israeli ambassador was a friend and I left because we had another function to attend.
#
And three minutes later, we heard, I mean, cell phones had just come in at that time,
#
and I had a cell phone and I heard somebody called me from the embassy and told me, my embassy,
#
and told me that this had happened. And are you safe? I mean, I said I've left already.
#
But that, so there were about 600 guests at that reception and they were all taken hostage by this
#
group of terrorists, the Tupac Amaru, who were demanding the release of some of their
#
leaders who were in prison in Peru at that time. So for four months to continue this hostage
#
situation continued. Some of the hostages were released, but a group of the VIP, VVIP people
#
were held there, including the foreign minister of Peru, in fact. So I just left a hair's breath by
#
a hair's breath. Otherwise, I would have been part of this, you know, this whole experience.
#
It ended four months later in April, 1997, when the government of President Alberto Fujimori
#
launched a surprise attack. Actually, they dug a tunnel from a mile away, right underground,
#
which opened up in the living room of the embassy. They blasted their way into the living room of the
#
embassy. At a time when through their intelligence, they knew that all the hostages were taking
#
their afternoon nap. It was a big mansion, so they were upstairs and only the terrorists were in the
#
drawing room of the embassy playing football, you know, foosball, as they say. You know, they have,
#
you can play football inside, you know, I don't know what it's called. There's some name for it.
#
Anyway, they were playing football and the rescuers, the special troops or whatever blasted
#
their way and killed each and every one of those terrorists. Not one hostage was harmed.
#
And that is a magnificent rescue. And so I lived through all that in Peru, and I was witness to.
#
I'm glad you left just in time, because from the little that I'm coming to know of you,
#
my feeling is you might have been playing foosball with them.
#
Not with terrorists. I don't think so. I may not have been, but it would have been quite an experience.
#
One would have been able to perhaps write a book about and a completely extraordinary situation
#
and something that hasn't happened since, and I hope it will not. But these are the risks that
#
one is exposed to. Talking of risks in diplomatic life, this is one. And timing is very important.
#
If I had not left at that time, so you go somewhere and you stay just as much what you need to
#
in terms of time and you leave and not to linger, not to there are there's no room for
#
deliance in diplomacy. I think you have to leave. You have to have a sense of timing that compass.
#
I don't know, instinct. We were told about instinct. I don't know what it was, but I left
#
three minutes before this happened. So similarly, I suppose in Sri Lanka,
#
when I was first secretary there, we had the race riots, the ethnic riots that
#
initially were kind of a prelude to the civil war. So witness to these very historical events.
#
Peru, there's in Sri Lanka that later on as high commissioner being there during the tsunami again.
#
Yeah, I had an aeromist once where on the night of the terrorist attacks in Bombay,
#
on that evening, a bunch of us were at an art opening in town and we don't get out much,
#
but we were there. So we said, okay, let's go for dinner. Where do we go?
#
And we said, okay, two choices. Let's either go to Wasabi at the Taj or let's go to Ulster Fry
#
at Gordon House Hotel. And we chose Ulster Fry. And Wasabi, of course, was where I think half the
#
people there died. And yeah, I think the novelist Sonia Faleiro who's been on my show was there.
#
My journalist friend Rahul Bhatia was there. So there were a bunch of us. And it was interesting
#
because in Ulster Fry, the attack started outside and there was a fog of information.
#
People are running around with machine guns. Someone said that there's a gang war. So there
#
was all kinds of rumors going around. And the hotel just said, don't go now. Ulster Fry is in
#
this hotel called the Gordon House Hotel. And they gave us a room there for the night. So the six of
#
us just kind of stayed in that room for the night. And the next morning they refused to take any
#
money for it, which was quite lovely. But to sort of get back to diplomacy, the next question that
#
then intrigues me is that there must have been times where you find yourself, you earlier spoke
#
of taking the party line. There must have been times where you are taking a party line that you're
#
not comfortable with or that you feel that this is the wrong thing to do or whatever. And I guess
#
there are two impulses. And of course, the professional thing is you put your feelings aside
#
and you just do what you have to do to the best of your whatever. But does that then diminish your
#
enthusiasm for the job? And does it also lead to a situation where to rationalize what you're having
#
to do, you then become apolitical in the sense that because you are representing the Indian
#
government, no matter which party happens to be running it at that point in time. And therefore,
#
you just become apolitical and stop having opinions because you know that you have to do your job.
#
And your personal liking or disliking for whoever, a minister or a prime minister maybe,
#
can't come in the way. You're representing India, you've got to do what you've got to do.
#
But as you're representing India, you may not often be acting in what you feel is India's
#
best interest. You might be following the party line. So have there been occasions where
#
that situation has happened? For example, you went back to Sri Lanka as the ambassador many,
#
many years later, you know, you're dealing with Tamils who at some level would feel that India
#
let them down, that first you support the LTT and you do whatever and then you just let them down
#
and you do whatever you do. And how does one handle a situation like that, where you can feel
#
incredibly sympathetic towards these people, you might even at some level feel bad for the things
#
that you now have to defend. So, you know, tell me a little bit, have you faced situations like that?
#
How have you dealt with it? I think in the context of Sri Lanka, I think there was never any question
#
of our, while we were always insistent on the maintenance of the unity and integrity of Sri
#
Lanka, we didn't support separatism. We never wanted, you know, the country to separate or be
#
partitioned. We didn't want that. We wanted a united, integral Sri Lanka. But at the same time,
#
our concern for the situation that the minorities faced, especially the Tamils. And after a point,
#
I think they suffered from both sides. In the sense, even the LTT made the Tamil population
#
suffer in that country after a certain point as the civil war crescendo arose and, you know,
#
situations like that happened. I think I tried to navigate this, although it was difficult.
#
I kept in touch with civil society or whatever remained of it in the north and east of the
#
country, especially after the tsunami. I traveled to each and every part, even to Jaffna and,
#
you know, areas as remote as Point Pedro, right on the north of the peninsula, Batticalo,
#
Ampara, Trincomalee, all these areas, which were kind of out of bounds to Indian diplomats because
#
of the civil war. But the tsunami opened it up. So I utilized that to reach out to people and to
#
convey that at the human level, at the level of people to people, you know, our concerns for them
#
remained intact and that we would work for their welfare. So did a lot of welfare related projects
#
there and including some renovation of temples, you know, Hindu temples and so delivery of medicines
#
and then helping them, helping Tamil kids with scholarships to study in India. So you find a way
#
to kind of do what you can under the circumstances. But then sometimes you're constrained by the
#
system because I remember during the Agra summit with Pakistan in 2001, when I had just become
#
spokesperson, I'd like to come back to this whole thing about us needing to be more proactive than
#
reactive in our communication. And we were entirely reactive during that summit. You know, we hardly
#
spoke to the media, which was all gathered in Agra during the Agra summit. And I think that lack of
#
communication did cost the government of India in terms of how the media spoke about the summit and
#
people were quick to condemn, you know, that we had failed. But if we had been a little more
#
proactive and been able to disseminate information in a timely way as to what was happening, we didn't
#
have to dive all state secrets. I'm not saying that, but I think we should in communication have
#
that confidence through which we emphasize our credibility in reaching out to the media and being
#
able to guide the narrative. That sometimes I felt, you know, was sad as Mr. Jaswant Singh, our
#
foreign minister at that time, said, there were too many midwives, but the baby was still born.
#
And we could have avoided that. We end up in a situation where there are often too many midwives,
#
but the person who's actually supposed to guide the birth perhaps should be a little more active,
#
more proactive in guiding the narrative. I felt constrained. And I was spokesperson also,
#
and since we can be frank, during the Gujarat riots, and I had to kind of speak to the
#
international media, sort of in a sense, trying to put the whole thing narrative, not, I'm not,
#
you know, defending anything that happened there. Because as a diplomat, I was not, you know,
#
in the center of those things. But our duty was to project to the international media that
#
Indian democracy was thriving and that steps were being taken to restore, you know, this peace in
#
these disturbed situations. And it was not easy because, you see, we were in a world where
#
media was already 24-7. Information was coming from everywhere. And to be able to put out something
#
that was, you know, reinforcing the central truth about India, respecting diversity, being inclusive,
#
being a stable society, became a task that, a complex task. I mean, there is that old cliche
#
about whatever you say about India, the opposite is also true. But in a moment like that, you know,
#
you're not focusing on the opposite, you're, you know, something like that has happened.
#
Was it difficult then? Was it like, are there, for example, meetings of you guys, where you sit down
#
and you decide, okay, how do we craft a narrative for this? How do we sort it out? Like, do the
#
orders come from above that this is a narrative we want you to push? Or do you sit and think that,
#
oh, no, okay, we've got to make India look good. That's our job. How do we craft a narrative where,
#
you know, we can make it work like that? Because I can just thinking aloud off the top of my head,
#
I can see multiple narratives which you can plausibly give to the international community.
#
You could, for example, say that this is an aberrant incident. It's not all that is made
#
out to be sure there was a riot, but we've got it under control. And hey, look at a record for
#
inclusiveness. That's one narrative. The other narrative would be that what happened is a great
#
tragedy. And we are going to look at it and we are going to sort it out. And we are going to make
#
sure it never happens again, because, hey, we are India, you know, shit happens, but we'll get past
#
it. But I have a feeling that that second narrative would not be palatable to the powers that be
#
because it would be, you know, accepting that something very wrong had happened, you know,
#
which politicians will never obviously want to do. And that's true of all parties, you know,
#
you see that across all of that. So take me through then a little bit of that thinking about
#
that process. And also when you craft a narrative, is there a danger that you start believing that
#
narrative? Yes, I understand what you mean. You know, that when I recall those days and both,
#
I mean, the Agra Summit before that, the takeaway that one gets is that in our system and as a
#
society, as, you know, Indians, you know, we're very good with the entertainment that we put out.
#
Look at Bollywood. Look at, I mean, a certain sense of spectacle and people, you know, love it.
#
But when it comes to defining and describing the narrative or what kind of direction you want
#
people's understanding to take, I think we perhaps have to cultivate within ourselves and as a system,
#
more emphasis on these aspects of governance and of modulating. I wouldn't say we should enforce it,
#
but being able to modulate, being able to put out through careful consideration,
#
through careful thought, the message that we feel can somehow not only improve people's
#
understanding of the subject, but also deal with rumor, conjecture, false news. I think we have to
#
devote so much more attention to it. Even today, I feel it's important for us, reputationally,
#
abroad particularly, internationally, as the world's largest democracy. And to my mind,
#
as a patriot, the world's greatest democracy also. Just think, you know, 1.3 billion people
#
and the way we live in an essentially stable country, essentially stable. We have, you know,
#
eruptions and we have unfortunate events that take place, as they do everywhere in the world.
#
But I think this essential stability, the capacity to endure this resilience of Indian society,
#
of Indian people, and the essential common sense of our population, which enables the,
#
you know, most people want peace, most people don't want division, most people want to live in
#
harmony with their neighbors. I think that is the compass to which we are set. And if we are able to
#
put that message out, even if it's repetitive, even if it's just two, three lines on a piece of
#
paper that everybody repeats, then it becomes a kind of a message that people also understand
#
better, especially abroad. I can totally see why you were such a legendary spokesperson.
#
You know, just two counter thoughts that come to mind is, I would say that, yeah, there is
#
been stability, but I fear that a lot of it is inertia and apathy, rather than anything else.
#
And also, you know, more than a greatest, more than the greatest democracy, I'd like us to be
#
the greatest republic, because that's what indicates that the rights of every individual.
#
Absolutely. You said it. Absolutely. Yeah.
#
Yeah. And those are the things I worry about. Now, I'm also...
#
And this ability to face the light. I mean, you know, you've heard of Plato's cave, you know,
#
if you're in the cave too long, I mean, you get used to certain lighting, certain illumination.
#
But when you actually go out into the open, you don't want to sort of... the light blinds you,
#
I think. We have to constantly be out in the open, I feel. Get out of our caves.
#
You know, and thinking of the way you've described in the past, how you became the spokesperson,
#
it feels to me that you are someone who's always entering Plato's cave from outside and
#
people inside are like, what's going on? Like you've spoken about how, you know, when you were
#
the first woman spokesperson of the MEA. Yeah, still today, I think.
#
Till today. And when you were being considered for the post, all these stereotypes came up that,
#
oh, these parties with the press will have cigarette smoke, liquor flowing and all of that.
#
But just one thing supported you, you know, and said that no, you know, if she's good at her job,
#
she's good at her job, period. And we'll kind of manage. You also mentioned and every publisher
#
listening to the show kindly listen to the next few words really, really carefully,
#
because Nirupama has said that she could write a book about the Agra summit of 2001.
#
It was so dramatic and so much happened. You've spoken about how what was supposed to be a retreat
#
became a carnival. You've spoken about, you know, just the media overreach was so much that it was
#
like, and I love this phrase by you, conducting foreign policy in an amphitheatre, right? And
#
you speak about the big communications era for which it all fell apart, where Sushma Swaraj,
#
who was the external affairs minister, not external, information and broadcasting minister,
#
sorry. She was asked that, oh, did you discuss Kashmir? And she innocently said no. And there
#
was a furor in Pakistan because, hey, how can Kashmir not be discussed? And then Musharraf had
#
this breakfast meeting with the Indian editors. And he said, it's only Kashmir. We will talk about
#
nothing else. And forget about terror and all that. And everything falls apart. And from a diplomat's
#
point of view, this would have been like politicians and media are destroying our game,
#
because, you know, everything like this is not how diplomacy is kind of conducted. And tell me
#
a little bit about that period of time, because then one begins to wonder if a diplomat would
#
then feel that the essential nature of diplomacy itself is shifting, because many of the things
#
that you would talk about in closed rooms, you know, in confidence with diplomats talking to
#
other diplomats, it suddenly, it becomes electoral issues, it becomes emotive issues, it kind of goes
#
out there. In fact, even in Agra, you said it's the only time in your life you were manhandled
#
by Pakistani journalists. Tell me a little bit about that experience, firstly.
#
Actually, those two Pakistani journalists who manhandled me were clearly, I think they were
#
from the Pakistan Observer, which they say is an ISI kind of influenced or directed production.
#
So they manhandled me and they said, is this what you mean by your Jamuri-yat? You have sent
#
a leader away, Musharraf had left without any conclusion. So that was very unfortunate. Of
#
course, the Pakistanis apologize to me. In all fairness, I must also put that on record. But
#
yes, it was an unnerving experience, that entire Agra summit, things could have been done
#
differently. Again, it comes back to the central, the message is the medium, you know, the message
#
is the medium. And I think we must pay much more attention to it because, and learn from the way,
#
look at the way, you know, they do it in the US or in these open societies. We don't have to follow
#
other examples, but, you know, we need to be much more out there, you know, communicating and
#
communicating in a sophisticated way, in a way that is, you know, international, that is not just
#
couched in the language we are. And we should understand that on these, but with Pakistan,
#
I don't know what direction our foreign policy can take. We seem to be stuck in some limbo,
#
I think, when it comes. And this is a country partitioned from us, like as if a limb of ours
#
was severed. And the connections run so deep between our two countries. And yet there is so
#
much hate, in a divided family, what happens? It's like the Montagues and the Capulets, literally.
#
And generation after generation, it continues. But I think to myself, don't we need to look a
#
little beyond this and to see in what direction all this can take us? And can we avoid design
#
disasters, future disasters that may threaten to fall upon us because we are so divided and we are
#
so unable to craft a policy towards each other that can be much more normal and much more
#
normalizing? You know, we need a normalizing policy. And right now, we seem to be stuck.
#
We seem to be stuck. And the Pakistanis have a lot to blame for it. I'm not at all saying that
#
in this situation, for no reason, there is a reason why we are in this situation and
#
the kind of calamities that have befallen us because of certain policies adopted by Pakistan.
#
But when can we come away from all that? I mean, I feel that this has to be a constant effort,
#
that these breakages in communication that seem to be defying the relationship today
#
cannot do us good in the long run. Cannot, I feel. And it doesn't help for integration.
#
It doesn't help for, as I said, normalized relations. It doesn't help the people of either
#
country, I feel. And especially for us being such an open, diverse, plural society, and we will
#
continue to be that way. I think we need, even if solutions may not be entirely to the full
#
satisfaction, maybe a balance of dissatisfaction, perhaps. We need that balance of dissatisfaction
#
that moves towards some more cooperative approach. Ultimately, if we had to think of security for
#
this part of the world, even from Afghanistan, if you look from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka,
#
we need a more cooperative, integrated approach to security also. Because the security of this
#
subcontinent, right now, it has been broken up into so many parts, but essentially it's meant to
#
cohere together, which it was for millennia, the way geography brought us together, the way history
#
brought us together, and the way the communications were laid across this entire expanse from the time
#
of Ashoka. Let us just, you know, going back, it's not just the time of the British. I'm not just
#
talking of Sher Shah Suri's grand trunk road. It's much previous to that. Somehow we've, we seem to
#
have lost that plot, I feel. Some larger questions. And for one of them, I want to kind of go to a
#
quote from the Fractured Himalaya, but, and it's in the context of Tibet, really, but I want to apply
#
to just a larger context. It applies to India, Pakistan also, where you said, quote, the cultural
#
boundaries transcend the political boundaries and always overflow, linguistically, culturally,
#
no matter how much you divide them by McMahan and Durand lines. On both sides, the people were
#
almost the same and there was free flow of trade and ideas. And anyone who's been to Pakistan will
#
notice the similarities. Like when I went to Lahore, it felt so much like Delhi. And this is a
#
cliche, but when I went to Karachi, it felt so much like Bombay, you know, through all of Pakistan,
#
like, except when I went to Peshawar, I did not feel that I was not in India. Only the signs were
#
in Urdu. And in Peshawar, of course, they were speaking Pashto and, you know, lighter eyes and
#
all of that. So they look different. So it wasn't unfriendly, but I, the rest of, everywhere else,
#
I felt like I was kind of in India. And, you know, you've quoted Nehru saying that countries
#
cannot run from geography. But I think the one little nuance there is that the problem isn't
#
geography. The problem is nation states in the sense that we draw these borders between people
#
who are otherwise so similar. Like, you know, Tibet is one thing, but there is a greater sense of
#
Tibet that, you know, and that Buddhism that is all around, you know, and North India has so much
#
more in common with, say, Pakistan than it does with South India. And there are so many commonalities
#
that go through. And surely as a diplomat, you obviously, you travel everywhere, you see these
#
commonalities, even in far off places like Latin America, and you see these commonalities. And yet,
#
it almost therefore feels primitive that we are negotiating the world through the lens of nation
#
states and the particular nation state that we come from. And of course, anything that is a status
#
quo always seems inevitable, right? You think it's been there forever and it'll be there forever.
#
But if you look through the large sweep of history, nation states haven't really been around for too
#
long. And it is not necessarily the case that the world will look like this 200 years from now.
#
We don't know that. It is not, there is no permanence about it. But what there is permanence about is
#
culture and the commonalities that they have. What there is also permanence about, like in a
#
different place you've spoken about how Tibetans in a map would not recognize divisions within
#
mountains and rivers and whatever. And you've very eloquent couple of paras by you. I won't
#
quote them here. I'll just encourage people to read the book. So what do you think about this aspect?
#
Because at one level, you are a person who is out there and you are immersing yourself in all the
#
cultures. You learn German, you learn Spanish, you know, you're learning the languages. So, you know,
#
that sense is there. But at the same time, you are representing one particular nation state,
#
which when you think about it as such an artificial construct, and you're representing it against
#
other nation states, which are equally artificial constructs. And does it ever feel like this is a
#
weird kind of game? Why are we in this game? This whole game is so just doesn't make sense.
#
Well, this is one area where one feels, you know, one has to acknowledge a certain sense of degree
#
of helplessness, because these are ordained, these are given to you. I mean, you're handed this down.
#
It's like, you know, like some 10 commandments written on stone that you have to deal with,
#
especially when you're in the policymaking framework. And this is what you deal with.
#
You deal with maps, you deal with borderlines, you deal with, you know, territorial integrity,
#
and the whole issue of sovereignty, which is like so sacred to us, you know, it's that third rail
#
you don't want to cross, literally. So all of us, whether we're Indians or Pakistanis or Chinese or
#
Bangladeshis or Sri Lankans or Nepalis, we have to deal with it. But then other realisation,
#
which is which should be there at the back of one's mind, is that very often the stories cut
#
across maps. Stories don't stop at the map. You know, think of a city like Amritsar. I delivered
#
a lecture on borderlands recently there at Maja House. And I spoke of this, you know, these are
#
cities like Amritsar. It's very much like it's like a city in chrysalis. I always think of it,
#
you know, it's still evolving. It is still influenced by the currents that cross borders,
#
you know, whether, I mean, on politically or whether culturally or whether historically,
#
I mean, you think of Ranjit Singh, for instance, and his whole, you know, the extent of his,
#
literally his empire. So you realise that the sense, the knowledge of history should be ingrained
#
in each and every one of us. Today, many of our kids, our students go into engineering and compute
#
study of computers or medicine. I can understand, you know, every parent wants their child to
#
do well in life. And these are avenues for advancement, no doubt. And in some senses,
#
as a doctor, you serve society, which is absolutely laudable. But every child, I think,
#
should have a sense of that history also. And that awakes the imagination. You need both reason and
#
you need both imagination, both of them together, so that you understand the history of the place,
#
which is what I think was kindled in me as a child. And you can kindle that in every child,
#
I think, that love of history. And it's through that love of history that you realise the power
#
of integration, the power of, you know, this organic whole that we are, and which has been
#
severed and dissected in so many places. So we're bleeding and, you know, and the frontiers in our
#
part of the world bleed, literally. They're not in that way. We think they're set in stone,
#
but they are bleeding. And how do we look beyond them? Why can't we have more integration? Why
#
can't we think of, you know, trade? And why do we have to be, you know, issues like territorial
#
differences and conflicts will take a very long time to settle. It's not something that we can
#
do overnight. There's no magic wand that we can weave. But we need that wisdom and foresight to
#
realise that even as these will take time to resolve, we have to get on with the business of
#
building a better life for the people involved, which we are not able to do at the moment.
#
Because we are living in these compartments, we are progressing. There is difference certainly
#
in our lives, but the potential is nowhere near being realised, I feel, because of these divisions.
#
So my friend Pranay Kottasane, when speaking about Pakistan once in an older episode, spoke
#
about how we can't think of one Pakistan. There are multiple Pakistan's and his specific phrasing
#
was there is a military jihadi complex and there is a putative state of Pakistan. And really,
#
and I've always looked at it as that, as well, that this, you know, the stronger this military
#
jihadi complex is, the worse it is for the citizens of Pakistan. They are also victims,
#
I think, you know, which is why you also often speak about people to people contact and the
#
importance of that and all of that. And this seems to flow along the lines I described earlier,
#
that the people everywhere are united by culture and by cultural similarities, if not united by
#
culture completely. But the states are thinking of it as nation states, there are these borders,
#
we have to do what we kind of have to do. And even though you are a representative of the state in
#
your capacity as a diplomat, you are also a person. In fact, you have, you're also a citizen. In fact,
#
in various ways, including the work you've done after retirement on your orchestra, which we'll
#
speak about later, you've tried to further people to people contact because that is the best way
#
to kind of solve these problems. And it might just be the case that the people in power have
#
an incentive to keep these problems going. After all, if Pakistan doesn't have trouble in its
#
borders, then you know, how do you justify spending so much money on the army, for example,
#
you know, in India, if the economy is collapsing, then the smart thing is to focus your anger on
#
an enemy outside and make that an issue, you know, so you have different incentives kind of
#
playing out. So now from the vantage point of where you are, where you have simultaneously
#
been a concerned citizen all your life, and, you know, dived into every culture and so on,
#
and also you have been part of the state. So how do you how do you kind of look at this? And do
#
you think that a greater recognition of this dichotomy would actually help everyone because
#
so many people in India, for example, are ingrained or brainwashed into just hating Pakistan,
#
but what is hateable there is not Pakistan, it's it's, you know, a particular kind of state that
#
is out there, but the people are you, you know, so what are your thoughts? I think every child
#
instead of being ingrained with the hatred of Pakistan should understand the circumstances in
#
which Pakistan came to be. And that is why the penultimate stages of our freedom struggle,
#
particularly from 1935 onwards, should be studied in much greater precision and detail by all of us
#
as concerned citizens. Because, you know, we think of the overall arch of the freedom struggle of
#
Gandhiji and civil disobedience and nonviolence. But, you know, the fine, the finely grained,
#
high resolution picture of those years from 1935 onwards must be studied more. How did Pakistan
#
come to be? How did our country get divided? Why were certain Muslims of the subcontinent
#
leading this struggle in the forefront? Did they really represent the interests of all the Muslims?
#
So there's the whole tragedy of Pakistan, the birth of Pakistan, I think, was in a sense a
#
result of that, the tragedies of division within our own committee, within our own society, within
#
our own body politic. And I think if we have that kind of perspective and understand the history
#
involved, understand the background against which partition happened, the greatest tragedy
#
of modern times, the displacement of the common man, basically common people. I always say,
#
think of the unknown Indian, think of the unknown Pakistani. We don't know much about even the
#
known ones, but unknown ones. I mean, their situations are so, so, you know, they're like
#
Siamese twins despite the partition, I feel, joined at the hip and fighting with each other,
#
struggling with each other, not understanding, you know, the linkages that kept us one for centuries
#
and then, you know, tore us asunder. So I don't think this is a normal foreign policy relationship.
#
It's a relationship that's tied up so much with our domestic constituencies and our own fabric
#
as societies, as nations, as peoples, as inter-religious, you know, relationships go.
#
So I wish we could understand the complexities of these relationships and how these divisions
#
have continued and become so much more accentuated rather than having division should have healed by
#
now. You know, we should have been, but then we had Kashmir, the whole struggle over Kashmir,
#
and then the usage by the military junta in Pakistan of these proxy methods of cross-border
#
terrorism and policies, not policies, maneuvers, tactics,
#
stratagems to ferment more division between the two countries. So India can't be faulted for the
#
efforts that it made over the decades to try and build peace. But Pakistan, through its, especially,
#
of course, the policies of the military dictatorships, has managed to create the
#
mess that we're in today. It's a total pickle, I think. And taking off from this, it seems to me
#
that many problems in international affairs are actually intractable, just unsolvable. You can't
#
do anything about it. The India-Pakistan problem is obviously one problem because each country has
#
taken a hard stand on something and there is no meeting point possible. Israel, Palestine is like
#
that. Even in, you know, our problem with China, which you describe in such detail, you know,
#
even the matter of Tibet, it's intractable because India is saying that, hey, you know, we are the
#
successors to the British Empire, as it were. So those agreements hold. Simla Pact of 1914 says,
#
these are the borders, blah, blah. China is saying, hey, we never recognize that. And we
#
have a different conception of the thing. And there's absolutely no meeting point. And maybe
#
there are moments in time where you can take a step and things can happen. But if that moment
#
in time passes, then it's just Groundhog Day. And it seems to me, therefore, that in, as far
#
as these problems are concerned, you could replace the diplomats with AI, right? You could just build
#
a machine and you program the machine and machines say the same thing. Each machine on each side will
#
argue, you are fed in with how far you can go and you can't go further than that. And all of that.
#
And of course, you make a difference on many other margins, such as repatriating straight
#
list people and all of that. But as far as these big problems are concerned, they kind of become
#
unsolvable. And it's essentially a dance. And it's a dance where everybody knows what is going to
#
happen. Because you have certain levers of public policy, your counterpart may have certain other
#
levers, you know how far each lever will work. So it's almost like the people are irrelevant,
#
you know, the machine just kind of runs itself and Groundhog Day, right? So has that ever been
#
a sense that you have got that this is futile? You know, what can one do here? Like whenever one
#
does something, like if I do a podcast, right? I'll try to put my personality into it, make it
#
something of me. If I play a sport, you know, Virat Kohli will play the sport in a particular way.
#
Whatever you do, you kind of try to do it in your own way and put something of yours in it.
#
But diplomacy, it also seems to me that what is required is really the opposite, that deviations
#
might be a bug and not a feature, that you just go with the program. And so on the one hand,
#
you're an independent thinking person, you are immersing yourself in your own ways,
#
you're meeting people, you're building rapport, you're building relationships.
#
But on the other hand, there are these guardrails. So what are sort of your thoughts on this?
#
Yeah, I think that very much there is a programmed diplomacy that you are handed down
#
and have to deal with and operate within those confines, the so-called guardrails,
#
or maybe I would say third rails, you don't cross them. So that definitely is something that all of
#
us have to contend with. And many of us just accept it and operate on that basis. And we kind
#
of repeat the mantras and know that you don't cross borders, as it were. There's no crossing
#
certain lines. I think, yes, especially, that's especially the case with us. And I don't know what
#
that portends for the future. Because, you know, for, and obviously, as Indians, we all want our
#
country to be on the global high table. We want to become permanent members of the UN Security
#
Council. We want to be recognized as a leading power. But in all, as a citizen, I can say that
#
now I'm not, you know, I speak out more on these issues. My own view based on my experience is that
#
we cannot achieve, we can certainly aspire, but we cannot achieve those heights of greatness that
#
we aspire to unless we are able to message the outside world and convey to the outside world
#
that here we are as the biggest country in the region. We are taking the initiatives to open up
#
things, to resolve historical problems, and to overcome prejudice. And, you know, to be as a
#
democratic, as a republic, you mentioned the democratic society that we are really able to
#
walk the talk on all that we stand for. And I think that that should be also something at the
#
back of our minds, especially at the leadership level, I think that political will has to imbue
#
these, these aims and aspirations. It's not just talking about them at every annual session of the
#
UN General Assembly or the speech that our representative makes at the Security Council.
#
I think that we have to be not only a voice for that, but we also have to be seen as doers,
#
you know, as action oriented in the direction of that inclusiveness that we stand for and that
#
sense of integration that we have always espoused when it comes to the rest of the world.
#
We are for the end of conflict. We want peaceful solutions. Our representative talking about
#
Ukraine is saying we need constructive diplomacy. We don't want conflict. We cannot afford the wages
#
of war, but we are not saying it in our region. I'm not, I don't mean vis-a-vis China. I mean,
#
there China is the bigger country, I think has to be much more magnanimous. Is foreign policy
#
constrained in a sense by domestic policy? And I mean this in two ways. One is my friend,
#
Nitin Pai says, and I agree with him 100%. He says that, you know, the best foreign policy is
#
a growing economy, right? Because you get GDP growth, you have more trade, bigger markets,
#
you have a better lever to use in your foreign policy and these levers matter. That's one aspect
#
of domestic policy mattering, because if you're a poor country, if you're all over the place,
#
no one's going to take you seriously. And the other aspect of it is that you can go on international
#
forums and say all of these things, but then those international forums can say, hey, but look what
#
you're doing in India. You're talking about inclusiveness, but look what's happened in
#
Gujarat or look what's happening in Karnataka over the hijab thing and look at blah, blah, blah.
#
And then where do you stand? And, you know, so at these different levels, necessarily,
#
if you're part of the foreign policy establishment, not just a diplomat, perhaps like yourself
#
or a foreign policy bureaucrat, but even a minister, they might in a sense be powerless
#
because you have the levers you have and you have nothing else. And that is what it is.
#
I agree that it has to really emanate top down. It can't be a bottom up sort of, you know,
#
movement in that sense, because these things, the messaging has to come really from the top.
#
There has to be a conscious deliberation, a conscious determination, conscious sense of
#
direction that we are able to give. So maybe that moment of realization, I hope it will be there
#
because I've always operated on the principle that we are a reasonable set of people. I think
#
it is there. We are programmed as what we are to be reasonable and to be common sense oriented in
#
whatever we do. So that's really what our religion teaches. Hinduism by large means that it doesn't,
#
it is not rigid. It is accommodative. It is able to evolve. You know, it doesn't stand in one place
#
in that sense. And I think we must, that absent that sense of rigidity, you know,
#
exclude it from the debate and be prepared to incorporate new ideas of thinking constantly,
#
because there I think the kernel of greatness lies in that, that ability to change, to evolve,
#
to assimilate, to accommodate. And in the process, the sum of the parts becomes so much
#
more than each individual. And a third domestic problem just struck me, which is political rhetoric,
#
especially in times like this, where like earlier you've pointed out that, you know, there is one
#
theory that the reason Mao was quick to come to go to war in 1962 was because the great leap forward
#
of nine, you know, three years before that had completely failed. I mean, the big summary there
#
is that sparrows were destroying crops. So he wanted, you know, he ordered that all sparrows
#
should be killed and locust proliferated. And it was just madness and one, you know, unseen effect
#
upon another. And tens of millions of people basically died. And therefore he knows because
#
he's messed up domestically, you know, an external enemy is a good thing, you know, and therefore it
#
works. And this is one theory. Obviously, it's not the only reason he went to war. There was, you know,
#
it's so much else. But similarly, in India, you know, this can lead to rhetoric, which gets in
#
the way of the diplomacy that diplomats might be trying to carry out. For example, you know, I had
#
Shivam Shankar Singh on the show recently who was in the BJP for a short while and as an election
#
analyst and a strategist who also was in IPAC for a short while, where he got Amrinder Singh elected
#
in the Congress campaign. And he said that the day he left the BJP was when at one point, they
#
decided consciously as a campaign choice that, you know, and this was for the 2019 elections,
#
and they decided that we are going to build a narrative of othering and anti-Muslim narrative
#
and all of that, because last time we did a narrative of economy and we have nothing to show
#
for it, right? Now, it strikes me that with 2024 coming, it might even be therefore a rational
#
thing to say for them from a political and electoral perspective, how do we get votes,
#
that if you have nothing to show domestically, things are so bad, you know, build up the specter
#
of the foreign enemy. So at one level, you have this kind of narrative going down for the benefit
#
of a domestic audience. But on the other hand, China is listening. But on the other hand,
#
Pakistan is listening. And Pakistan is listening is okay, but China is listening. They are way more
#
powerful than you. You know, if China and India were to go to war today, it wouldn't end well for
#
us, right? So, you know, when you guys, your sort of diplomatic community, when you sit and you see
#
what the hell is happening in the world, there's so much populism. It's not just India, it's kind of
#
happening everywhere. You know, someone you've met many, many times, Xi Jinping is also going
#
off in more and more aggressive directions. And you must also tell us about your encounters with
#
him and how you found that. But is this something that makes you despair sometimes? That what can
#
I do at the foreign policy level, where all of this political rhetoric for domestic consumption
#
makes my task virtually impossible? Yeah, I'm not in the system anymore. So I suppose, yes,
#
it would have meant being, you know, the space within which you operate becomes much more confined
#
today by all that is going on domestically, because you can't separate the domestic context
#
in which we operate as a republic, as a democracy from the foreign context in which we operate
#
on the global stage. We seem to think that we can impose these divisions, these compartments,
#
but I don't think we can operate in those silos anymore because the world sees us.
#
I mean, we're there, an open book, however much we may try to, you know, impose restrictions on
#
the way our media talks in the country, for instance. I mean, a certain line is put out.
#
And if you are an unquestioning citizen, you accept that and you think things are going well. And
#
there's really all is well, as they said in The Three Idiots. All is well, yes. So it's only,
#
I think we all need to, you know, they talk of the examined life. What is the examined life today,
#
I think? And you talked about what do we have to show for six or seven years of a certain party's
#
rule. I think we need that self-examination. I think we need that kind of probity within ourselves,
#
that honesty, I think. And what is it we want for the country? Do we want the redressal, as we see
#
it, of historic wrongs that we as a majority community have had to, have become, have been
#
victims of or whatever the rights or wrongs may be there or whatever the true flow of history may
#
have been in that connection? Yes, we did suffer. There's no doubt. We were conquered. We were
#
victims of historic circumstance. But there is a larger context of our capacity to endure through
#
all this, that resilience and which really speaks to the strength and the health of a society that
#
was able to endure through all this and come out, you know, with the last man standing literally,
#
you know, at the end of it all. So we don't think in those ways. If we create the sense of victimhood,
#
then I think we lose sight of the goals that we need for the country. We need modernization.
#
How do we define modernization? It's just not adopting rap music or, you know, wearing blue
#
jeans or, you know, you look at, as I said earlier, you look at our films today. I mean,
#
I really wonder what the messaging is. I think the messaging has got all confused.
#
Modernization really means, you know, the best roads, the best infrastructure, the best universities,
#
the best schools. Tell me, you know, we had this entire campaign against corruption in the country
#
and we were all witness to it. And I think a lot of us, we don't want corruption, obviously,
#
want it eliminated. But why is it that we don't, when we, I notice, I sometimes feel like I'm a
#
wolf howling at the moon when I walk on the roads in my own city here. I mean, in Bangalore, the
#
pavements, you know, the manholes, the lack of proper waste disposal. I mean, we're trying,
#
there's no doubt the municipalities are trying, but roads that are repaired within one year,
#
they go back to the same. This is what people should be talking about. Why is it that we,
#
drinking water is not safe enough after 70 years of independence? Why is it that we don't have a
#
road leading to my school in the village? Or why is it that my children have to walk to school for
#
so long? Why is it that, you know, I don't have a doctor nearby or a dispensary nearby? These are
#
the things that, you know, should really concern us. And this is what modernization is. It's
#
it's, it's not about righting historic wrongs. I think we've won our freedom today. We have an
#
established constitutional republic. We have to improve it, no doubt, but that is improvement
#
in governance, improvement in state capacity, which is so important. When you look at state
#
capacity, you look at this, you look at how our cities are planned, and that's all about state
#
capacity. I think this is what we should be talking of. The debate should be about these
#
countries, not about the othering, as you said, of, you know, if a girl student coming to college
#
wearing, you know, a face scarf, I think it's a headscarf, really, what they were wearing,
#
the face was not covered. But it's still coming to college. It's not coming to a
#
denominational institution. It's coming to for a secular education. I think that is important,
#
don't you think? It's important that that girl has been able to come to that school, is able
#
to ride a scooter, park it there, come into college, study, wanting to become an architect
#
or a doctor or an engineer or an academic. That I think is what modernization is. It's not about,
#
you know, however much, you know, wearing a niqab or a burqa may imply in terms of whatever it implies
#
in terms of the place of women in Islam. That's a whole debate. I mean, it involves the whole
#
Muslim communities across the world. It need not be confined to India. And we don't have to start
#
that. It has to come universally. You need many autoturks, I think, to begin and complete that
#
debate. But for us, I think it is to ensure that girls come to school and girls are educated and
#
girls become financially independent. That's really what modernization is about. Modernization
#
is about our cities, you know, being able to deliver facilities to the population. It's about
#
the lifting more and more millions of people out of poverty and making them stand on their own feet,
#
giving them a sense of pride rather than being just dependent on my bap, literally. I think these
#
are, this is how I define modernization. Yeah, many strands. And I agree with you on
#
everything you said, really. But, you know, you described yourself as a wolf howling at the moon.
#
I see myself as a wolf howling at the new moon because nobody's listening, right? Nothing is,
#
like, even that anti-corruption thing. Like, the core cause of corruption is the state has too much
#
power. You give the state too much power, too much discretion. Corruption is inevitable. As Lord Acton
#
said, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts. Absolutely, it's inevitable. You need to change
#
the incentives of the state and that's the only way to kind of get it to work. I also agree about
#
everything you said about… And corruption is not confined to India alone. I mean, I've seen it in
#
China, even under the Communist Party. Same thing, big state. Huge, huge. Yeah, the more power the
#
state has. But the landscape is being transformed. I think, you know, I went to China in 1986 and
#
that's 40 years almost down the line. It's, as the saying goes, the past is another country.
#
It's another country that you see today. You never step in the same river twice. Yeah,
#
yeah. I think that is what should consume us as to how that kind of change happened.
#
You know, it happened, I think, because a certain of a certain, you know, something
#
consuming the Chinese people, I think, about wanting to stand up, wanting to be counted,
#
wanting to be modern. I think from 1919, when the May 4th movement was consuming the students
#
of Peking University and other big universities. I mean, this was the debate about modernization.
#
I think that debate has not happened. Yeah. Well, I agree with you. And, you know, you've in fact
#
spoken when you were in China in the 1980s. And at one point, your Indian delegation was taken
#
for a meeting. And this was after Tiananmen. And the streets were all empty. And it was ghost towns.
#
And it's kind of no longer like that. I agree with everything you said about the hijab, by the way.
#
Like, I'm in the middle of writing a newsletter post about, which has a headline, dial H for hate,
#
not hijab, which I think is a core problem there. You know, the hijab is a separate issue.
#
Even the constitution. None of us may really, I mean, if I go to, I've been to Iran a number of
#
times on work. Covering my head with that scarf, I'm so unused and uncomfortable about it. And I
#
used to think, how are people? But underneath it all, the Iranian woman had found, you know,
#
you know, she had a buffa hairdo under that way, under that head scarf. She, you know, wore high
#
heels. She was absolutely sophisticated. She was out there in the marketplace, you know, kind of,
#
you know, doing her shopping, driving her car. We need women who are able to do all this despite
#
the fact that they're wearing that, you know? Yeah. I mean, my point here really is that what
#
matters finally is consent. Now, some women wear the hijab because they want to. Some may not have
#
that full degree of consent and they wear it because of pressures. Like in Afghanistan today.
#
Yeah. But the point is, that is not the debate here. The core issue here, which we kind of forget,
#
and the hijab becomes a diversion, even talking of the constitution and rights, I think becomes a
#
diversion. The core issue here is that in our society, there is, there has always been this
#
undercurrent of hate, this anti-Muslim sentiment. And this is one of many recent expressions of that.
#
And we have to address that. And what you earlier said, that why focus on this? Let's focus on
#
better roads, modernization and all of that. You know, I'm reminded of Nehru's debates with
#
Muhammad Iqbal and Jinnah, these two separate debates, which were reproduced in this book by
#
Tripura Daman Singh and Adil Hussain. I had an episode with them as well. And Nehru, in fact,
#
for example, took the stand with Jinnah that the communal problem is an elite problem.
#
We should focus on poverty. And I think that's a big mistake. I think focusing on poverty is,
#
of course, the key thing to do. You know, as Gandhi put it, every single thing that you do,
#
you first need to ask, is it going to benefit the poor? No argument. But simultaneously,
#
you have to solve the communal issue, you know, and that was, in fact, one area where,
#
you know, Nehru learned some hard lessons. He was obviously wrong there. And the communal problem
#
exists. And what you see today is, I don't think this was created by the party in charge. I think
#
it is the other way around that the causation goes. It's endemic to society. It's endemic to
#
society. So it's part of our society. And the opposite is also true, as with everything. But
#
this is what we need to address. And I think this is a core point. I mean, I agree that I'm sounding
#
apathetic about the economy, because on the economy, frankly, every government we've ever had has been
#
statist, barring brief periods of exceptions, maybe. And populism is mixed up very much with
#
that. Yeah. So, you know, the economy has always been going to hell in India, and it's going to
#
continue, besides brief moments where things looked up under Narsimha Rao and Vajpayee. But
#
it's just hate. It is these fissures in our society, which I kind of worry about a bit more. And
#
one way of healing these fissures is perhaps through finding common joy in culture. And in fact,
#
that is, let's talk about your music now, which I'm kind of fascinated by, because you and your
#
husband decided to sort of set up this, what you call the South Asian Symphony Foundation, and you
#
founded the South Asian Symphony Orchestra. And the reason being that, listen, you know, we are
#
we are united culturally in so many ways. And this can sort of be an expression of that. You spoke
#
about Israel and Palestine doing a similar effort with the East-West Divan Orchestra,
#
Divan, of course, being this work by Geetha. So tell me a little bit about your thinking
#
behind this. I mean, these are really two strands, simultaneous strands, and I want to examine
#
the musical aspect of it, your interest in music, learning opera, all of that, after this. But it's
#
the thought behind it, you know, that we can unite people through culture, which really intrigues me,
#
because you've got, you know, youngsters from Afghanistan here, you've got youngsters from
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all over South Asia, except Pakistan, performing music that is not just your typical, you know,
#
Western classical music, but I mean, I won't call it fusion either, but you're also performing
#
indigenous stuff and doing it in your own way. So tell me a little bit about the thinking behind
#
this, what kind of led you to do this? And if one is to extend that central principle, or the central
#
sentiment, that music can unite people, that culture can unite people, that do you think that
#
that this is one direction in which we can possibly think to mitigate everything else
#
that is going wrong? Well, it certainly can't mitigate all the hatred and division that we
#
see around us. And you and me individually cannot do much about it, I realize that, but you can
#
certainly be a voice in the wilderness also, which I try to be. And it's a bit unorthodox the
#
approach, because we are very embedded in our cultural traditions, and legitimately so,
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because there is so much richness in what we have inherited and what we are as a civilization and a
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culture. So I am proud of it. But when I think of integration, I felt that rather than seeking
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to dominate the space with one identity, which is Indian, because much of the culture and the music
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and all essentially stems from this space. And our neighbors, they like it, they absorb it, no doubt,
#
but there is always this consciousness at the back of their minds that India is, you know, kind of,
#
even a cultural hegemony in some ways, you know, we really are that giant, that kind of the shadow
#
is cast all over the region. And how do they thrive in that shadow? That is the dilemma that
#
many of our neighbors face. So they're consciously trying to break out of it. So I felt if we have
#
this, if I do use music as an integrative tool for this region, I should try and perhaps again,
#
this obsession I have also with this whole modernization and globalization kind of
#
being becoming more international globalization, maybe, maybe, you know, we've adopted cricket as
#
our game, we play tennis, competitive tennis, we want to excel in field sports in Olympics,
#
we've adopted certain idioms, even if, you know, we as a society, we are quite resistant, I think,
#
to a lot of this, this kind of opening our doors to foreign influence, there is a certain, you know,
#
a certain attitude and approach we have there. But I felt that even as we can be proud in our
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own tradition, we should, we should perhaps bring this region to the world. And the concept of an
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orchestra appealed to me, not just because it was a Western concept, not, you know, yes, they've
#
succeeded very well with the symphony orchestras that they have abroad. But, you know, the orchestra
#
would bring musicians from our region together and make them sit side by side, you know, in orchestra,
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there's a term called desk, you share a desk, literally, you know, you're with that fellow
#
violinist or fellow trombone player or fellow cellist or clarinet player, you're rubbing
#
shoulders and you are, you are operating within a discipline that entails for you to listen to the
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other person and to sort of calibrate your movements in accordance with what the other is playing,
#
because otherwise the harmony doesn't happen. Even if you have a conductor there who's telling
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you do this and do that, unless you're able to listen, pick up sounds, cultivate that habit of
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here of the year, which is the first sense that develops in a fetus within 40 days of conception.
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That is the first sense, the sense of hearing. And I think here we have to, in normal life,
#
in life on earth, we have to inculcate that, particularly in our region, listen to the other,
#
listen to the other, being able to overcome. And through listening, you become curious about
#
the other person, you want to know more and you begin conversations. My idea was to begin
#
conversations that would enable certain barriers to be broken down. And I think to that extent,
#
although we are not a professional orchestra, to become that kind of level that you hear
#
in the West, it'll take years. We don't have an institution where these people come together,
#
live for years together and perfect their art. We have not had that kind of opportunity to develop
#
it in that direction. So what happens now is we invite people to identify them itself was
#
an uphill task. We didn't have a database. Today we have a database of musicians of South Asian
#
origin. A lot of them are Indian origin, but other countries also who have some aptitude in
#
playing in an orchestra and we're bringing them together. Some of them are world-class, some of
#
them are middle level, and some are just novices struggling, especially from the region, because
#
we don't have opportunities for many of these musicians. And in the process, I have tried,
#
we have tried to also orchestrate for an orchestra music of the region. And that's how we came up with
#
this piece of music called Hamsafar, which was really bringing in music from the whole region
#
into an orchestral piece. At the inaugural concert of the orchestra at the NCPA in Mumbai in April
#
2019, we opened with this song, Maithreem Bajata. So Maithreem Bajata is a Sanskrit hymn composed
#
by the Kanchi Shankaracharya with music by this Marathi composer for the films who worked a lot
#
with V. Shantaram also. So we tried to bring that before a modern orchestra and an orchestra
#
playing the music while we had this beautiful singer from Chennai sing it in Sanskrit. This
#
was the music, this was a song that was performed by M. S. Subbalakshmi before the United Nations
#
in 1966. And for listeners who wonder what it means, Maithreem Bajata is let friendship
#
resound, let it ring out. And the words are just beautiful, non-denominational. So that's the kind
#
of thing you need for South Asia. The language was Sanskrit, an Indian language, but the message is
#
universal. And I think the musicians of the orchestra, because our orchestra was performing
#
in India, we did two concerts so far. They started the performance with our national anthem,
#
but there was no question of saying, I'm from Sri Lanka, I don't play this, or I'm from Afghanistan.
#
Everybody played together. They played for the love of the art, the love of the medium,
#
and not of one country versus another country. So that was really my message.
#
And so far it's been an entirely Indian effort. My husband and I have tried to fund it from our
#
own resources, and we've got some help from friends in India, nothing from abroad. Although
#
now we are entitled to apply for FCRA, we haven't done it as yet. But to sustain this effort,
#
obviously we will need more resources because our resources are finite, we can't do this. But I
#
would hate to, now having launched it, and the idea has taken hold. All these musicians who
#
have played with each other, they keep in touch. They're exchanging greetings on festivals or
#
birthdays or, you know, they're following each other. And I think we've done something in that
#
regard. And the other thing I'd like to mention, although Pakistan is not part of it, I had this
#
wonderful conversation with Ali Sethi about two, a year ago, during the pandemic, in fact, in May
#
2020, I had a conversation. And I would highly recommend that listeners read the verbatim of
#
it, which was published in The Wire. And we talk about music and his own background, how he went
#
to Harvard, and he was studying the Tirukkural in his South Asia program, and the poetry of
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of Ramanujam. You know, so this integrative look, you look at the Ismailis in Gujarat, the Ismaili
#
community, one of their prayers to Allah, to Islamic prayer, is called the Bhoj Niranjan,
#
where the Almighty is called Niranjan, which is really the word you associate with Vishnu,
#
with our deities, but that word has crept into their religious liturgy, as it were. Bhoj
#
Niranjan, it's called. It's a prayer to, it's a Muslim prayer, but it's called that. So this,
#
our history, which brings me back to the central point I mentioned, understand the history of this
#
region, how interlinked we are, how connected we are, and severing those connections can't be good
#
for the future of the space that we inhabit. Fabulous. So tell me about, now let's talk about
#
your personal journey through music. You know, like you played Spanish guitar as a kid and all
#
of that, but once you join the foreign services, that kind of ends and your, you know, your rock
#
star dreams have to be kept in the back burner for a while, I guess. I was a Joan Baez fan.
#
You were a Joan Baez fan. I loved Joan Baez, even today I do, but I was just, I went to the
#
academy in Missouri singing Joan Baez, actually. Wow, wonderful. And when you and your husband
#
parted to two different postings, did you sing, I never dreamed you'd leave in summer for you.
#
No, I didn't. And mind you, he sings only in Hindi. My husband also sings, but he sings
#
early, the Hindi film songs, Talat and Hemant and Mukesh. So I sing in English, but he sings
#
in Hindi only. Well, that's quite a jugalbandi. So what I'm fascinated by is that at 50-51,
#
you decide that I'm going to start learning music again, which is really inspirational
#
because I think what happens after we reach a certain age is that we think that if there
#
was something in our youth that we didn't do and we wanted to do, it becomes a regret.
#
It doesn't become a plan of action. It becomes a regret that, oh, I didn't do this or whatever.
#
And, you know, life happens to you when you're busy planning other things. Fine. All of that.
#
But you decided to learn again. In fact, you started learning opera singing, which at one
#
level is harder because, you know, and you also speak about the meditative aspects of
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it and how, you know, how it helps you so much with your breathing. So tell me a little
#
bit about what sort of led you to say that, you know, what led you? It takes a lot of confidence
#
also to do this. I mean, I don't know if I'd have it in myself, but what gave you that
#
confidence or the hoots part to say, okay, I love doing this, therefore I will learn
#
it. I don't care how old I am. Take me through that process. Yeah. I was very interested
#
in getting back into music. But in my early years, of course, I just sang popular music.
#
And, you know, like I mentioned, Joan Baer's folk music and music you just listen to. You
#
didn't need any specific training for it, but you just followed the tune. My sister,
#
you know how we used to learn music today? You have, you know, you go on to Google and
#
you Google for lyrics and you have the lyrics of a song, you know, just come up on your
#
smartphone and you sing. Those days, you know, we had to listen to a song five, six times
#
whenever it came on the radio and write down the words. And, you know, you'd have gaps.
#
The first time you listen to it, you couldn't get everything. Second time you listen, you
#
would get everything or most of it. Third time, yes. That's how, you know, I have a
#
songbook with my 14 year old handwriting full of these songs, even somewhere. I don't know
#
where it is, but today it's very, but when I came to, when I was 50, 51, when I started,
#
I decided to start music again, I was, since I'd been posted abroad and been to, you know,
#
musical performances and concerts and I'd been exposed to Western classical music and to
#
opera, a bit of it, and ballet. And I loved the singing of singers like Maria Callas and,
#
and Rene Fleming and many others, Marian Anderson. And I thought, you know, the way they sang and
#
the expressiveness and what they were singing, opera, many of the, you know, the operatic,
#
the big, great operatic arias, if you get the translation, many of them are in Italian or
#
German. They're sung very few in English, I think, but, but, you know, the message is very
#
sublime as a human being. I think you can relate to it, you know, it's about love, it's about death,
#
it's about separation, it's about conflict, it's about patriotism, all these things,
#
you know, are expressed through opera, very secular, it's all in the, in daily life,
#
it's not so much religious. Of course, you had religious songs also, some great religious,
#
Christian religious hymns that are sung in the concerts and especially when you go back to 16th
#
and 17th century singing, which is basically sacred, not so much, but it's from the 18th
#
century that you have more of things, you know, romantic and daily life sort of things and more
#
in the Shakespearean tradition or Shakespeare was a pioneer much before all this and what he
#
portrayed in his dramas and plays. So I felt, why not give it a try? It's, you know, many times if
#
you don't know opera and if you haven't listened too much, you think, oh, everybody is, you know,
#
singing in a high pitched way and what exactly are they saying? If you read Tintin comics,
#
you have singer Bianca Castafiore who sings and shatters glasses, you know, that's your
#
impression of opera. But when you actually start studying it, you realize it's something very
#
sublime, I feel, and the physiology of the voice you begin to understand, breath control is involved
#
and there's a rigorous discipline about the way you sing, where you take a breath,
#
where you, you know, how you maintain pitch, how you, you know, enunciate, how you articulate,
#
all these things appeal to me because I've always been interested in public speaking and
#
communication. So this I felt added to my thirst for knowledge in this area. So that's how I
#
began to learn opera, but I wasn't able to keep it up because my professional commitments didn't
#
permit that sort of, it requires rigorous, like with classical music, even Hindustani or Carnatic,
#
you have to practice, you have to, you know, stick to a regime, you have to be very, very dedicated,
#
which I could not because I had to, my job was there and my commitments, professional commitments,
#
didn't permit that. But I think that short one or two years that I learned, it taught me a lot,
#
taught me a lot, not only taught me about the repertoire, which I learned so much more about,
#
but also just as I said, the physiology of how you use your voice, how you project it, how you,
#
how I said, as you enunciate, how you articulate, how you convey emotion, how you convey feeling.
#
I think it was very interesting. And so it helped me with my singing later, which is as a hobby,
#
because I'm very fond of, I sing basically in English. I sing in Bengali also. I'm very fond
#
of Tagore. So I, you know, I sing a few things in Bengali and a little bit in Malayalam, but
#
basically in English. And I'm very fond of musical theater, which is like Broadway. And also,
#
and I'm fond of jazz and I don't, I don't sing rock music or pop music really. So I, so in that
#
sense, I don't have much of an audience because I think in India is basically the love of Western
#
music is, except, you know, there are aficionados of jazz and all, but by and large among the,
#
among the vast cross-section of people who listen to music, I think Western music today, basically
#
it's popular music, rock music or, or rap music, all that, you know, you see it also being
#
incorporated into our own film music. So, you know, you, you mentioned you sing Bengali songs.
#
Can you sing Akhla Chalore? I don't sing Akhla Chalore. I sing, but I know Akhla Chalore. I
#
haven't sung it. Otherwise at the end of the episode, I would have asked you. Well, that's
#
the story of my life, I think, Akhla Chalore. Yeah. That's why I thought, because I love that
#
song. And I thought, oh, if you sing in Bengali, surely you, you know, that would be the first
#
song you'd pick. Couple of questions. And this, I'm really just thinking aloud. Like one of the
#
interesting things about opera is you'll never see a mic used by an opera singer, right? Because
#
so much breath control, you're projecting your voice, as you said, it all comes from there.
#
Now I'm thinking of how the form of something can sometimes shape the content, which in many
#
different contexts, I explore this scene. But for example, you know, in the 1920s, vocal music
#
changed dramatically because mics became advanced enough to pick up these small nuances. So a singer
#
like Bing Crosby could whisper into the mic and could sing a song that way. And there would be a
#
whole different feel. And that affects the music. And I'm just thinking that if opera requires this
#
kind of projection out, does that then also influence a kind of content and the kind of
#
singing that you're doing? Like, then would every emotion be heightened because so much is kind of
#
going into it? You know, so and I don't know opera at all. So forgive me if this is like a very
#
basic question, but just thinking aloud that it seems that this form that you're always throwing
#
your voice, you're projecting and so on and so forth is something that would have an impact on
#
the music and the kind of music also and therefore on the listener and therefore on the singer.
#
Well, I think it comes from a very different culture, operatic singing, I suppose. And of
#
course, the Mongolians have throat singing, as you know. This, of course, comes from a very
#
Western tradition and has its origins obviously in earlier centuries where you had the form of
#
religious singing that Western cultures had. There's no doubt about that. It's a very different
#
experience from what we had. But I think since we are going into, but then that doesn't stop you
#
from learning opera. That should not stop you from saying, oh, you know, they are Western.
#
I don't think we have the capacity to do that. We are very different. I think we need more
#
confidence and faith in ourselves to be able to try out new things without sacrificing where we
#
come from or where we belong or from the cultures into which we were born. I'm not saying we should
#
ever forget that. But we can be just as good in those. I know so many young Indians who have
#
studied opera, quite a few of them, and who are excelling in them. So, you know, it's not that our
#
voices can't do what Westerners have been doing. We have that capacity. So I think in terms of also
#
interpreting ourselves to the rest of the world, I think if we do things like this, others are a
#
little more curious about you. They want to know more about you and they become, they befriend you.
#
It's a way of building bridges also, I feel, to be able to look at foreign cultures and say,
#
what's good in that culture can become mine also. I can also, you know, opera is a classical form.
#
It's a classical form. Nobody can dismiss it as saying, you know, it is something that for,
#
it's not for novices. It's a very, very serious form. So if we are drawn to it,
#
then say I have the confidence and I will try and learn it and see what I can imbibe.
#
And also the argument that it's from outside is a nonsense argument. Even potatoes are from
#
outside. Are we going to stop eating potatoes? Stitched clothing came from outside. Are we going
#
to wrap a cloth around us and walk around? If you want to do that, that's fine. But yeah,
#
everything is kind of from outside. So one more question on the theme of music before we move on
#
from here. And it's not really on music, but it's something that sort of I thought of because music
#
clearly gives you so much joy. So what gives you joy in the sense that when you wake up in the
#
morning, what makes you look forward to the rest of the day? Like obviously listening to music or
#
maybe singing, maybe singing with your husband. He sings in Hindi, you sing in English. That might
#
give you joy. Maybe spending time with your kids would give you joy, though it depends on the kids.
#
Maybe it wouldn't, in which case bad kids introspect more. But so what are the things that kind of give
#
you joy? And do you sometimes sing that, hey, you know, when I was 40, when I was 50, I should have
#
focused a little less on all the other things that I did and just focused on what makes me happy?
#
What makes me happy? I mean, when I wake up in the morning, I am, you know, I'm at this stage of my
#
life. I'm just thankful for waking up. And, you know, for the, for when I look out of the window
#
and I see it's a normal day, it's a bright day, I love sunshine. I'm not a rain person. Of course,
#
I realize how important rains are. I've always loved the sunshine, really. And just, I'm really
#
very into the environment. I love being surrounded by greenery. And that's why I love going to the
#
Nilgiris, where I grew up, and to Coonoor, because that pristine environment, which you can still see
#
in those hills, appeals to me very much. So that, and yes, the sound of good music certainly makes
#
me happy, which is, it's not something I listen to first thing in the morning. But, and the fact
#
that there is, there's so much to do, you know, that you, you plan to do this today, that you have
#
this to do. So I get, I concentrate the mind. I think the ability to concentrate the mind gives me
#
happiness. That's profound wisdom. You know, before we talk about your wonderful book, which
#
we'll briefly do, you know, a couple of general sort of questions. And one of them comes from
#
diplomacy, but also extends outside of it. Now, just as earlier, we spoke about, you know,
#
we spoke about airports being one country, or cantonments being one country. And similarly,
#
it seems to me that diplomats can inhabit the same country, in the sense that all diplomats
#
everywhere are basically doing the same thing. That, you know, they are sort of representatives
#
of their nations in this strange dance, a strange game that is being played. And therefore you kind
#
of just play that game. And so my kind of question is that, you know, you've referred in different
#
places to, you know, to friends that you have in, you know, all of these friends that you made
#
through your career, you know, at one point where you were talking about Sri Lanka. In fact, there
#
was this poignant moment where you talk about the foreign minister there, Laxman Kadirgama,
#
who was assassinated just a couple of hours after, you know, meeting you at that event and all that.
#
But my question is a broader one. One is that, of course, you know, you travel the world,
#
you meet new people all the time, you make friends. And this is a theme that I've been
#
coming back to with a couple of my guests in terms of how do we form friendships, especially
#
how do we form friendships in adulthood? Like, it seems a lot of people, they have school friends
#
and college friends, and then they lose a habit. Like Abhinandan Sekri was on my show, the brilliant
#
journalist. And he said that he has no friends after the age of 25. They're all from before,
#
right? So which means there's a comfort zone and then you're in that comfort zone. In my case,
#
on the other hand, I think the internet was a great boon. And all my close friends today are
#
really people I have met in very serendipitous ways, mostly enabled by the internet, right? And
#
those are kind of my friendships. And I think there is, I find that there is great value in that,
#
because the friends that we make when we are young are restricted by circumstance. We go to
#
a particular school and that's a pool of people we have. We go to a particular college, that's a
#
pool of people we have, all of which say the same stupid things on WhatsApp. So you don't really
#
want to be friends with them. But through life, you can form communities of choice, where, you
#
know, and that I feel can be so enriching. So when you look back on your life, having travelled in
#
so many places, you know, dived into so many cultures, made so many different friends in
#
different places, how do you think of that? Like, if young people are listening to this,
#
how seriously should they just take that sense of getting to know people, getting to listen?
#
And I know you mentioned earlier that you're a loner and so am I, you know, just being with
#
people just saps my energy. You know, I hate people, not really. So tell me a little bit
#
about any perspectives you have. Yeah, talking about friends, I think most of the friends I've
#
made have been the friends I keep in touch with today have been, there's just one I know I have
#
kept in touch with from my high school days and I continue to keep in touch and we are very close.
#
But otherwise, they're all from my subsequent career, my friends, especially music. This whole
#
thing of opening my life to music brought me beautiful friendships. And the other point I
#
wanted to mention was, and these are friends from various countries, they may be Peruvian,
#
they may be Australian, they may be British, Sri Lankan. So really all across the world,
#
and I keep in touch with them and they're important to me and, you know, we've shared so
#
many beautiful moments together. The other thing is that I now find I make friends with people who
#
are much younger than me, you know, maybe a generation younger than me and we're wonderful
#
friends. So I think friendship can span generations. It just need not be confined to somebody you knew
#
in school or somebody who was brought up with you or somebody of your own vintage. It need not be.
#
And I think that is another thing that keeps the energy, you know, up and your joie de vivre,
#
you know, your love of life going. I think keeping in touch with young people. I've really enjoyed
#
my friendships with younger people. Let's talk about The Fractured Himalaya there and I don't
#
want to talk about it too much because I want people to just buy it, read it. It's a fascinating
#
book. There are so many human stories in it and there's a lot of thriller material, intrigue and
#
drama. One of the things that I'm interested in, which you looked interested in knowing your views
#
on, is you spoke about a sort of Nehru, about how it might be unfair just because we have the benefit
#
of hindsight to, you know, blame everything that happened there on Nehru. And at some level,
#
I agree with that. But at another level, I also think, and this is not necessarily blaming it on
#
him because who knows if there is even free will, but I can agree with matters like not blaming
#
somebody for something he or she did just because we know it didn't work out well in hindsight.
#
This is not about things that he did. It is also a sort of state of mind of how people kind of
#
approach certain things. At one point you refer to Isaiah Berlin's Fox and the hedgehog thing.
#
You know, a hedgehog only knows one big thing, a fox knows many things. Nehru kind of fancied
#
himself as a fox. He knows little bits about everything. But even there, I think he makes a
#
hedgehog mistake of having one lens and applying it on that one thing, which almost seems a character
#
attribute. You've quoted Lloyd George as saying that, quote, Nehru thought he knew more history
#
than the experts knew. He decides by inspiration. Stop, quote. And I, of course, had a recent
#
episode on the debates that Nehru had with the Four Worthies. And one of them was on China with
#
Sardar Patel, where Sardar Patel kept warning him that, you know, we have to do something about
#
Tibet. We have to be practical. We have to be pragmatic. But Nehru was taken in by this
#
romanticism and by this conception of himself as this leader who leads from, you know, a particular
#
kind of place and a notion of China, which was, you know, different from was mistaken in different
#
ways, perhaps. And in many ways, in fact, it seems to me that just as Nehru was constructing his idea
#
of India, he was also constructing his idea of himself. And this was and this character trait
#
manifests itself across different issues. So it is not as if he did as if he made a mistake on China.
#
It is not as if he made a mistake in, say, our economic direction or that he made a mistake in
#
dealing with people like Jinnah. It's that he had this sort of even though you give him one has to
#
give him a lot of credit for engaging with ideas and his dialogues with all of these people are
#
just incredible, man of incredible erudition and curiosity. But there was also a sort of a stubbornness
#
and arrogance and different aspects of that also kind of come up in parts of your book and so many
#
other books. And especially in that chapter in Tripur Dhaman and Adil's book, where he has a
#
debate with Patel on this. And that is something that I think, you know, cannot be wished away.
#
Now, I'm not saying that you just blame the China war on Nehru. It's a combination of various
#
circumstances. It's multifactorial. Even events contain multitudes. But where I'm coming at with
#
this is that we can look back on history and like, you know, there's that old cliche about character
#
being destiny. And in some sense, when you have people in power, whether it's Nehru or Mao or
#
whoever, you know, it takes on this tragic tinge. Like sometimes when I think about figures in Indian
#
history like Jinnah, right, how he loses control of the Congress in 1921, where Gandhi does his,
#
you know, Gandhi kind of takes over the Congress and Jinnah changes direction completely, right.
#
Or even in Nehru and so many other people, they seem like deeply tragic King Lear kind of figures,
#
you know, especially, you know, when Nehru eventually realizes his mistakes on China,
#
and, you know, just disintegrates at the end. And it is, it is so tragic. It is so tragic that,
#
you know, he has to go through that and the cost of that which the entire nation has taken,
#
which of course he feels. So when you look through history, and I'm asking you not as someone who's
#
been a diplomat, but just as a historian, and there's so much I could ask you about that as
#
well about learning to be a practitioner historian, as opposed to an academic historian,
#
looking through history, and especially as you have known so many of these people yourself,
#
right, you met Xi Jinping many times, you've, you know, known Rajiv Gandhi well, you've known
#
so many prominent people in different countries so well. What do you feel about this? Do you feel
#
that in a way that people who come to positions of power or close to positions of power,
#
they are constrained by character, constrained by who they are, and everything kind of flows from
#
there. And that can have a tragic dimension, like what happened to Mao in China, what happened to,
#
you know, all the mistakes Nehru made. And Nehru also did many great things which emanated from
#
positive aspects of his character. But, you know, he messed up on China, he, you know,
#
messed up on the communal question, certainly before independence, he messed up on the economy
#
pretty badly. So what are, what are your sort of thoughts on this, just looking at these figures,
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you know, you're someone who's read a lot, you love opera, you mentioned Shakespeare. These are
#
grand figures, except that what they're affecting is not a story, but the real world.
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Well, I think human frailty is a constant. Nehru was no exception. And, but Nehru, as I said,
#
I agree that he was flawed, but flawed in a heroic sense in some ways, because
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nobody could doubt, I think, his dedication to the country, or his patriotism, or his,
#
his desire to, to put India at the forefront of nations. I don't think anybody would question
#
that. But I think he, the situation in which he found itself firstly, himself firstly, of course,
#
India is a young country, combating many challenges. I agree that many of them flowed
#
from the pre-independence era and steps taken then. But he was there at the helm, and he had
#
to deal with them and deal with them as, as, as the best he could. Now, his differences with
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Sardar Patel, of course, we all know that. But I think what impressed me was the manner in which
#
they both learned to work together. I think they, you know, the rivalry was there, not the rivalry,
#
perhaps the certain incompatibilities between the two were definitely there. But they took their
#
direction from Gandhiji, and they learned to work together. What's interesting is the China
#
debate is what could have brought this to a head, because there was rebellion growing in the cabinet.
#
First, Rajaji fought with Nehru, then, you know, Patel wrote his famous note on China, you know,
#
just two months before he died. And then there was going to be a cabinet meeting to discuss it,
#
the cabinet had all lined up with Patel, and then he falls ill, he misses a cabinet meeting,
#
and then he dies a month later. Yeah, I know, I'm aware of that. And Patel was, was about
#
15 years older than Nehru. And in fact, Nehru died 15 years, almost 15 years later,
#
almost at the same age. So, so in that sense, there was a there was a gap in in chronology
#
between the two, of course, if if what we don't know what, what would have ensued if
#
Sardar Patel had lived and he had continued to wield influence on the making of policy and how
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the differences would have mounted vis-a-vis Nehru, we don't we can only conjecture to that,
#
to that effect. But everybody makes a lot out of this letter from Patel to Nehru of 7th November
#
1950, a few weeks before he died. And, you know, it's made out to seem that there was a plethora
#
of differences between the two on how to, to operate this policy towards Tibet. But then if
#
you look at the bare, you know, essence of the situation at that time, you know,
#
India could have mounted a diplomatic offensive, you can say, against the Chinese entering Tibet,
#
could not have mounted a military offensive. I mean, even General Karyapa said at that time,
#
you couldn't send more than a posse of people of troops, perhaps a battalion of troops to defend
#
maybe our agency in Gyanse. But if I remember correctly, at one point, the British said that
#
they were willing to station troops in Tibet for the time being, so that China wouldn't take it over
#
and Nehru said no. I don't think I have no, at least I didn't come across this. I think I vaguely
#
remember this from Adil and Tripur Dhaman's book. Yeah, but I, you know, how could that, I mean,
#
you would have been, I don't think the British, they would have liked India perhaps to take a more
#
overt diplomatic stance on the entry of Chinese troops into Tibet, particularly at the UN when
#
the Tibetans were trying very hard to bring their case. At that time, I think that's where perhaps
#
we kind of could have done more. And we decided to kind of skirt the issue and avoid looking at it.
#
But mind you, the very same diplomats like Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, who we believe did brief
#
Patel and apparently could have even drafted the letter that Patel sent to Nehru. The same Sir
#
Girja, although some of his advice on China was very practical, like take up the issue of the
#
boundary in the 1954 talks on Tibet, which was what his advice to Nehru was. Nehru ignored it
#
in favor of Sardar Panikkar's advice. But when the Chinese entered Tibet, even somebody like
#
Mr. Sir Girja was somewhat, I think, divided in his opinion about what could be done,
#
you know, even though personally he felt we should do much more to support the Tibetans.
#
But even he felt that the Tibetan order, the theocratic order within Tibet was antiquated,
#
that it had to change, it had to modernize. And secondly, that there was no strength to withstand
#
the Chinese offensive. India could have done little. So there was that feeling of, you know,
#
having understanding the practical difficulties and the nature of the situation, while at the
#
at the principle level of principle, yes, you should do much more. You have to take on the
#
communists, you should, you know. But he was also, Sir Girja was as as an excellent advisor
#
to Nehru and Nehru was fond of him. It was not, I mean, that was an era where you could have
#
differences of opinion and yet deal, you know, with your superiors. And that is something perhaps
#
that is less and less seen today. But again, to come back to the question after Patel wrote
#
his letter to Nehru, unfortunately passed away a few weeks later. But it was not as if Nehru
#
slept over that advice. He didn't respond directly to Patel. But, you know, the cabinet was
#
convened, the committees were set up regarding the extension of Indian administration right up to
#
the frontier to safeguard our security, to bolster, you know, improve infrastructure. The initial
#
steps were taken soon after that letter. And that is how you find the entry into the extension of
#
administration into Tawang in February 1951. It was all steps taken, keeping in mind the situation
#
that was going to change on our frontiers with the entry of the Chinese into Tibet.
#
So the picture is mixed, I feel. You know, we can fault Nehru and Nehru is faulted for saying,
#
you know, Patel said this and Nehru was, you know, smoking a pipe, literally dreaming about
#
friendship with China. No, but it's not exactly like that. Nehru understood the challenge from
#
China. He said that it would be a slippery path if we, you know, do not acknowledge this challenge.
#
He understood that. He understood that borders had to be safeguarded, security had to be strengthened.
#
We had to, you know, maintain a presence which was right up. I think where I think the slippage
#
occurred was in the Aksai Chin area where the terrain, the geography, the nature of the expanse
#
of territory made it very difficult for the extension of our presence into that area,
#
which the Chinese exploited and which caused the dispute. So I'll quickly read out that bit
#
because I was wondering if I'm mistaken. So I straight away went to the book and I've,
#
so this is from Tiputaman and Adil Hussain's book on Nehru in the introductory essay to this chapter
#
where they write, quote, when Tibet turned to India for help, requesting formal recognition
#
of its independence as a basis for bringing before the United Nations any attack as international
#
aggression, its request was turned down. Anglo-American requests for cooperation
#
in transferring military aid to Lhasa were similarly denied. In January 1950, for example,
#
when secretary of state Dean Acheson considered inviting a Tibetan mission to Washington
#
and inquired whether the Indian government would be willing to cooperate with the United States
#
in helping strengthen Tibet's military capacity, he received a negative reply from foreign
#
secretary KPS Menon, stop good. But my point here wasn't to sort of indict Nehru. I mean,
#
the one thing I would indict Nehru for very, very strongly, where I think there is no justification,
#
was what he did for free speech. Like the sedition law was struck down as unconstitutional by the
#
courts in 1950 and he brought it back with the first amendment. And I think that there's no
#
defense of that, but that's a separate area. In China, it's deeply complicated. There is so
#
much stuff happening that is really difficult now in hindsight to blame everyone. As far as his
#
intentions are concerned, listen, even Prime Minister Modi after demonetization said,
#
meri niyat achi hai. What are we going to do with niyat? You know, we can't have niyat for lunch.
#
But even if you, you know, when you quoted from Adil Hussain's book, you know, the
#
British and American interest in trying to do something for the Tibetans was definitely there,
#
not in terms of stationing troops, but providing some military aid, which India at that time
#
advised against because we felt that we would be the country facing China on that border. We would
#
be the people who would have to transact that relationship. The Americans and the British
#
and all were absorbed a lot with Korea at the moment. Their focus was on the Korean Peninsula,
#
not on Tibet. So Tibet in that sense, I've called it the Cinderella of our foreign office, literally
#
became the Cinderella, but there was no, nobody to rescue Cinderella from that, from her fate,
#
literally. And that still hasn't happened. It still continues to be like that. So,
#
what could we have done under the circumstances? And my answer is at least diplomatically,
#
we should have been prepared to do something for Tibet, especially at the United Nations,
#
for instance, we could have done something to, we could have kept the question of the Chinese
#
claim or the Chinese imposition of their so-called sovereignty over Tibet in question. We could have
#
kept that open, but that would have also entailed, and perhaps that thought did cross Nehru's mind,
#
that would have entailed a relationship of open hostility with China. And at that point of time,
#
how prepared were we for that? It was a world in flux. It was a world in, which was in churn
#
at that time. And the Republic was very young. The Republic needed to be, the ship of state needed
#
to be sustained. And a lot of internal challenges within the country had to be addressed. So,
#
you know, this is still a situation in the making, in formation. Nobody knew where it was going to
#
lead. That's why I say hindsight is always 20-20. We can say a lot of things. We could have done
#
this and that. But when it came to Tibet, I think the nature of the geography, the nature of the
#
terrain made it so much more easier for China to enter, to occupy, to extend its control. So,
#
what was the best thing we could have done under these circumstances was to safeguard our own
#
frontiers, to understand the threat to our security. The point of my question wasn't to
#
assign blame, but just to sort of point out how, something that you pointed out in your book, how
#
the personalities mattered, that Nehru had one particular kind of personality, you know, dreamy,
#
idealistic, smoking a pipe, as you put it, as you put it now, you didn't put it in the book.
#
Just figuratively. We didn't smoke a pipe. Yeah, please, please, WhatsApp people, calm down,
#
don't spread this. And on the other hand, there was, you know, Xiao Enlai and Mao, who were,
#
you know, very different kinds of people. But, you know, they might have been friendly, and Mao
#
certainly had a sense of humor, but they were very pragmatic and very hard-nosed about where
#
their national interests are and that kind of mattered. And you've pointed out, and this I
#
found was one really profound insight from your book, where you've pointed out the key contradiction
#
in our foreign policy, where you write, quote, India's frontier policy of firm boundaries was
#
transacted in a world play segregated from a foreign policy on China that stressed conciliation,
#
dialogue and accommodation, a non-sustainable exercise in policy contradiction, stop quote.
#
And an illustration of this is perhaps the big deal that didn't happen, like in your book,
#
you've written about how we could have used Aksai Chin as a bargaining chip to get China to
#
say that, okay, we'll respect whatever is south of the McMohan line. And so they were. Settled it on
#
that basis. Settled it on that basis. And I think even in the 80s, there were ways to settle this,
#
but there were opportunities kind of lost. But to my mind, once China and Pakistan transacted
#
the so-called boundary agreement in 1963, some of the doors had closed on that, because today
#
the Chinese are very unwilling to discuss. Why is it that they have not agreed to a joint
#
delineation of the line of actual control? It's because they don't want to discuss the boundary
#
west of the Karakoram Pass. Of course, you can argue, if you're the devil's advocate, that
#
what is the line of actual control west of the Karakoram Pass? Because unfortunately, because
#
of the circumstances of what has happened in history, China and Pakistan getting together
#
and reaching an agreement on that section of the boundary, a so-called agreement on that section
#
of the boundary, there's no line of actual control where we are operating there. We claim it. It's
#
part of our sovereign territory, we say, and we may be perfectly justified in that. But there is
#
no line of actual control, would you agree, west of the Karakoram Pass, in terms of an India-China
#
line of actual control? It's not there. But we have refused to define it thus. And the Chinese
#
say we will not discuss it west of Karakoram Pass, because the line of actual control is really
#
falls south, southeast of Karakoram Pass. They haven't said it in so many words. The Chinese
#
are never explicit. But the differences came to light on that ground. When we started the exercise
#
of delineating the line or defining it in the early 2000s, we were doing that. It fell apart
#
because of this. Yeah, and honestly, I could talk about your book for another four hours,
#
because it's so rich in content and questions. But I'll just urge the readers to go and check
#
it out. Some final questions, and one obviously is about where India and China stand today and
#
what's really going on. Because on the one hand, you see a weakened India that whenever something
#
happens, whenever there is aggression from there, we'll do some kind of narrative building or
#
posturing like ban TikTok, you know, and that kind of nonsense. And on the other hand, you see,
#
you know, it's hard for me to figure out exactly where China is aiming to go by ramping up the
#
aggression in this way. Like, what is the end goal? Where are the boundaries? You know, what's going
#
on there? And of course, you've met Xi Jinping many times, so maybe you'll have some insight
#
into his character. I really don't, I'm afraid. He sees an enigma wrapped in a riddle.
#
But how do we look at the India-China problem? Because I don't even see what levers we have.
#
They want to build a village in Arunachal Pradesh, they'll build a village in Arunachal
#
Pradesh. What are we going to do? Right. So how does one look at this?
#
I think it's a question of, you know, comprehensive national strength and the current asymmetries of
#
power between India and China, and until we are able to narrow those asymmetries and until we
#
build the country in a mission mode, let's put it, build India and achieve all the aspirations
#
that we've set for ourselves. I think these uncertainties along our frontier will continue.
#
Unless, of course, India and China sit down together and say, okay, we are not settling
#
the boundary, but from the east of the Karakoram Pass till the Izurazi Pass, which is at the
#
tri-junction of India, Burma and China or Tibet, as you may refer to it, until we are able at
#
least to come to some understanding on that, saying that we understand there are pockets
#
of difference, you know, where aggression or transgressions have taken place, but we will
#
create zones of disengagement there. And, you know, if you're thinking in an imaginative way,
#
I mean, think of, you know, sanctuaries and, you know, preservation of the environment and
#
all these things where we can work together. But that requires will, particularly from the
#
Chinese side. I don't think it's for lack of willingness on the Indian side. I think there's
#
much more openness to at least consider such ideas, at least from my experience. But the
#
Chinese have been impossibly rigid from the mid 1980s onwards. And as their power has grown,
#
they have become even more inflexible, even more, you can use the word that Nehru used,
#
expansionist. You can, their ambition now really knows no boundaries, I think, which is the danger
#
that and the risks that all countries that have territorial differences and potential for conflict
#
with China are experiencing today. But the line, at least we should consider that if you can't
#
give up claims, and if you can't concede to one or the other side, or reach some level of
#
accommodation and the lines of what we could have in the early 1960s, at least we have some
#
of a management regime for this relationship, where you deescalate, where you're able to
#
disengage where you have to, where you are allowing people on both sides to trade with each other
#
and improve contact and communication, trade and commercial level, and better understanding.
#
It may take 50 to 100 years to better understand each other and create mutual trust and confidence.
#
It won't happen overnight. But in the absence of it not happening overnight, is the alternative only,
#
you know, jingoism on either side, populist rhetoric, nationalism, mutual, you know,
#
not looking at the problem, hoping it'll go away. That's not going to happen, I think.
#
And ultimately, even if we talk of the Indo-Pacific and we talk of the Quad and we talk of our
#
growing partnership with the Americans, nobody is going to help us, you know, when it comes to
#
these conflicts that we have, you know, nobody's going to fight our battles for us, except in some
#
kind of fictional scenario. So, you know, you can think of scenarios like the novel
#
that by Admiral Stavridi is a recent novel called 2034. It speaks of an imaginary scenario in the
#
year 2034, where the U.S. and China go to war with each other and what happens in the Indo-Pacific.
#
And even the role that India plays, which is more of a peacemaker, which is the ideal role we should
#
be playing in such situations, because we cannot be camp followers of any country, I really feel.
#
I mean, although they say non-alignment is outmoded, and we need not use that word,
#
but we have to act in our own interest. And India is a standalone country in many ways,
#
by virtue of our position, the neighborhood we are in, the challenges we face, the Indian Ocean,
#
where we have such a commanding position. We don't have to be anybody's camp follower,
#
but we can align our interests with various countries. But that doesn't take away from the
#
need for us to have peaceful borders, you know, for our own progress, because there are really,
#
there's so much to be done as yet to achieve the goals we want to as a nation. And that really
#
requires more focus on these problems that we face with our neighbors. Others are not going to help
#
us. The Quad is not, other members of Quad are not going to help us on this. I mean, you saw how
#
AUKUS came about. I mean, the Anglosphere gets together. They will always, Australia has fought
#
in every battle on the side of the Americans, but that's not our history. I mean, Americans are
#
democracy, America is a democracy like us. We have a huge diaspora there. Our interests are so
#
much more intertwined, but ultimately we are situated where we are. And that we cannot row
#
ourselves away. It's not, you know, the Statue of Liberty won't be our beacon, cannot be our
#
savior, you know, at this moment, inviting all the poor and wretched to come to. We have to face
#
situations within our own neighborhood and face them not in a combative way as the popular
#
sense, it's combativeness. You know, peace is waving the white flag of surrender. That's not
#
what peace is. You know, I think when peace is destroyed, you realize you have no friends anywhere.
#
So, you know, your successor as foreign secretary is now a foreign minister, Mr. Jayashankar, right?
#
So, a thought experiment, if you were to be foreign minister, right, we're given complete freedom by
#
whoever the Prime Minister is. He was my successor in China, he was my successor in the US also.
#
Haasi, it's very sad they should have made you foreign minister, but in my thought experiment,
#
you are. And in my thought experiment, the Prime Minister, whoever it is, tells you that just go
#
and, you know, whatever your vision is, just implement it. From that perspective, just looking
#
at foreign policy as a whole, and I guess China would dominate a big part of that, what would be
#
the areas of hope? Because the more I see it, one, we don't really have too many good foreign policy
#
levers because of various reasons. Sure, we have an important position geographically and all of that,
#
but our levers are limited, you know, and also when it comes to China, it seems to me, and correct me
#
if I'm wrong, that not only are they not particularly keen to talk because they're in such a position of
#
power, why talk? But we seem to have a hard time even understanding what they want to begin with.
#
So to, you know, begin that process where, I mean, the whole goal of foreign policy should be that,
#
I suppose, that you just try to play positive sum games with everyone, you know, and everyone
#
is better off in the end. Now, typically, what it comes down to is you're playing zero sum games,
#
and when things go bad, they become negative sum games, especially, you know, when you have
#
conflicts that can degenerate into war. So if you were to be foreign minister and you were to sort
#
of outline sort of a foreign policy vision for us, like part of that you just did outline where you
#
said that, forget the term non-aligned, but we don't necessarily need to look at strategic
#
considerations of, oh, let us ally with the US for this or let us ally with so and so for this,
#
but rather follow our own interests on a case by case basis and so on, if I'm reading you correctly.
#
So, you know, what would be the broad contours of what you would want to do and where you would
#
want to go, assuming no constraints, constraints like this constant populist rhetoric of, you know,
#
and banning TikTok and all this rubbish that goes on? Well, first and foremost, let me say as a
#
former colleague that Dr. Jayashankar has all the competence and experience to be foreign minister,
#
and I don't question that. I was joking, of course he does. Yeah, so no, no, you, of course,
#
I just wanted to say that. So I realized that he doesn't face an easy task. So it's maybe, you know,
#
it would be facile on my part to comment on how he could have done this or that. So be that as it
#
may. If I were given that position of responsibility, you, of course, work within the system and,
#
you know, you often have to defer to the prime minister and how he wishes a certain, what his
#
judgment is on. But I think it's your responsibility also to provide him or her with all the facts and
#
the nuances and the subtleties of a certain policy. My own experience is that prime ministers
#
understand this very well, and they take on board, especially the foreign ministry is quite
#
influential in that. The advice from the professional foreign service is always taken on board
#
and internalized and used as a guide to how the policy is ultimately framed. I think that my advice
#
to the prime minister would be to concentrate doubly and triply on the neighborhood and to see
#
how we can withstand and, in a sense, neutralize the ingress by China into our neighborhood,
#
the way it's come in, the kind of influence peddling it has done. It's becoming a key
#
influencer within the polities of many of our neighbors. And I think we need a good, good
#
forensic examination of how this could have happened, where we misstepped or where we did
#
less than we should have, or how we could have, you know, withstood this kind of thing. So I think
#
that would be a focus. I think relations with the Americans and others have had a certain course,
#
and I don't think there's any correction needed. I think where China is concerned, I think, again,
#
we should try and understand that everything is connected here. It's not just that China has
#
become powerful and become more aggressive and muscular and expansionist. It's true. They have
#
the wherewithal today in terms of military and economic strength to do that. But the nature of
#
our problems with China is such that they have a history. It's a legacy dispute. And that does not
#
go away, despite what they're doing in Ladakh today is part of that legacy dispute. It's not
#
just a part of their expansionism and new, you know, military strength, which is, of course,
#
much more. But everything stems from those differences that have persisted over the last
#
60 years, at least if you take 1960 years, you know, a cut off from what has happened in terms
#
of what has happened. So understand that continuity also and to realize that we have to
#
make the best of the situation. We have to see how to address the pressure points and to reduce
#
the pressure that we are facing so that, you know, some semblance we don't continue with
#
this two front challenge that we have with India and Pakistan. I mean, with China and Pakistan,
#
really, we have to be able to diffuse these tensions. And so in a sense, we're doing,
#
I think it's practical that our relationship with Russia should continue, should be strong,
#
should have endured. And that the Russia, India, China forum has also been maintained. Channels of
#
communication should be kept open with China, because it's a neighbor. It's, you know, it's
#
staring us down on that frontier. And we have to, we have to be, the need of the art is really
#
how we can put into action those smart moves, smart diplomacy that is needed,
#
because our strengths are not matched. India and China's strengths are not evenly matched. So
#
the challenge is so much greater for us today than it was in the 50s.
#
So I'm letting my imagination run wild here. I'm thinking you're a foreign minister, and Prime
#
Minister Modi Ji comes into your room and says, Nirupama Ji, these Chinese have irritated me so
#
much, kuch to karna parega, army bheju, and your answer would be nahi, orchestra bheju.
#
Not orchestra, I'm kidding.
#
But I think that I would say, you know, now, Prime Minister Modi and Xi Jinping had these
#
informal summits, you know, one in Wuhan, and then Mamalapur. They haven't met or accept,
#
you know, not face to face, but in meetings and all they have encountered each other since Galwan.
#
But there's been no meetings since then. And I think that is required, that that kind of
#
connection has to be maintained. Even if it means, you know, as they say, swallowing your pride a
#
little, but it shows your statesmanship also. If you're saying, if you pick up the phone and
#
speak to him and say, there's a big problem, this should not have happened. Our soldiers died.
#
We had this bloody brawl. How I wish it need not have happened. Let us sit down together and see
#
how we can defuse this. We have to do this in the interest of our people. Why not do this? I don't
#
think we should worry too much about how it goes down. And it would actually help his image as a
#
statesman. I mean, help his self-image as well. My final question, because China is not Pakistan.
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Pakistan, we define as an enemy. China is an adversary. You know, there's a difference between
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enemy and adversary. And I won't go into that, but I've written a piece on it. Please
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guide your listener. Words matter. Like another fine distinction I noted in your book was between
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border and line of control. And I, you know, I thought we can talk about language as well, but
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we haven't had the time because how much can one talk about in four hours. But a final question
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for you, which is probably a highlight for many of my listeners, recommend some books or music
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for listeners to listen to, which you love. Doesn't have to be about diplomacy, foreign policy,
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China, any of this, just books that are really close to your heart and that you go back to
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and music that is really close to your heart and, you know, just means a lot to you.
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Okay. Difficult. It's a question I haven't given much thought to, but one of my favorite books is
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In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki. I don't know if you've read it.
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I've read other Tanizaki, like he's got a book with nettles in the title about marriage,
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which is beautiful. I forget what it is. This is a, it's a book, it's an essay on Japanese
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aesthetics and it's a beautiful, it's a thin, slim volume. I love that it speaks about Japanese
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aesthetic, but to me it's very, it's an epigram on life itself. And we avoid the shadows, but
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you know, interplay of light and shadow is so important to understand the beauty of things.
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And aesthetics, the aesthetic of it, Japanese aesthetic appeals to me very much. So
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that, that is a, that is a book that I remember the title of the Tanizaki book I've read and
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loved, which is called Some Prefer Nettles. Some Prefer Nettles. Yes, I remember that. And
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that would be, I mean, I don't want to burden them with too many, too many books. The Book of Tea
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by Okakura Kakuzo is another of my favorite books. I mean, Japan is a, I didn't talk about it in the
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podcast, but Japan was the country that made me, that kindled my desire to become a diplomat. So
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I feel particularly close to Japan. I never served in Japan, but it's a country that I feel,
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you know, I feel in terms of my spirit, very close to, because a lot of what Japanese culture
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sort of expresses appeals a great deal to me. And I feel very close to it. So, and then in terms of
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music, I'm very fond of, as I said, I like all kinds of music. I like the music of MS Subalakshmi.
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I met, I mentioned my Trim Bhajat. I like the guzzles, Hindustani guzzles. I like the poetry.
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I mean, that, that speaks of the culture of this region. Particularly, I love the poetry of Aga
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Shahid Ali, the Kashmiri poet who died very young. I love his poetry. Country without a postcard.
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Yeah. A country without a post office. A country without a post office. I like that. And another
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piece of music I like very much is, is a Western piece, The Lark Ascending. I don't know if you've
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heard it. It's by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a British composer. It's one of my favorite pieces of music,
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The Lark Ascending. This is the idea of birds soaring, you know, in the, in, up into the sky
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and so much symbolic of hope and, and renewal, you know, that, that expresses, and I love many
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of the operatic arias, especially from the opera Norma. And one of the important operas, I'll just
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tell you, somehow I've gotten to a senior moment. It's a, it's an opera by Bellini. And one of the
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arias in that opera is Kasta Deva, C-A-S-T-A-D-I-V-A, Kasta Deva. It's a beautiful, beautiful aria.
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Again, you know, people have, you know, songs, they say, this is a song that I would try to listen,
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like to listen to, you know, in my final days or something. It's such a, it's a beautiful opera.
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And there's another beautiful aria that I love in, it's, it's, Do You Know the Country,
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Cone Tule Pais, Do You Know That Country, where the singer is singing of a country
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which she has left. She's living somewhere else and she's been exiled from that country and she's
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remembering that country. That's another opera that I feel, that's another aria that I feel I would
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love to listen to, you know, till my dying day. Wow, I can't wait to check these out and listen
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to these. And thank you so much for being so generous with your time and insights. Not at all,
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not at all. I enjoyed doing this. It's a privilege to be invited onto your show,
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to be asked to do this. Thank you so much. I love this. Thank you.
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If you enjoyed listening to this episode, head on over to your nearest bookstore online or offline
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and pick up The Fractured Himalaya by Nirupama Rao. You can follow her on Twitter at N. Menon Rao.
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You can follow me at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A. You can browse past episodes of The Scene and the
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Unseen at sceneunseen.in. Thank you for listening. Did you enjoy this episode of The Scene and the
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Unseen? If so, would you like to support the production of the show? You can go over to
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sceneunseen.in slash support and contribute any amount you like to keep this podcast alive
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and kicking. Thank you.
