When General Pervez Musharraf was the unchallenged ruler of Pakistan, and New Delhi was touting democracy as its supreme asset on the global stage, not known outside the ministry of external affairs, a furious tussle was taking place within this ministry between its civilian personnel and a few men in Indian military uniform who had become ‘usurpers’ within a key division of the country’s foreign-policy establishment. The tussle remained hidden from the large and growing group of ‘beat’ reporters covering the MEA although it was taking place right under their nose in Shastri Bhavan, where these reporters attend their daily briefing by the ministry’s spokesman. Nor did any hint of this aberration leak out to the 400 or so accredited foreign correspondents in India, many of whom would have loved to write for a global audience about the irony of military men trying to grab the most visible slots for the interpretation of Indian diplomacy to the world outside the habitat of professional diplomats.

The story of this injection of military personnel into the public arena of Indian diplomacy goes back to 2006, when South Block’s leadership decided, in its wisdom, to ape America’s example and create a division for public diplomacy. Just as in the United States of America, this decision has been one of the MEA’s colossal misjudgments in recent years. While the urge to create a public diplomacy division could very well be understood in the context of the United Progressive Alliance government’s fascination with everything American, be it good or bad, what was most puzzling about this enterprise was the decision, obviously made at very high levels and after inter-ministerial consultations, to bring in two military officers on deputation to Shastri Bhavan, where the new division was housed.

Wing Commander M.V.R. Vikraman and Lt Col A.K. Mohla are, no doubt, gentlemen and, by all accounts, very good officers in their lines of duty. But the idea of two men in full military regalia parading up and down the corridors of one of the most public buildings of the Indian foreign office was, to put it mildly, enough to render apoplectic anyone who believed in the best traditions of Indian diplomacy in its six decades of independent practice.

Much will be written and said this week about Navtej Sarna, who relinquished the job of MEA spokesman on Monday. But his biggest feat as the most important source of public outreach in Indian diplomacy was to keep the presence of Wing Commander Vikraman and Lt Col Mohla away from the prying eyes of Indian reporters and foreign correspondents, and prevent a first- rate gaffe from exploding in the face of the foreign office. It is not that Sarna condoned the presence of Vikraman and Mohla in Shastri Bhavan, from where his own truncated external publicity division continued to function after the public diplomacy division was carved out of it. Sarna, according to accounts in South Block, used his persuasive abilities to ensure that the two officers, who were on deputation from the ministry of defence, did not display their uniforms in full view of reporters. It is doubtful if he spoke to the officers directly about it: that has never been his style.

According to the same accounts in South Block, Wing Commander Vikraman and Lt Col Mohla bristled on a few occasions at the idea that they should doff their uniforms while they were with the MEA when the subject was broached by their colleagues in Shastri Bhavan. But eventually they gave in, or almost. Periodically they reverted to their uniforms, but for the most part, they avoided controversy by going to work in civilian clothes.

Normally, this column does not devote itself to individual serving officers except the head of the Indian Foreign Service. But Sarna’s tenure as spokesman will be a case study for future students of Indian diplomacy. The career leadership of the IFS, barring a few exceptions, still does not understand the interface of journalism and diplomacy. For the most part, it is stuck in the days when diplomatic deals were struck behind closed doors, and treaties and covenants were signed on the assumption that they will never meet the eyes not only of posterity — but, heaven forbid, also of nosy reporters.

One of the biggest challenges before Indian diplomacy in the 21st century is its need to cope with a teeming band of young, enterprising journalists, especially those who cater to the 24-hour news cycle and are no longer satisfied with the Swaran Singh style of briefings in the mid-1960s. Sarna’s nearly six-year, and record, tenure as MEA spokesman coincided with this change in the way South Block is covered by the national and international media. With his media-related experience in Soviet Moscow, martial-law-bound Poland and post-Pokhran II Washington, Sarna was an ideal choice for coping with this challenge for Indian diplomacy.

Logically, one would have expected that the leadership of the foreign office, both career and political, would rise to this challenge and help the spokesman to cope with it, especially when he is someone who has done media work during almost his entire career as a diplomat. But what does South Block do? Take away the bulk — indeed, an unacceptable chunk — of his budget and give it to the questionable public diplomacy outfit. There have been colourful stories on the South Block grapevine about why the public diplomacy division was created out of the MEA’s external publicity division two and a half years ago. But those stories become irrelevant when the balance sheet of the new division is considered.

It has merely duplicated the work of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and the Indian Council for World Affairs. There is not a single thing that the public diplomacy division has yet done, which could not have been planned or executed by either the ICCR or the ICWA. Of course, it is another matter that successive governments have tried to ruin the ICCR, which was once a great institution as envisioned by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad 58 years ago. Azad conceived the ICCR as an institution to foster cultural understanding between the people of India and the peoples of the world. The decline of the ICCR started the day P.V. Narasimha Rao, under political pressure, asked the vice president, the ICCR’s president by convention, to step down and make way for a political appointee who had lost out in the political rat-race and was looking for state subsidy for his continued stay in the capital as if he was still a minister. The decline, sadly, continues.

The story of the ICWA has been no different. It became a personal fiefdom of an individual until the National Democratic Alliance government showed the guts to remove him from the prized Sapru House in the heart of New Delhi and tried to restore the ICWA to its formal glory. Sadly, the effort was short-lived. A more recent attempt to professionalize the institution was thwarted when the UPA government gave in to a junior minister in South Block and removed an upright head of the ICWA who had embarked on a course to restore the institution’s traditions and values.

At some point in India’s evolution as a big economic power, a nuclear weapons state and a permanent member of the United Nations security council, it will become necessary for the country to have its own global media voice — an Indian version of the BBC, perhaps. The Chinese have already mastered ways to make the most of the US media market. India will have to follow suit. If and when the country is ready to launch its own version of the BBC as a government enterprise or as a public-private partnership, it will hopefully turn to Sarna, given his almost life-long relationship with the media, to head an outfit that will benefit from the richness of his experience with the media all over the world.