Gifts exchanged during diplomatic engagements as part of official visits are a good indicator of a political leader’s standing, more often than not, a credible measure of how the world sees a prime minister or a member of a national cabinet. In terms of ground reality, it throws up a better judgment of a politician than, for instance, the domestic media’s report card on performance. Official gifts also offer clues on where the exclusive club of leaders places the recipient of a gift, offering, in the process, an unmistakable guide to their personalities.

In the present United Progressive Alliance government, S.M. Krishna easily stands out as a cabinet member who has a public persona that the rest of the world can identify with, and, more important, relate to. So it was not at all surprising that Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, gifted Krishna a tennis racquet signed by members of Israel’s Davis Cup tennis contingent. A leading Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, wrote that when Krishna held up the racquet at a joint press conference with Lieberman, he “cracked a large smile, and looked like a happy child who has just received a vaunted present.”

It was not surprising that Krishna knew more than most people at that meeting about the Israeli team’s dramatic victory over the Russians to reach the semi-finals of the 2009 Davis Cup, even though it was played in Lieberman’s home turf of Tel Aviv. A racquet autographed by Israel’s Davis Cup squad was replete with symbolism for Krishna, if only because the external affairs minister has more in common with Dwight Filley Davis, after whom the world’s largest annual international sporting competition is named, than with Krishna’s controversial Israeli counterpart.

If the Harvard graduate set the Davis Cup rolling in 1900 by donating his challenge trophy to start the international competition, Krishna is life president of the All Indian Lawn Tennis Association. If Krishna was governor of Maharashtra, Davis was governor-general of the Philippines and, like Krishna, Davis was a member of his country’s cabinet, serving as secretary of war for Calvin Coolidge, president of the United States of America.

Krishna said in his public pronouncements in Jerusalem that India would like to benefit from Israel’s expertise in areas from “agriculture and water management to the latest hi-tech applications in communications, health and energy.” What he left unsaid was that if it were up to him, Krishna would also like to emulate Israel’s remarkable experiment in tennis that has made that sport for the small Jewish state what cricket is for Indians. Israel initiates its young into the game through the largest tennis programme for children anywhere, covering as many as 350,000 families.

Tennis centres for training children early into the sport dot Israel and have proved to be, devoid of its fractious politics, a powerful force for co-existence among that country’s Jewish, Arab, Druze and Bedouin children. It did not escape the Indian minister’s notice that the great granddaughter of Davis emigrated to Israel 20 years ago and now lives in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

For a country which has produced many erudite political leaders, where incorrigible hawks can turn into peacemakers with ease, Lieberman is an aberration. He is to Israel what Subramanian Swamy is to India. The comparison applies not merely to the way both men, leading minuscule parties in their respective countries, have managed to get into high positions in government but also to the way they have hogged the spotlight totally out of proportion with their political following.

Swamy was recently booted out of Harvard’s summer school for writing an article that, almost word-for-word, echoes the beliefs of Lieberman about the loyalty of minorities to their countries. Like Swamy, Lieberman has frequently switched his political allies and loyalties, at one time flirting with the extremist leader Rabbi Meir Kahane’s followers, who were charged with terrorist offences in 1992. Lieberman denies the association. In 2004, he proposed the expulsion of Arabs from Israel so much so that even Ariel Sharon, then prime minister, was forced to repudiate Lieberman and then dismiss him as a minister in his government.

During his first visit to Washington as foreign minister in June 2009, Lieberman clashed with the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. She, in turn, publicly rejected the disinformation that was being spread by the foreign minister that the George W. Bush administration had reached a secret understanding with Israel to allow more Jewish settlements on occupied Arab land.

Given that history, Krishna was wise not to discuss the Palestinian issue with Lieberman, except in very general terms and in the passing. At their joint press conference, the external affairs minister diplomatically evaded a direct question on India’s voting pattern in the United Nations general assembly and the security council, where the Palestinians are seeking membership of the world body: India supports their quest for UN membership. Temperamentally, Krishna prefers to avoid unpleasantness with his interlocutors in public.

But even for Krishna, the harangue — not necessarily from his hosts in Jerusalem — about an embargo on Iranian oil was simply too much. In an uncharacteristically strongly-worded response on an issue of supreme Indian interest, the external affairs minister said, “with reference to Iran, we have taken a very consistent position. We respect the right of every nation to pursue its nuclear-energy ambitions to its logical level. Just like India has exercised the option of resorting to nuclear energy in order to meet the growing energy demands of India, so is every nation entitled to develop that.”

He said New Delhi’s “stand is that every country has that right but that right is subject to the parameters which the International Atomic Energy Agency sets. And we fully subscribe to that principle.” In fact, Krishna just stopped short of suggesting that Israel and the US should follow India’s example when he argued that “we commend that principle for acceptance to other nations.” It was perhaps appropriate that Krishna’s return gift to Lieberman was an exquisite carpet: although it was woven in India, it may have helped Lieberman understand that India has civilizational ties with Iran.

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres, there was no need for the Indian minister to tip-toe around the issues. Netanyahu lived up to his reputation of being expansive at meetings with Indian leaders. He admitted to Krishna what he might not admit in his conversations with many other leaders. As a nation, he said, “we punch above our weight.” Peres discovered India by secretly reading Jawaharlal Nehru’s translations into Hebrew which were banned by the British. He referred to Nehru benevolently as a “king” at his meeting with Krishna. Like one patriarch talking to another, Peres shared his vision for the youth of their two countries dwelling on the exploitation of a common brain power.

But Netanyahu is the first Israeli head of government to be born after the Jewish state had come into existence. This columnist first met Netanyahu at Tandoori, Tel Aviv’s famous Indian restaurant run by a Mumbai couple, Reena and Vinod Pushkarna. This, in itself, is not surprising because he is said to have discovered India through its cuisine. Everyone at Tandoori called him “Bibi,” the nickname by which the then up-and-coming politician was known.

A surprise during the one-and-a-half-hour breakfast between the prime minister and Krishna was that Netanyahu did not get the Pushkarnas to prepare a South Indian breakfast. Instead, he took into account Krishna’s liking for exotic dairy products and served some 10 different varieties of Israeli cheese, in addition to liberally garnishing the omelettes with traditional Israeli yellow cheese. At the end of their meeting, Netanyahu typically threw his security into a tizzy when he decided to escort Krishna down one floor and all the way to his motorcade waiting outside the prime minister’s office.

Among the purveyors of caution in New Delhi, there is some concern that Krishna said before his talks with Netanyahu that “the scourge of international terrorism which has become the curse for the entire humanity” must be addressed, and that “our efforts should be to checkmate and ultimately eradicate terrorists from the face of the earth.” But these are the exact words Krishna has used before, during his visit to New York last September for the UN general assembly and, therefore, any suggestion that he may have overstepped his brief is misplaced.

Accuracy in news reporting, as economist Amartya Sen pointed out in this newspaper recently, is often a casualty in today’s Indian media: that was in evidence during Krishna’s stay in Jerusalem when it was widely reported that the external affairs minister referred to India and Israel as “natural allies”, with implications of a military or strategic alliance. Krishna was very specific in saying that “India is naturally an ally of Israel in… the field of agriculture and science and technology innovation.” He added: “I look forward to an increased economic content to our existing political relationship.” Besides, at the end of the day, as an Israeli columnist lamented, “despite such royal treatment, Krishna did not offer any Israeli leader an invitation to visit India.”