“Janab Asaduddin Owaisi” are the three words with which I started my column in The Telegraph last month. I did so to applaud the MP from Hyderabad on his emphatic and spontaneous condemnation of the act of terror in Pahalgam on April 22. I am commencing this column with the same name now to appreciate his speaking with clarity and conviction as a member of one of the seven multi-party parliamentary delegations touring thirty-two countries in the wake of Operation Sindoor.
Each member of these delegations has spoken on India’s response to the terror attack with articulate impact. The DMK’s Kanimozhi, the TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee, the Shiv Sena’s Priyanka Chaturvedi, the NCP’s Supriya Sule and the Indian National Congress’s Shashi Tharoor, Salman Khurshid, Manish Tiwari and Anand Sharma, to name a few, have spoken on behalf of the country. They have done so rising above party lines, regional affinities, and political predilections. The delegations have, of course, included, and been led by, MPs from the BJP as well — notably by Baijayant Panda — but so visibly inclusive has the composition of the teams been that the Opposition MPs have, by their very presence, drawn special attention and, without meaning to, almost eclipsed the BJP members. It has to be said to the BJP’s credit that there seems to have been no resentment in its ranks over this. I, at least, have not come across any.
There is in this, whether intended or not, a touch of egoless sharing of honours, and of what in politics is much coveted: limelight. And one could add a neologism: limemike. The two — visibility and audibility — have been apportioned democratically and even-handedly by either chance or design, I would not know which. Perhaps by both.
One feature of ‘Operation Outreach’ stands out.
Just as in Test cricket there is such a thing as the ‘man of the match’, the star of the outreach has been Shashi Tharoor. No question about it. His cool manner, his warm handshakes, his swift repartees and his unflagging energy made it inevitable that he would get a very ready rebound press in India. Tharoor has been, during this exercise, something of a shadow minister for external affairs in himself, answering media and other civil society questions on a gamut of India-related issues.
Other Opposition lights on the delegations have also had to respond reflexively to questions on India and Indian public life. Answering a loaded query on India’s ‘national language’ (there is no such thing), Kanimozhi, rather than go into technicalities, chose to say, “Unity and Diversity”, thereby saying all that could be said, and existentially so. Khurshid’s comments on Article 370 of the Constitution of India have been notable for their individuality and clarity.
It is a pity that the response of the Indian National Congress to the delegations’ work has, after an initial note of solidarity, sounded dissembling. That in the selection of its MPs the party leadership’s views were not given their due is understandable but the Grand Old Party’s seniority required it to let the perceived contretemps pass. And once the Congress MPs selected had come on board, the party hailing their selection and claiming justifiable ownership of their contribution would have been a handsome thing to do. That, in Hindi, would be described as having shobha (grace). And this would have strengthened the party’s totally valid stand (voiced by the TMC and others parties, notably the CPI(M) and the CPI as well) that a special session of Parliament to discuss Operation Sindoor would have been right and proper. The calling of such a session would have had shobha and garima (dignity,) lending both those attributes to the travelling delegations, and a loftiness to the government’s response to April 22.
When Pakistan’s atrocities in its eastern wing had reached unbearable proportions and refugees were streaming into West Bengal, the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, had requested Jayaprakash Narayan, her trenchant critic, to visit socialist-liberal democracies in the West, whose leaders respected him greatly, to share India’s concerns. The great man agreed and made a significant point to his hosts. During India’s freedom struggle, he said, there were some Indian opinion-makers who did not support the struggle and were not opposed to the British continuing to rule India. But now, he said, in East Pakistan, there is not one, not one, person, leader or led, who wants Pakistan to rule over them. Technically an Opposition figure, JP spoke for India almost as India’s shadow prime minister.
JP was JP but the MPs who went to thirty-two nations now have done something on JP’s lines. Unmindful of their political positions in India, they have spoken for India.
In the sheer fact of the delegations, as distinct from their impact overseas, I value the following: One, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has seen the importance and the value
of multi-party cooperation and coordination when it comes to the national interest globally. Operation Sindoor as a military initiative is impressive; as a measure that has the entire nation’s unreserved backing is, to use that millennial phrase — awesome. It is imperative, for the nation and its democratic ethos, that this sharing of space does not become, to use that cliché, a ‘one-off’. The inclusivity shown and used to differential effect by the delegations should be the norm.
Two, the Opposition has shown itself to be capable of taking up a role with the colours of official representation with natural ease and èlan. The MPs on the seven delegations have been de facto ministers and to that extent Operation Sindoor may be said to have put together for the duration of the delegations’ work something like a ‘national’ ministry of external affairs. This can and should become the start of calibrated cooperation between the Opposition and the Treasury benches in legislative procedures.
I wish one delegation could now go to China as well, and to Sri Lanka and Nepal. This would be the toughest one of all, making those three neighbours see India as a nation that stands for the well-being of civilisations. It will have a formidable impact if led by the vice-president of India and includes the external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge, with non-political personalities like the writer, Banu Mushtaq, the chess hero, Gukesh Dommaraju, and the javelin wizard, Neeraj Chopra. That will make terrorism look the vulgar monster it is. It would be important to make the delegation an anti-terror and pro-peace endeavour, de-hyphenating India and Pakistan. Would China decline to receive such a delegation? Perhaps, but the people of China and India would have seen the gesture and noted its intent.
I shall conclude with a historical verity.
From May 2 to June 3, 2000 — exactly 25 years ago — the then president of India, K.R. Narayanan, went on a state visit to China for the 50th anniversary celebrations of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. He chose a representative delegation to accompany him. It included the former petroleum minister, Manohar Joshi of the Shiv Sena and MPs, Sushma Swaraj of the BJP, and Somnath Chatterjee, Nilotpal Basu and K. Suresh Kurup of the CPI(M). Among journalists was N. Ram, then helming The Hindu. President Jiang Zemin was cordiality personified, while Prime Minister Zhu Rongji spoke of “differences left over by a third party” and said there was “more than a touch of India in the Chinese civilization”. The MEA saw this as a highly significant observation as the Chinese use their words after due deliberation. The head of the Nationa People’s Congress, Li Peng, likewise, described India to President Narayanan as “a great country”, a departure from the standard ‘great neighbour’.
An unusual thing has happened in the sending of seven multi-party delegations to thirty-two countries. The unusual step of proposing a delegation to China and the two other nations mentioned would be a diplomatic attempt worth making.
On this 75th anniversary of the same event, a delegation to China on the subject of war, peace and terrorism would have more than a touch of shared wisdoms to it. Posed and even if not accepted, a point would still have been made. And no ordinary point, strategically, diplomatically, civilisationally.
