Paul Martin and delegation in India

This is a week for celebrating Indo-Canadian relations. K. Natwar Singh?s whistle-stop tour of Canada, which began in Ottawa yesterday, taking him to Montreal today and ending in Toronto, will be the precursor to a long-overdue visit by an Indian prime minister to Canada. If all goes well, Manmohan Singh will be in Ottawa in the summer of 2006.

Visits to Canada by Indian leaders have been few in the last seven years since India tested nuclear weapons for the second and third time ? that is, exempting visits by politicians in Punjab and Haryana, who use taxpayers? money to spend time with their relatives in Canada. Visits by Canadian leaders to India, on the other hand, have been many. Two Canadian prime ministers ? Jean Chr?tien in October 2003 and Paul Martin in January 2005 ? have visited India without a return visit by an Indian prime minister taking place or even being considered until the last few months.

As an enthusiastic supporter of India?s nuclear weapons programme and a long-time critic of Canada?s double standards on nuclear non-proliferation, it would be very tempting for this writer to gloat on the occasion of the external affairs minister?s visit that the normalization of Indo-Canadian relations since the 1998 nuclear tests has been entirely ? 120 per cent ? on India?s terms. But to do so will be a disservice to a relationship, which is full of promise. Promise which appeared to be on the verge of realization several times in the last 15 years, only to be scaled back and reduced to pious platitudes at dinner toasts, media appearances and other platforms.

Rajiv Gandhi proposed to Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng during his historic journey to Beijing in 1988 that improved relations between their countries should not be hostage to the difficult boundary dispute between India and China. The Chinese agreed. Atal Bihari Vajpayee proposed to Nawaz Sharif, and later to Pervez Musharraf, that while efforts go on to find a solution to Kashmir, the countries should not miss out on opportunities to develop their ties in other areas. Sharif agreed, but was undercut by the army. Musharraf has not been able to make up his mind.

This writer has come away from a recent visit to Ottawa with clear signals that between Natwar Singh?s talks in Canada this week and Manmohan Singh?s planned trip next year, Canada will go through the motions of creating a modus vivendi for working with New Delhi on the nuclear issue. But such an arrangement can only be cosmetic, since nuclear non-proliferation is one of the many holy cows in Canadian foreign policy.

What is needed is an acknowledgement and a declaration of intent, such as the one made by Li Peng and Rajiv Gandhi in 1988, that while efforts will be made on both sides to reconcile India?s non-negotiable status as a nuclear weapons state with Canada?s non-proliferation concerns, development of bilateral relations in other areas will not be hostage to the nuclear issue. In a way, this is already happening, but it is not taking root fast enough for a vibrant and multi-faceted Indo-Canadian partnership.

Since the Fifties, Hindi films have been one of the most potent, but under-used tools of Indian foreign policy. Raj Kapoor?s films did much more than socialism or non-alignment to bring the Indian and Soviet people closer, creating a friendship that has stayed robust until this day. Given that bit of history, it is fortuitous that Canada?s international trade minister, Jim Peterson, has become a fan of Hindi films. Peterson saw two Hindi films at a festival of Indian films at the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa in July-August this year: the festival featured Lagaan, Jogger?s Park, Monsoon Wedding, Zubeidaa, Morning Raga and Mission Kashmir. The minister has been telling his friends that he would have liked to see all six films, so India?s high commissioner in Ottawa, Shyamala Cowsik, has sent him DVDs of the films Peterson could not see.

Peterson?s new-found passion for Hindi films may well open new vistas. On September 16, students from 40 schools in New Delhi sent their students to the capital?s Vasant Valley School to see some of the world?s best mountain films brought to them from the Banff Mountain Film Festival in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The untapped potential of films was underlined once again this month when some 1,300 people gave film-maker Deepa Mehta a standing ovation at the 30th Toronto International film festival opened with her controversial film, Water. Premiered at the festival were two more Indian films: The Myth and Mistress Of Spices. The festival also featured Buddadeb Dasgupta?s Kalpurush.

In April this year, the Canadian government tabled in parliament an international policy statement. Described as Ottawa?s ?first comprehensive framework in a decade on the country?s role in the world?, the statement is significant for its desire to be engaged in new and wider areas of the world even as Canada seeks its natural anchor in North America. The IPS calls for the creation of new networks of influence through which Canada can broaden and deepen ties with ?emerging world powers such as China, India and Brazil?.

A portion of the vision document reads: ?India has developed largely on the basis of its own market and the considerable skills of its people...We will also pursue particular Canadian needs ? such as air links, investment protection and science and technology partnering ? that tap into the dynamics of India?s information and technology sectors in particular. The new science and technology agreement with India will open the door to accelerated cooperation in this area.?

Two days before Natwar Singh arrived in Ottawa, Globe and Mail, Canada?s leading newspaper, splashed a story with the headline: ?Generic Giant Moves in from India?. It was not long ago that the only stories about India that one could find in the Canadian media were about diseases, natural disasters, human rights violations and secessionist movements. Today the stories are increasingly about how Canada is benefiting from reforms that allow overseas investments by Indian companies. Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Satyam and Wipro have set up facilities ? some of them even have software development centres in Canada.

Two years ago, Chr?tien visited New Delhi, signalling a thaw in relations with India which virtually froze after the Pokhran-II series of nuclear tests. A joint statement issued after meetings between Chr?tien and then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, put the two countries on the road to rediscovering each other.

In January this year, Martin, who succeeded Chr?tien, made another prime ministerial visit to India. By that time, India and Canada had travelled some distance along their path of post-Pokhran-II reconciliation and partnership. Martin and Manmohan Singh identified a host of areas such as science and technology, environment, corporate partnership and people-to-people links which the two countries could jointly work on. Moreover, the two prime ministers put their countries well on the way, once again, towards the kind of international cooperation that they practised in the Fifties, when Indo-Canadian friendship was seen as a model for countries of the South and the North to emulate.