Spin doctors are on work in Pakistan and in social media. The refrain being India’s External Affairs Minister, Dr S Jaishankar, was ‘more than impolite’ to a visiting dignitary Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and even called him a ‘spokesman of the terrorism industry’.
In India, we cherish ‘Atithi Deva Bhava’ -‘ the guest is a God ‘. Indian diplomats, Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers, and others often went out of their way to entertain and please the guests, especially when they came from across the Western border.
We can list a few ‘hosts’ – who readily went out of the way(s). Indira Gandhi, who was charmed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s bluff, allowed the turn the victory of Indian soldiers and their sacrifices to turn into a joke and defeat called the Sima Agreement.
Of everything, it was agreed to “Let each side retain the territory captured by each other in Jammu & Kashmir” while withdrawing to its own side of the international border ( Clause 6, section 4 and 5 Simla Agreement).
Historians can easily recall with ‘regrets’ that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (incidentally grandpa of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari) Bhutto came to Simla as the ‘head of a defeated nation with nothing to bargain’. As many as 93,000 Pakistani prisoners were in India, and the tehsil of Shakargarh and large tracts of desert were under Indian occupation.
Indira Gandhi played a good hostess and a bad PM. All that Pakistan conceded at Simla was that it would not use force to solve the Kashmir problem, a promise that has never been kept.
The Simla Agreement was, in effect, a historical blunder of huge magnitude.
In more recent times, Indian leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Dr Manmohan Singh and also Salman Khurshid (External Affairs Minister) played good hosts and ‘good neighbours’. Dr Manmohan Singh even legitimised Pakistan’s unreasonable demand on Baluchistan. Salman Khurshid hosted Pakistani guests even in a season when Indian soldiers were being headed at the borders.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee hosted Gen Pervez Musharraf at Agra, only to be reciprocated with Musharraf’s very unusual breakfast meeting with Indian editors in 2001. Late Sushma Swaraj went ‘out of the way’ yet again in 2015 and touched the feet of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s mother in a true gesture of a Hindu Indian.
PM Modi air-dashed to Lahore on December 25, 2015, to greet Nawaz Sharif on his birthday.
The Indian gestures were reciprocated with Pathankot and later Uri.
By then, that is the monsoon of 2016, New Delhi realised the folly of candlelight ceremonies and playing a good neighbour and ideal host to its western neighbour. PM Modi pulled up the sleeves and ordered the post-Uri Surgical Strike.
Pakistan was taken aback. But the Indian ‘sickular’ establishment and select English media came to its aid. And came the question, ‘Where’s the proof of the surgical strike’. Then in 2019, the Pulwama terror attack happened, and PM Modi was firm enough again not to let the wrongdoers go unpunished and hence came the Balakot aerial strike. This was more of a decisive message.
Subsequently, in another misadventure, they ‘captured’ India’s fighter pilot, and this resulted in a serious warning from New Delhi. The then Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’ sheepishly’ released Capt
Abhimanyu.
So what Bilawal Bhutto Zardari got during his Goa sojourn was a result and culmination of Pakistan’s audacity to take Indian leadership for granted. Some of it, of course, has been due to inherent India’s weaknesses.
In the name of Nehruvian soft policy for long, New Delhi believed and practised the ‘Lok Kya Kahenge’ (What will people say)’ brand of diplomacy. It was more of a syndrome and a malady. But now, a concentrated dose of medicine has been found under the Modi regime. There are aerial strikes to destroy terror camps, and there is a Foreign Minister who knows how to put across the right message.
Under the man in reins of power in New Delhi now – the irreplaceable PM Modi – this is New India. It knows how to be assertive when the seasons demand so.
Thus Dr S Jaishankar was right when he said his Pakistani counterpart was ‘treated’ accordingly – as per the protocol vis-a-vis the SCO Foreign Ministers’ Meet. But when it came to Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s attempts to get into Musharraf’s shoes and try a ‘media coup’ in Goa and ‘preach’ about the same boat theory at the formal SCO gathering, Dr S Jaishankar was well prepared. He was articulate and, perhaps more importantly — he had all the backing of his boss, that is, the Prime Minister of India.
Analysts have reasons to believe that the bravado of Paksitani leaders comes naturally as a nation perennially loses one battle after another — both in battlefields and at the diplomatic table.
Dr S Jaishankar has a point when he says the ‘credibility’ of Pakistan is on the decline faster than its forex reserves.
In typical Punjabi and Urdu — many dub Pakistanis as a ‘Haaru hui kaum’ (a community of big time and constant losers). Thus as Bilawal Bhutto Zardari goes back to Islamabad and does indulge in ‘soul searching’ about the Goa trip, he would realise the blunders of some of his predecessors and Pakistani national leaders had to one day boomerang on them.
As your elders sow, so have you reaped, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari! Never mind….there was nothing personal about it !
But lastly, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister should be more ‘serious’ about the terror menace as personally, he is a genuine victim of the radical menace, having lost his mother, Benazir Bhutto, to the terrorists’ nefarious acts on December 27, 2007.
