Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar
Inder Gujral's astonishing foreign policy triumphs
It is astonishing that a government led by
the most unprepossessing
Prime Minister we have ever had should have notched up so many
successes on the foreign policy front in so short a time. It only
goes to show that the best training for high office in South Block
is relentless lunching at the India International Centre.
So vivid have been Gujral's achievements that the expression 'The
Gujral Doctrine' is now passing into conventional speak and bids
fair to be as enduring as the Monroe Doctrine proved to be at
a comparable stage of nation-building in the United States. The
difference is that while the Monroe Doctrine sought to exclude
all but Americans from the Americas, the Gujral Doctrine aims
to including all South Asians within South Asia.
(And for those
who might be wondering what an interestingly moulded film star
has to do with our excessively respectable foreign minister, might
I clarify that the Monroe Doctrine has nothing to do with Marilyn?
As far as is known, the staid and dour US secretary of state who
gave his name to the Doctrine in 1812 contributed little, even
down the ages, to the engendering of the young lady who captured
the adolescent fantasies of my generation close to a 150 years
later.)
In four deliberate steps, Gujral has changed the atmosphere in
South Asia. The first was the Mahakali Treaty with Nepal. It is
a framework treaty on which we still have a long way to go before
its promise is actually realised. But the really impressive breakthrough
part of the agreement is that it has at all been concluded. Gujral
could not, of course, have conjured the treaty out of thin air.
Various developments, such as the devaluation of the absolute
authority of the king accompanied by a significant measure of democracy
in Nepal, preceded by several years the advent of Gujral. But
the credit goes to Gujral for seizing the opportunity that was
staring us in the face ever since the street revolution of April
1990 restored democracy to the Nepali Rashtriya Panchayat (since
renamed).
Next was the Ganga Waters Treaty with Bangladesh. Here too, he
was fortunate in having Sheikh Hasina rather than Begum Khaleda
Zia to deal with. But it stands to Gujral's credit that instead
of availing of the ascension of Sheikh Hasina to the summit of
power in Dhaka to sort out India's grievances with Bangladesh,
he gave priority to settling Bangladesh's grievances with India.
If it was a master-stroke to have delinked questions of transit
from the sharing of Ganga waters, it was a super master -stroke
to have sent Jyoti Basu to pave the path to the convulsion of
the treaty. For all that had stood between the treaty and its
non-conclusion all these wasted 25 years has been West Bengal's
reservations. In placing the crow of thorns on the West Bengal
chief minister's head, instead of wearing it himself or sycophantically
attempting to adjust it on Deve Gowda's, Gujral stooped to conquer.
True, it is polite of Jyoti Basu to take no part of the credit
for the achievement. True too that the treaty is tantamount to
no more than a sharing of shortages but the genius in concluding
it lies less in showing ourselves to be knights in shining armour
than in clearing the way for addressing ourselves to the more
important problem that is common to India and Bangladesh -- the
augmentation of Ganga waters.
By needlessly rubbing it into the
Bangladeshis that augmentation all these squandered decades Gujral
understood that sharing had to be put out of the way before augmentation
could be addressed. He refused to go along with the paranoiac
South Block view that if we let Bangladesh off the hook on sharing,
they will show no interest in augmentation.
Gujral saw that while
there was a conflict of interest on sharing, there is a complementary
of interest in augmentation. He also saw that while sharing can
be attained immediately, augmentation will take time. He, therefore,
surrendered a short-term Indian interest in a larger share to
the much more long-term Indian interest in the augmentation of
Ganga waters.
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