During his tenure as the US envoy to India, John Kenneth Galbraith had his share of diplomatic mishaps. Among those recorded in Ambassador’s Journal is the story of a pair of Siamese kittens presented to his sons during their visit to Gujarat. One of these was called ‘Ahmedabad’, because that is where it was born. The name was later shortened to ‘Ahmed’.

The news of the christening somehow reached the pages of Time magazine and led to a major uproar in Pakistan. Already angry over US aid to India to combat the Chinese invasion, the Pakistanis went ballistic. The windows of the US consulate in Lahore were smashed, a jeep carrying US personnel was overturned and “Mullahs inveighed against us and, in their prayers, arranged for me an especially ghastly posthumous reception,” wrote Galbraith. This was because ‘Ahmed’ happened to be one of the names of the Prophet.

Quite alarmed by the turn of events, Galbraith held a press conference and met the Pakistan ambassador to India to clarify the matter. The latter assured him that the disturbances would be brought under control, but the controversy dogged him for a while wherever he went. He also feared that foreign service officers in the US would be exulting over “the awful risks which a great nation runs when it entrusts its diplomacy to amateurs”.

A few months later, in 1963, during a press meet at the end of a very hot, humid and tiring evening in Patna, a reporter rose and once again asked, “Mr Ambassador, would you tell us about the name of your cat?” He recalls that with a determined effort to hold on to his patience, he said, “I will answer once more, but it is the last time. Here are the facts: First: It was not a cat but a kitten. Second: It was not my kitten but my children’s kitten. Third: My children did not name the kitten ‘Ahmed’, for the Prophet, but Ahmedabad, for its birthplace. Fourth: Ahmedabad was not named for the prophet, but for Sultan Ahmed Shah, its founder. Fifth: So that no one’s feelings could possibly be hurt, my children have renamed the kitten ‘Gujarat’.”

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