It was nearly two years ago that I last met Venkat, or V V Rao, who was killed today in a brutal suicide bombing on India’s diplomatic mission in Kabul. He was in New Delhi, en route from Washington D C to his new job in Kabul as the head of the Indian Embassy’s political section.

I had warmly congratulated him for being so bold in accepting the assignment to Kabul. What can one now say to his wife, Malathi? That Venkat was a real hero, who represented the new face of Indian diplomacy as well as the long-forgotten tradition of the Indian Foreign Service and its precursors — the Indian Foreign and Political Department and the Indian Political Service.

Venkat should be remembered as the first IFS officer to die abroad in pursuit of India’s national interests. To be sure, there was Ravindra Mhatre, an Indian diplomat in Birmingham, who was kidnapped by Kashmiri terrorists in 1984 and murdered a few days later.

Venkat lost his life for being at the very cutting edge of India’s current strategic foray into Afghanistan. In that sense, he is the first martyr of independent India’s foreign policy, especially its more ambitious version of recent years.

Venkat was heroic not because he was unaware of the risks in Kabul. He knew very well that there were few takers for the jobs in Afghanistan either from the IFS or the other central services. The running of India’s high-profile diplomacy in Kabul and the four other consulates in Afghanistan — in Jalalabad, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif — has depended entirely on volunteers like him.

... contd.