Agra is past: In Pak, Sushma’s raj

Last week the phone rang in the house of the TV journalist Talat Saeed Hussain. It was the witching hour in Islamabad, after midnight, and most of the town was asleep. General Musharraf would like to talk to you, said the voice from the other end of the line, will you take the call? Of course, said Talat, yes.

Within seconds, the most powerful man in Pakistan was telling the young journalist that his interview earlier in the evening with Indian I&B Minister Sushma Swaraj, that had gone live on state-controlled Pakistan TV, had indeed been very good. It was a very ‘‘animated encounter’’, he said, ‘‘well done’’.

Musharraf wasn’t the only one. Evidently, PM Vajpayee also watched the interview later in Delhi, and sent word to Swaraj that he liked the programme.

From Agra to Islamabad, Swaraj seems to have finally wiped out the lingering stain that it had been her intervention with journalists in Agra last July that had provoked the Pakistani side into responding in kind — and contributing to the summit debacle.

PM cancels tour?

Prime Minister Vajpayee is unlikely to undertake his journey to Cambodia, Brunei and Singapore sometime next month, if the story in Ayodhya remains as tense as it currently is. With these visits also likely to go the same way as Australia, a trip which New Delhi had to cancel earlier this month, New Delhi will need to use all the cards in its hand to control the VHP monster that is giving it such a bad name abroad.

With India having decisively lost the high moral ground abroad — especially in Pakistan, where the Gujarat massacres have played very badly — that the secular nature of its state is a given, Vajpayee faces an uphill battle in bettering that battered image. The MEA has already told its missions worldwide to explain the situation in the BJP-run state, to emphasise that in police firing, as many Hindus as Muslims have been killed. New Delhi knows that is weak defence, but it doesn’t have much of an alternative.

Interestingly, outside criticism may actually strengthen Vajpayee’s hand in dealing with the VHP.
broadcasting programmes from the Afghan capital, while others will focus on specific needs that Afghanistan has.

New Delhi has meanwhile asked to open consulates in four cities — Mazar-e-Sharief, Herat, Kandahar and Jalalabad, and been told that Herat could be a first choice. But with the situation beginning to get out of hand, especially in southern Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai’s writ is already coming under strain. It must be in India’s interest to help in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, otherwise it may find itself in a Central Asian replay: Unable to move into the new republics after the break-up of the Soviet Union in end-1991, New Delhi’s role in the new Central Asia today is marginal at best.

More on Sushma

Sushma Swaraj has to be the heroine of last week in Pakistan. Her 45-minute session with Talat Hussain on PTV will likely go down in the current, stalemated bilateral context as one that helped tectonically shift the many mood layers in Islamabad.

She reiterated New Delhi’s old positions in many ways but what was refreshingly different was the manner in which she did it. In scintillating Urdu, by itself a huge surprise in Pakistan, she took control of the live broadcast (it was the only condition, she said, she would not have consented to a taped interview, to be edited later) from the first minute to the last.

The Pakistanis also discovered her sense of humour. At a dinner in her honour by Indian charge d’affaires Sudhir Vyas, Swaraj stuck out her hand to young Talat and said, ‘‘Aaj kal tere mere charche har zubaan par’’, mimicking that old Hindi film song. Talat had the presence of mind to reply, ‘‘Tere charche, mere kaaran’’.

Elsewhere, at the dinner, she told the former prince of Swat (a frontier region in Pakistan) called Mian Gul Aurangzeb that she would only speak to him if he acknowledged the fact that he was a descendant of Aurangzeb.

One Lucknow-born Pakistani, speaking for many people, later conceded that the Lahore-born Swaraj had won this encounter in the running India-Pakistan battle. If the MEA doesn’t watch out, the lady from I&B could soon take over the ministry’s coveted Pakistan division!

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