Making A Difference

How The West Was Lost

The MEA's 'internal affairs' spook—launched at Europe—has come back to haunt Indian diplomacy, pushing it against a wall

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How The West Was Lost
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The world was kindest to India at the time Gujarat was at its worst. A month after the Godhra killings of February 27, all that British foreign secretary Jack Straw said was: "I’m greatly concerned and saddened at the deaths in both communities in Gujarat and hope calm can be restored as quickly as possible. I appreciate the efforts of the Government of India to this end." As recently as April 15, the European Union (EU), after a meeting of its foreign ministers in Luxembourg, issued just one line on Gujarat, tagged at the end of a statement on Indo-Pak tensions. The ministers simply "expressed concern at sectarian violence in Gujarat".

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The troubles began from that meeting itself. EU ministers discussed reports on Gujarat from their missions in India, and the MEA’s policy of shutting its doors in their faces. Though only one line was issued after the April 15 meeting, an EU official said "the message is that the protection of minorities and upholding of human rights is important". It was also decided then to express concern directly to the Indian government by way of a demarche. This was done verbally during a meeting between an EU team and India’s ambassador to Spain Dilip Lahiri.

That began the next diplomatic misadventure from Delhi’s South Blockheads. The EU called the discussion a demarche, the MEA insisted on calling the demarche a discussion. The EU called it concern, the Indian government called it interference. The Indian government turned this into a fight for sovereignty, blundering in its futile diplomatic effort to build a wall around Gujarat with "internal affairs" written on it. One after the other, European diplomats were shown that sign.

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Even earlier European diplomats had turned to the media. The British did what they are best at: conduct an internal inquiry and leak the report. EU diplomats took the cue. To an extent, this late confrontation was a consequence of continuing violence. To a degree, the full horrors of Gujarat were beginning to emerge, and Indian diplomacy was instructed to cover horror with spin. "It’s really the stonewalling tactics that backfired," a senior Indian diplomat based in the EU told Outlook. "It would have been far smarter to show respect for their concern and not block diplomatic channels."

Another senior diplomat said: "We cannot hope to condemn a coup in Fiji and condemn the destruction of statues in Afghanistan and cry interference when someone expresses concern over killings on such a large scale."

The killings in Gujarat came about the time of the killings in Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. A few deaths in Palestine and Israel are still bigger news in Europe than many more in India. But there is the beginning of a globalisation of column inches. Worse, New Delhi has not seen the last of this. It could be Kashmir next. Straw signalled as much at the Luxembourg meet. "There is a danger, given our current understandable focus and preoccupation with the Middle East, that our eye turns away from the intrinsic problems of Kashmir. And so we have to remain engaged there. It is a very, very tense situation." The next day Straw told British Parliament that UN observers were at present only on the Pakistani side of the Line of Control, and "looking to the future, there may well be a role for observers, under the auspices of the UN, to enforce better a proper peace".

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Indeed, if ever there was a time not to rub the EU the wrong way, this was it. After September 11, the EU has been going out of its way to convey that it is not anti-Islam. The EU even confronted the US over prisoners at Camp X-Ray in Cuba, and has been trying to move closer to the Islamic world.

EU foreign ministers and ministers from several Arab countries met in Valencia, Spain, on April 22 and 23 to discuss the setting up of a Euro-Mediterranean free trade zone with 12 Mediterranean countries including several Arab countries and Israel by 2010. "We came here to have a dialogue with Europe and we are very happy we did come," Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian representative, said at the meeting. Shaath was, on the other hand, sharply critical of the US.

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Obviously, the EU is projecting itself differently from the US before the Islamic world. An attack on the BJP on Gujarat suited conscience and policy. The US approach has been significantly different, though senior officials in the Bush administration privately say they are aghast at what has happened in the state. Calling the post-February 27 events in Gujarat "horrible", a senior US official said Washington was "deeply saddened" by it.

The US, however, hasn’t emulated the EU in attacking New Delhi. Says state department spokesperson Richard Boucher: "It goes without saying that this has been a subject of great concern to the Indian government, and the Indian government is acting on it." Asked for a reaction to New Delhi’s stand that it does not appreciate lectures from abroad on the situation in Gujarat, Boucher said he wouldn’t take offence on that.

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"India is not being unrealistic at all when it says Gujarat is an internal matter," says Smita Narula, senior South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch. Given its own track record, the US, she says, should be the last country to poke its nose in others’ affairs. Narula, who authored a scathing report on the Gujarat government’s direct involvement in the killings of hundreds of Muslims, says there have been "numerous incidents" where the US has told the international community to keep out of what it sees as its "internal matter". The treatment of Al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is one such example.

"Yet," Narula says, "what’s happening in Gujarat is of concern to the entire humanity and not just one government." Other human rights activists say there has been a lot of support from the civil society in India for the international community to play a bigger role in pushing the government to investigate those responsible for Godhra and the subsequent riots.

The Indian American community, though, is dismayed by what it calls "outside interference" of foreign governments. "India has never interfered in what the US does. Then, why this hue and cry over Gujarat?" Agrees Dr Sudhir Parikh, president-elect of the Indian American Forum for Political Education: "We mustn’t let foreign governments dictate to us what is right and what is wrong." Really, you don’t need a foreign government to tell you that Gujarat was wrong. All that the world wants is a quick end to the violence, and justice for the victims.

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Sanjay Suri in London and A.K. Sen in Washington

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