It is unfortunate that in every sphere, the United States administration takes an anti-India stance. We have gone out of our way and at the risk of political alienation within India, to be friendly and accommodating to the United States, but to what avail?’
The above text was the PM’s minute of the meeting on 28 March 1983, which she added to a note I had recorded during my talks with a visiting State Department official. The issue at hand was the granting of a visa by the US to Jagjit Singh Chohan, the Sikh leader who had been campaigning for an independent state of Khalistan. By inclination, the PM found it difficult to be genuinely, instinctively friendly with the US, as she was with Britain (but not with the Soviets). During the previous two years, she had tried hard to be friendly with the Americans. Her visit to the US in 1982 was successful. Evidently, she found Reagan to be a charming person. But charm did not take one far. There had been no concrete benefit to us from the Americans. Fuel for the Tarapur Atomic Power Station near Bombay (now Mumbai) was a major irritant, but it was somehow settled with the French agreeing to replace the US as the supplier. But this in no way had helped matters with the US, which refused to give the spares for Tarapur. More than these individual differences, it was the attitude of the US administration that was the bigger obstacle. If one wanted to have good relations with them, it was possible only on their terms. No self-respecting nation would accept that kind of arrogance.
Reagan and Indira Gandhi exchanged polite letters, and that too frequently. But I had a feeling that they were both maintaining this show only for the sake of records; neither’s heart was in it. Reagan did not care for any other country, including the Western alliance, barring his own. He believed in ‘Fortress America’. India was nowhere in his priority list. American officials referred to us as the dominant power in our region. (And regrettably, some of us got flattered at being so described.) He was not bothered much even about the Chinese.
We had a one-hour briefing meeting with the PM on the visit of the American Secretary of State, George Shultz. The length of the meeting was unusual. Also unusual was the fact that not once during the one hour did she send out a note to Dhawan or otherwise engage herself in any small activity, such as filing her nails. Even when she did that, she was all ears. The Foreign Secretary had carefully prepared a list of subjects for the PM to raise with Shultz. She simply said, ‘I am only going to talk to him about bilateral political relations and you, PV, deal with everything else.’
As our discussions progressed, she agreed to take up a few more subjects. As always, she took a commonsensical view of things. If anyone made a ‘learned’ or ‘profound’ analysis, she would say, ‘But what role can we play?’ or ‘What has that got to do with this?’. She did not seem to have a high opinion of the MEA. Half the time, we talked about the Middle East, Arafat’s difficulties, Soviet’s role, Reagan’s letter to her on 7 June and what she should tell Shultz about it. At the end, she asked me to give her a note on what she should say. She herself had very clear ideas about it. The PM visited several countries in June that year— Yugoslavia, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Austria. Before we returned from the European visit, American ambassador Harry Barnes had said something to the effect that he could not understand why Indians got so upset about the grant of visa to Jagjit Singh Chohan; after all, people advocating independence for Puerto Rico also came to India. The press and political parties as well as the PM were all very upset with the ambassador. One of the Congress general secretaries asked for his recall as did, for some reason, the Bihar assembly. Inevitably, inference was drawn that the ambassador was not speaking entirely on his own. Wisely, the government decided not to give any official reaction. Barnes came to see Alexander, who told him he had added insult to injury. I told Barnes that the analogy with Puerto Rico was particularly unfortunate from the American point since it would generate pressure on the Indian government to change its vote on Puerto Rico in the UN from abstention to affirmative.
For some reason, the secretaries in the MEA had a soft corner for Barnes. Alexander also felt the same way. He once said, ‘We all know what a sincere and warm-hearted person Barnes is!’ Rasgotra tried to help Barnes out of the situation. His idea was that Barnes would make a press statement that he did not mean to draw an analogy between the two situations, etc. Barnes merely issued a statement through his press officer. He and Alexander were pressing the PM to host a lunch or at least a breakfast for Shultz. She was not keen but felt the pressure.
My worry was that the Canadian deputy PM, Allan MacEachen, was coming soon after Shultz and the discrimination would be blatant. When I mentioned this to the PM, she said she had not yet decided on the lunch. She agreed with my suggestion of tea. The name of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the mercurial ruler of Cambodia, came up during the meeting about Shultz. He wanted to stop by to talk to the PM. She was not unwilling. Rasgotra suggested that Sihanouk could be persuaded to break with the coalition government in Phnom Penh. I said he might ask for a quid pro quo. The PM retorted, ‘From me? Never, he would never ask for quid pro quo from me, he knows me too well for that, long before I was in the government, when I was only my father’s daughter.’ She added that it was not that Sihanouk was not intelligent, but he had no political sense at all. ‘His voice is so shrill that it gets on my nerves.’
This excerpt from ‘Centres of Power: My Years in the Prime Minister’s Office and Security Council’ by Chinmaya R. Gharekhan has been published with permission from Rupa Publications.