A quintessential diplomat

Shyam Saran

Former Foreign Secretary and Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research

ON July 17, we shall mark the 100th birth anniversary of one of India’s finest diplomats, scholars and humanists, Dr Jagat Singh Mehta (1922-2014). He was India’s Foreign Secretary during 1976-79 and later served as a highly respected academic at Harvard and Princeton Universities and the University of Texas. He was India’s Charge d’Affaires in Beijing (1963-66) in the difficult years after the 1962 India-China border war and retained a life-long interest in China and its relations with India. Indeed, it was my reporting on China from Beijing which brought me to his attention. I had sent a chronological account of the popular demonstrations in the capital’s Tiananmen Square in April 1976 against the left-wing radicals led by Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s wife and therefore obliquely against Mao himself. My colleague Shankar Menon and I were junior diplomats. We mingled excitedly with the crowds in the square, eager to follow the momentous political developments unfolding before our eyes, somewhat unmindful of the risks. Mehta as Foreign Secretary sent a letter addressed to me, praising our work. We went around with inflated egos for a long time.

Mehta, who served as Foreign Secy during 1976-79, believed that diplomacy’s role was to seek mutual understanding.

On my return to Delhi on a posting, I served for a few months in the Foreign Secretary’s office as a staff officer and learnt more about foreign policy and diplomacy during that brief assignment than one would have over several years. He was a hard task master, working long hours himself but demanding similar commitment from officers deployed in his office. But he was also most considerate and unfailingly polite and courteous. I was surprised to receive a hand-written thank you letter from him a few months after I left on a posting to Geneva in 1979, in which he even apologised for having been a most demanding boss. There was a long gap before our paths crossed again. He came to Kathmandu where I was ambassador, in 2001, and stayed as our guest. There were long conversations about India’s neighbourhood policy, the changing relationship with the US and, of course, China. He believed in the pursuit of ‘enlightened self-interest’, which meant that foreign policy must not be divorced from an ethical dimension. As he stated in his book, The Tryst Betrayed, “The challenge is to blend national and planetary interests. We diplomats are not just national civil servants but also world citizens.”

In an increasingly globalised and densely inter-connected world, the salience of cross-national and global challenges, such as climate change, has increased greatly. The line between what is domestic and what is external has become blurred. Mehta saw this clearly and was ahead of his time in articulating such views. But even now we witness a resurgence of narrow nationalism and parochial sentiments in country after country and India is no exception. Mehta believed that if India had to claim exceptionalism, it should do so by leading on these critical global challenges.

Several positions espoused by him have been controversial. He opposed India going nuclear in 1998. He would have preferred a more accommodative stance towards India’s neighbours. He did not support the merger of Sikkim with India nor the occupation of the Siachen glacier. He would be accused of giving too much away in the first Farakka Barrage agreement with Bangladesh which he concluded as Foreign Secretary in 1977. There are strong arguments against these positions but one must acknowledge that Mehta did not lack the courage of his convictions. This also explains his view that the role of diplomacy is to seek mutual understanding, not the besting of the adversary: “Diplomacy, however, has always been a matter of negotiated compromise for reasonably safeguarding national interests.”

I had the opportunity to meet him on several occasions after I took over as Foreign Secretary in 2004. He was effusive in praise, mildly critical at times but always encouraging. He could see that the world around him had changed and that there was even less patience with the ideas he espoused. He welcomed the renewed emphasis on the neighbourhood and felt optimistic about the trajectory of India-China relations. There was, understandably, some scepticism about the Indo-US nuclear deal though he appreciated that it could expand India’s diplomatic options. He saw India’s civilisational attributes, its embrace of immense plurality and its democratic dispensation as intangible assets which enhanced the country’s status and influence in the world. India, he would always assert, must stand for something more than itself. One cannot disagree with these sentiments.

During the final years of his life, Mehta devoted more of his time to the family NGO in Udaipur, Seva Mandir, which continues to render yeoman service to the poor and deprived in the state, focusing on empowerment through education. I had occasion to visit him a few times in Udaipur and found him physically frail but with a remarkable sharp mind. During my final visit to the family home in Udaipur I found his daughter, Vijay, reading out to him from books in his huge and impressive library and he seemed to enjoy that very much. He remained a seeker after knowledge right to the very end.

Mehta had many admirers, among them former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Speaking at the launch of Mehta’s book, Negotiating for India, Dr Singh said, “Jagat is the quintessential civil servant, outstanding diplomat, complete patriot and thorough professional. The likes of him are not found everywhere and blessed is the land which has given birth or nurtured men of his vision, men of his integrity and men of his courage.” No better tribute could be paid to the memory of an outstanding member of the Indian Foreign Service on his birth centenary.

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