Indian Foreign Policy

[Philip]

Tharoor has a point in that India was loathed by the west for its principled "morality" during the Cold War, for being one of the principal pillars of the Non-Aligned nations and not allying with the west against the Soviets.It did not play games in "real-politik",the favourite gambit of the Nixon-Kissinger duo and Mrs.Gandhi buried that gambit in '71 creating Bangladesh and "partitioning" Pakistan in one swift masterstroke of political and military genius that has not been seen on the global stage since.The US is mired upto its bloodied hair in Afghanistan and licking its wounds in Iraq which is waiting for US forces to leave before creating their own powerstructure.

In Africa India was loved for its moral leadership and its freedom struggle emulated by a host of African leaders the most famous of them being Nelson Mandela.Where we were once "top dog" in the respect list,we have slid down and the Chinese have usurped our top dog status through immoral diplomacy.I was told recently that Namibia a country which we were the first to recognise and which has such a high regard for us is amazed that we do so little to leverage our goodwill.Here is a piece on how the Chinese are surging ahead in that continent.

http://www.alarabonline.org/english/dis ... 2%20%C3%A3

O-Ped : The Chinese Move Into An Early Lead In Africa
By Bouzekri Chakroune*

China’s prevailing presence in the Dark Continent is becoming a well established fact focused on by the media just after the shrinking influence of France and the United States. The former was a colonial power and political patriarch in Africa and the second was and still an interventionist superpower for anti-terror operations. That role dwindled after the significant changes of French foreign policy in favour of a grandiose Euro-Mediterranean Union project in the Presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy who made a real rupture with French traditional supervision of African Commonwealth Both France and Spain co-chair The Pan-Mediterranean Union The first secures its Presidency and the second assumes the responsibility of its Secretariat General from the Catalan Capital, Barcelona. However, France works hard to have an extended presence and influence in the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and the Near East favouring big economic partnerships with reliable economies like Russia and Brazil. The United States is still trapped in the stagnant situation of its fossilizing economic recession and ferment financial crisis and an hyperactive and a very costly effort of fighting fiercely intercontinental terrorism in the terror-stricken territories like Pakistan and in Afghanistan where the CIA was bereft of its seven worthiest operational agents. The bleak signs had already been uttered once US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condoled America’s dwindling huge hegemony by the alternative low-profiled participatory role of “Smart Power”. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates started to use in his military press releases the revered term of “International Community” Even the military coalition constituted by the NATO nations who are still deployed in Afghanistan imperceptibly split as each ally tries to guarantee the safety of its troops in exchange of an under-cover ransom paid to the Talibans who resist to yielding ground to the American troops and gained ascendancy over them after nearly one decade of fighting. Finally, the noticeable fiasco of the US intelligence community and namely its agencies to avert imminent security disasters like the Detroit airline incident orchestrated by a Nigerian teenager terrorist and the Indian stranger who successfully slipped the US security’s notice upon the invitation of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife to a White House dinner. US President Barack Obama admonished the inadequacy of the US intelligence agencies to prevent and abort such threats and called for the implementation of an across-the-board streamlining of its human resources and high-tech devices to guarantee the smooth running of the US Intelligence and Security Systems and efficiently ensure a flawless US National Security.

China, the heir presumptive of the vanishing soviet magnificence and Russia’s rapid return to the international arena, devised a restricted and reserved role for herself as a rising superpower in the communist realm besides the Russian Bear After reaping the rewards of his strategic dialogue with Moscow, US President Obama’s African stopover was merely emblematic and short and confined only to the American style oasis of democracy: Ghana, an alternative American Atlantic outlet and a strategic oil supplier provided for calamitous contingencies in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf if any war broke out. If china (porcelain) breaks easily, the political legitimacy of the exporting country China gets both the combination of the steel’s strength and silk’s smoothness thanks to its industrious, omnipresent manpower and cheap manufactured goods and articles and also its non-interventionist policies beyond its borders. Chinese overwhelming presence in Africa has significantly increased since 2000 and its hard-headed government diversified its overseas economic partners by expanding African-ward to meet the country’s increasing needs of raw materials from minerals to oil for its prosperous heavy and light industries and seek promising investment opportunities in Africa. Indeed. China has not missed its share of economic growth. The post-mandarin Cultural Revolution (1966-1970) was propounded by the brilliant statesman Mao Tse-tung (1893-1976) aka the “great helmsman” who transformed China from a feudal imperial peasantry to an authoritarian industrially advanced superpower and an exceptionally thriving, trading nation in the world. Moreover, its diplomacy mobilized the support of mineral and oil-rich countries that have been permanently blacklisted among rogue and pariah states. The US/UN-embargoed Sudan for atrocities committed in the oil-rich Darfur gets a Chinese fair hearing in its cause of territorial integrity as China itself victoriously ended the occupation of two European enclaves, Hong Kong and Macao by restoring its sovereignty over the first from the British in 1997 and the latter from the Portuguese in 1999 although Taiwan remains a bone of contention until our days between the United States and China that considers the island as a dissent and secessionist province.

The Chinese leadership and its self-motivated diplomats made numerous visits to the African Continent and signed memoranda of cooperation frameworks with its potentially affluent countries. Recently its President Hu Jintao’s 10-day-African trip included African states handpicked on the grounds of resources and future potentialities. It is worth-mentioning that China had hosted the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) barely three months ago where Chinese leaders and ministers of 48 African states agreed upon an Action Plan for 2007-2009. The bonds grow stronger Between China and Africa after the worsening relations between America and the Arab and Islamic Worlds due to the persistent predicament experienced by the Palestinians and the unjust embargo imposed on the occupied territories and namely in the Gaza Strip and America’ hotchpotch of perceptions on Islam, terrorism and global justice. It should not be forgotten that the Communist regime in Beijing regularly cracks down the Islamist and dissent movements and up-risings whenever they constitute a source of mayhem that clash with the Chinese beliefs and the Maoist precepts of the Asian Big Brother. Being on good terms both with its Arab and African clients, China’s presence and influence is waxing prevailing and a matchless masterstroke in the Dark Continent under the justifiable pretences of a coveted, Chinese millennium and an unavoidable hegemony of red China within a decade from now.

* Bouzekri Chakroune published numerous articles in Arabic, French and English in different newspapers as well as translations in scholarly journals.

PS:I've in the Sri Lanka thread reported how the Chinese presence in Hambantota is being bitterly resented by the locals who see the tens of thousands of Chinese workers as "invaders" stealing their jobs and eating up all their wildlife! The situ in Cabinda also,where there was the attack on the Togo football team is partly due to the fact of the hated Angolans illegally occupying that country by force and vacuuming claeaning it of its trillions of mineral resources by the Chinese.Africa is a continent where India can make a huge difference if our foreign policy is more pro-active and challenges China leveraging our decades of goodwill amongst the African people.

[Sanku]

Again if it was a non-INC govt (like NDA or UF) its par for the course. he cant be in INC and act like opposition!

Thank god for the 33 crores devtas of Hindustan that we have "some" opposition, in whatever manner.

Yes Tharror is not doing the morally right thing for his position but a very invaluable service to the nation.

------------

Why is that as I get older, I see everything in these mutually contradictory terms existing comfortably together?

What happened to all the Greeko-Roman with us or against us teachings?

------------

Meanwhile in other updates Arvind Adiga has come up with a full center page expalanation on how Tharoor just could not have meant anything other than being haigographical for Nehru.

It seems Tharoor crossed some red lines and hurt some ideological "holy cows" of congress -- namely need for dog like devotion to the first family -- and now his usual pseudo-intellectual crony-secularists are out to defend his bacon.

http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/Articl ... 008&mode=1

Of Arvind Adiga thinks that the Dawn is a liberal paper in Pakistan so......

[tejas]

What is hilarious is the illustrious Pandit was not being criticized for his magnificent strategic thinking and maneuvers in Kashmir, Tibet, giving up a UNSC veto yielding seat to China or his socialist economic model which with the continued connivance of his daughter impoverished hundreds of millions of people.

Rather it was the joke of NAM and his moralistic preaching that were questioned. The first family lap dogs then come out of the woodwork and call Nehru a "Giant." Remember the saying "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it." Obviously the lapdogs of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty don't.

[ramana]

Google Book
Aspects of India's International Relations:1700-2000 by Jayanta Kumar Ray.

very interesting article on evolution of Indian Army.

harbans and surinder there is description of Ranjit Singh's Armies.

[ramana]

Op-Ed on Tharoor in Pioneer.

OPED | Saturday, January 16, 2010 | Email | Print |


The Tharoorian dilemma

Udayan Namboodiri

Shashi Tharoor is not only wasting himself as junior minister in the MEA, but by conforming to party diktat also scaring away from politics a whole sub-nation of English-educated, broad-visioned Indians

Today they are celebrating the 150th anniversary of my old school in Kolkata — St. Xavier’s College. And here in Delhi you have Shashi Tharoor, who shares space with Rabindranath Tagore, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Raj Kapoor and Sourav Ganguly in a long list of distinguished alma mater,personifying the opposite of high achievement. He sits and fiddles a silly Blackberry, scuttles a historic opportunity — all for want of much to do.

But there was a time when he had a spark. That I discovered on a rack of the heritage Goethals library deep inside the womb of that revered institution. “It’s a very valuable almirah,” said the late Father Achiles Verstraten, one of the outstanding figures in SXC’s history who gave me a guided tour back in the old days. “There’s a lot of early genius locked up within.” Unless you are a special visitor all you get is a peek through the glass at the spines of cloth and leather bound volumes with the gold-embossed words, The Xaverian. These are the old issues of the annual magazine started by Father Eugene O’Neil in 1904 to give the boys their first platform for intellectual expression. For the boys it was a very big deal to get a picture or a composition encompassing his world view into The Xaverian. By any standard, Shashi Tharoor was the star of 1971. In that year’s number, he was on pages 15, 18 and 27. Apart from two pictures in which he looked real cutiepie, the edition carried the essay which won him first prize in an inter-school competition hosted by Don Bosco. The subject: Mujibur Rahaman.

A space crunch bars me from reproducing excerpts, but without effusion I’d admit the 16-year-old was already somewhere as a writer with insight. Shashi Tharoor has never heard of me, not just because I was ten years his junior. My mother, who used to go for Calcutta Kerala Samajam events, often brought news on the progress of this doe-eyed Mallu kid. You could say he was the pride of the community. He evolved into a fine writer and combined international bureaucracy and prose making with rare élan. Yes, Shashi Tharoor kept his looks, which is important — and did he come thiiiis close to becoming UN Secretary General!

After that, the downhill. Nothing more to achieve at the UN, he packed for home and for a while Shashi Tharoor kept the Kerala media guessing whether he’d join Congress (while the Delhi media speculated when he’d join Congress) and blabbered away evenings on TV channels. Entering electoral politics is a good thing; I’d recommend it to anybody looking for great material for a future book. Winning? Still better, provided you don’t take it to head. But joining the MEA as MOS — that was punching below weight.

The futility of having MoSes is the oldest story in Raisina Hill journalism and I’ve done several in my heyday. Now, the MoS of the MEA is aparticularly ridiculous figure because he spends five of the most productive years of his life expecting people to believe that the government is terribly serious about ending the tout menace in the passport offices. The entire cake is hogged by the cabinet minister, the EAM, while the two MoSes (earlier there was only one) fight over who would be ‘minister-in-waiting’ for the next visiting head of state. There are also junkets to South America and West Africa which Shashi Tharoor could survive without.

What outsiders don’t know is that the MEA is the most bureaucratised ministry, a legacy of the first prime minister who kept this portfolio for himself because it allowed maximum breadth for grandstanding his utopian vision. Bureaucrats love these guys because they are easiest to manipulate. It didn’t help that after Nehru, the Congress heavily strengthened the MEA by treating the EAM’s post as a sinecure for loyalists. History will bear out that the combined contribution of Swarn Singh, PV Narasimha Rao, Madhavsinh “Bofors letter” Solanki, Pranab Mukherjee and Natwar Singh was half that of Jaswant Singh — even if nobody in the BJP will agree. Whenever India under a Congress government succeeded in scoring a major international breakthrough it was in spite of its EAMs, not because of. They had Indira Gandhi who fetched us our only post-Independence glory.

After Shashi Tharoor won from Thiruvananthapuram a lot of people genuinely believed that he would be Sonia Gandhi’s automatic choice for EAM in UPA-II. Not one of the others could hope to hold a candle to Shashi Tharoor for knowledge of world issues, personal friendships enjoyed at the highest level and contacts spanning the atlas. But India got SM Krishna, every IFS officer’s dream. Shashi Tharoor should have walked up to Sonia Gandhi and told her “cabinet berth or nothing.” But he groveled.

By choosing to become a greasy politician, Shashi Tharoor let down our entire sub-nation of English-educated, professionally talented, broad-visioned Indians. In our self-flagellating moments we may scorn ourselves as the “India shining” types, but we know India could do with guys like us in the political space. Nothing would have changed for Sashi Tharoor if Sonia turned him down, if only for appeasing her cronies. With time, Shashi Tharoor would have left a bigger mark in Indian history as a gentleman politician in the Bidhan Chandra Roy mould. Free of the unfreedoms of a MoS, he could have enriched India’s foreign policy format from outside. Knowing the tastes of folks in Thiruvananthapuram, I’d say Shashi Tharoor would have made a better impression as a parliamentarian-cum-author-cum-social worker than what he has reduced himself to now.

This media mountain made out of his tweeting has within its rain shadow area the painful truth that at 53, Shashi Tharoor has no choice but fill his hours in ways not dissimilar to what was employed by his 19th century tharawad-managing ancestors in Kerala: counting the coconuts as they dropped, watching varnish wear off the solid oak door, etc. There were luscious diversions too, which, unfortunately, our sedentary MoS must do without. He is also a prisoner to his party’s lowest common denominator politics; protocol and form bars him from writing or speaking his mind and, to add insult to injury, he must answer fellow MPs’ banal questions twenty days in a year. So, after a hard day of standing down, he reaches for his mobile phone and finds amusement by tweets. What’s most depressing to watch is that he often stoops to the level of his correspondents.Shashi Tharoor is not a professional politician, so he needn’t have conformed. He faces a dilemma that is, well, Tharoorian, and the only way out is by wanting out. It’s time we PLUs showed the neta types that they can’t have it both ways. If they want us in their parties, they must accept us on our terms.

The Tharoorian dilemma — how to avoid being a typical politician — is now gripping another treasury bencher. Shashi Tharoor may not have met Kabir Suman, the Trinamool Congress member from Jadavpur, West Bengal. For altogether different reasons this pop singer has fallen foul of his party’s high command. But at least he is resisting (Lookback). Tharoorism is also seen in south Indian politics (The Other Voice). Maybe things will get sorted in the 2010s.

-- The writer is Senior Editor, The Pioneer

Mayy be the Twitter gang should tell him about BRF! He might do better here.

[AnimeshP]

Op-Ed on Tharoor in Pioneer.

OPED | Saturday, January 16, 2010 | Email | Print |


The Tharoorian dilemma

Udayan Namboodiri

Shashi Tharoor is not only wasting himself as junior minister in the MEA, but by conforming to party diktat also scaring away from politics a whole sub-nation of English-educated, broad-visioned Indians

Today they are celebrating the 150th anniversary of my old school in Kolkata — St. Xavier’s College. And here in Delhi you have Shashi Tharoor, who shares space with Rabindranath Tagore, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Raj Kapoor and Sourav Ganguly in a long list of distinguished alma mater,personifying the opposite of high achievement. He sits and fiddles a silly Blackberry, scuttles a historic opportunity — all for want of much to do.

But there was a time when he had a spark. That I discovered on a rack of the heritage Goethals library deep inside the womb of that revered institution. “It’s a very valuable almirah,” said the late Father Achiles Verstraten, one of the outstanding figures in SXC’s history who gave me a guided tour back in the old days. “There’s a lot of early genius locked up within.” Unless you are a special visitor all you get is a peek through the glass at the spines of cloth and leather bound volumes with the gold-embossed words, The Xaverian. These are the old issues of the annual magazine started by Father Eugene O’Neil in 1904 to give the boys their first platform for intellectual expression. For the boys it was a very big deal to get a picture or a composition encompassing his world view into The Xaverian. By any standard, Shashi Tharoor was the star of 1971. In that year’s number, he was on pages 15, 18 and 27. Apart from two pictures in which he looked real cutiepie, the edition carried the essay which won him first prize in an inter-school competition hosted by Don Bosco. The subject: Mujibur Rahaman.

A space crunch bars me from reproducing excerpts, but without effusion I’d admit the 16-year-old was already somewhere as a writer with insight. Shashi Tharoor has never heard of me, not just because I was ten years his junior. My mother, who used to go for Calcutta Kerala Samajam events, often brought news on the progress of this doe-eyed Mallu kid. You could say he was the pride of the community. He evolved into a fine writer and combined international bureaucracy and prose making with rare élan. Yes, Shashi Tharoor kept his looks, which is important — and did he come thiiiis close to becoming UN Secretary General!

After that, the downhill. Nothing more to achieve at the UN, he packed for home and for a while Shashi Tharoor kept the Kerala media guessing whether he’d join Congress (while the Delhi media speculated when he’d join Congress) and blabbered away evenings on TV channels. Entering electoral politics is a good thing; I’d recommend it to anybody looking for great material for a future book. Winning? Still better, provided you don’t take it to head. But joining the MEA as MOS — that was punching below weight.

The futility of having MoSes is the oldest story in Raisina Hill journalism and I’ve done several in my heyday. Now, the MoS of the MEA is aparticularly ridiculous figure because he spends five of the most productive years of his life expecting people to believe that the government is terribly serious about ending the tout menace in the passport offices. The entire cake is hogged by the cabinet minister, the EAM, while the two MoSes (earlier there was only one) fight over who would be ‘minister-in-waiting’ for the next visiting head of state. There are also junkets to South America and West Africa which Shashi Tharoor could survive without.

What outsiders don’t know is that the MEA is the most bureaucratised ministry, a legacy of the first prime minister who kept this portfolio for himself because it allowed maximum breadth for grandstanding his utopian vision. Bureaucrats love these guys because they are easiest to manipulate. It didn’t help that after Nehru, the Congress heavily strengthened the MEA by treating the EAM’s post as a sinecure for loyalists. History will bear out that the combined contribution of Swarn Singh, PV Narasimha Rao, Madhavsinh “Bofors letter” Solanki, Pranab Mukherjee and Natwar Singh was half that of Jaswant Singh — even if nobody in the BJP will agree. Whenever India under a Congress government succeeded in scoring a major international breakthrough it was in spite of its EAMs, not because of. They had Indira Gandhi who fetched us our only post-Independence glory.

After Shashi Tharoor won from Thiruvananthapuram a lot of people genuinely believed that he would be Sonia Gandhi’s automatic choice for EAM in UPA-II. Not one of the others could hope to hold a candle to Shashi Tharoor for knowledge of world issues, personal friendships enjoyed at the highest level and contacts spanning the atlas. But India got SM Krishna, every IFS officer’s dream. Shashi Tharoor should have walked up to Sonia Gandhi and told her “cabinet berth or nothing.” But he groveled.

By choosing to become a greasy politician, Shashi Tharoor let down our entire sub-nation of English-educated, professionally talented, broad-visioned Indians. In our self-flagellating moments we may scorn ourselves as the “India shining” types, but we know India could do with guys like us in the political space. Nothing would have changed for Sashi Tharoor if Sonia turned him down, if only for appeasing her cronies. With time, Shashi Tharoor would have left a bigger mark in Indian history as a gentleman politician in the Bidhan Chandra Roy mould. Free of the unfreedoms of a MoS, he could have enriched India’s foreign policy format from outside. Knowing the tastes of folks in Thiruvananthapuram, I’d say Shashi Tharoor would have made a better impression as a parliamentarian-cum-author-cum-social worker than what he has reduced himself to now.

This media mountain made out of his tweeting has within its rain shadow area the painful truth that at 53, Shashi Tharoor has no choice but fill his hours in ways not dissimilar to what was employed by his 19th century tharawad-managing ancestors in Kerala: counting the coconuts as they dropped, watching varnish wear off the solid oak door, etc. There were luscious diversions too, which, unfortunately, our sedentary MoS must do without. He is also a prisoner to his party’s lowest common denominator politics; protocol and form bars him from writing or speaking his mind and, to add insult to injury, he must answer fellow MPs’ banal questions twenty days in a year. So, after a hard day of standing down, he reaches for his mobile phone and finds amusement by tweets. What’s most depressing to watch is that he often stoops to the level of his correspondents.Shashi Tharoor is not a professional politician, so he needn’t have conformed. He faces a dilemma that is, well, Tharoorian, and the only way out is by wanting out. It’s time we PLUs showed the neta types that they can’t have it both ways. If they want us in their parties, they must accept us on our terms.

The Tharoorian dilemma — how to avoid being a typical politician — is now gripping another treasury bencher. Shashi Tharoor may not have met Kabir Suman, the Trinamool Congress member from Jadavpur, West Bengal. For altogether different reasons this pop singer has fallen foul of his party’s high command. But at least he is resisting (Lookback). Tharoorism is also seen in south Indian politics (The Other Voice). Maybe things will get sorted in the 2010s.

-- The writer is Senior Editor, The Pioneer

Mayy be the Twitter gang should tell him about BRF! He might do better here.

I think that the writer has too high an opinion of oneself ... If "English-educated, professionally talented, broad-visioned Indians" get let down so easily, then maybe they shouldn't be entering politics ...
So the writer castigates one uber-English educated-professionally talented-broad-visioned Indian (Nehru) for failures of EAM but expects another one of the same kind to do better ... Oh the irony ...

[Rupesh]

^^^
Udayan Namboodiri is a WKK admirer of Tharoor. .. Thank God Tharoor did not become MEA!
Ramana saar, I don't think Tharoor can survive on BRF for long, moi is sure someone will make him wear a soosai vest

[Philip]

Tharoor is now being accused of selling his books to missions abroad (worth 3+ lakhs)! His books were part of a long list of books of other authors also sent.One of our media channels seem bent upon booting him out of office.There is little evidence that Tharoor used his influence with the MEA to buy the book,written a decade ago,which criticise Nehru and Mrs.G in part.However,he seems a misfit in the crowd of the Congress party,where psychophancy rules the roost.His innings at the MEA might be very shortlived.

[kshirin]

I do not know much about Shashi Tharoor, but I was going over his speeches on the MEA website, which he prepares himself rather than get baboos to write them (most senior bureaucrats do not write their own speeches/letters/drafts and unfortunately some Ministers follow this tradition), which is commendable in itself. But if you go over his speeches on the mEA website you will find he questions a lot of "holy cows" and pokes fun at corruption and mental rigidity. By that token he should be OK with BRF public.

[SSridhar]

Tharoor has a point in that India was loathed by the west for its principled "morality" during the Cold War, for being one of the principal pillars of the Non-Aligned nations and not allying with the west against the Soviets.

While the West may loathe India for all that and they are not always right, I agree that Shashi Tharoor has a point. Here is an excerpt from an earlier post I made in another thread:

India was facing many serious problems on the political front, partly due to its unimaginative and at times inflexible foreign policy and partly due to circumstances that did not favour her for one reason or another. Having just gained independence using sustained nonviolence over a protracted period of time against one of the most powerful nations on earth and thus caught the admiration of both the free and the colonized nations, Indian leaders naturally stood on a high moral pedestal when it came to dealing with global conflicts and issues and were very self-righteous about this. India decided to speak up and stand up for what it considered as just causes. The Indian foreign policy was guided by third-world solidarity, non-alignment with either blocs and anti-imperialism and colonialism. That, practice of state craft was a fine balancing art between conflicting requirements, to maximize benefits for the country while minimizing risks, was either lost on most of her leaders, diplomats and policy makers or was arrogantly consigned to dust-bin in the initial flush of gaining freedom.

Too many events were happening around the world in a rapid succession such as the Palestine problem, the division of Germany, independence of Indonesia from the Dutch, the Suez canal issue in 1956, the question of Apartheid, the Cold War, Nuclear weapons and test issues, the Korean War, Treaty-of-Peace with Japan, the struggle of the Afro-Asian countries against colonialism, entry of People's Republic of China (PRC) to the UN in spite of its occupation of Tibet by the fall of 1950 and its hostile attitude towards India, the Indian military action in Goa, the transfer of pockets of French possession in India, the Afro-Asian Bandung Conference in 1955, the invasion in Vietnam, the suppression of the Hungarian uprising by the USSR where India chose not to condemn the Soviet Union, Nehru’s attempts at forging third world solidarity and his unmasked revulsion of the United States even as he single-handedly defined India’s foreign policy, to name just a few. In many of these crises, India was a leading voice. Having chosen to stand for unbending moral correctness, many of these events naturally seemed to pit India against the Western powers as India's stand on most of these issues was in direct conflict with them. In fact, India’s quest to be a leading light in establishing a just world order, a quest too ambitious for an emaciated India just getting out of two hundred years of colonial yoke and exploitation, had started even before it got independence. The INC (Indian National Congress) sponsored a medical team led by Dr. Kotnis to serve the Chinese during the aggression by Japan in the Second World War. The INC again reacted strongly against the Balfour Declaration that displaced the Palestenians from their lands. Later, India refused to have any diplomatic relationship with Israel fearing a backlash from Muslim community in India as well as Islamic countries of the Middle East that were meeting India’s crude oil requirements. Just before independence, Nehru convened the Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi in March, 1947 in which he propounded free India’s foreign policies. From then onwards, Nehru took complete and sole control of India's foreign policy and single handedly directed the fate of the MEA.

[JE Menon]

Philip has got it right. There is an "effort" underway to bring Shashi Tharoor very much to heel. It is a pity, and (IMHO of course) , an internal thing. His problem is that he is good with the media, in some eyes probably too good if you know what I mean. You see, his ambitions must never, ever exceed that of EAM, and if he was made EAM at 53 where, god forbid, would he set his sights next? And being reasonably presentable, comparable to cough cough cough (there's this chinese virus going around), it is not entirely a far fetched possibility in this increasingly media-driven electoral game. So, draw your conclusions.

And you seriously think Congress is going to gift away Kashmir? I laugh at you with contempt The poor Paks don't know what they are dealing with.

What do I think of Tharoor? He may not say and do things exactly as some of us on BRF would like, and he may be a bit smug and sanctimonious (I don't think so myself), but his heart is in the right place. A good man, and without question a patriot who speaks his mind when he can, and that's saying a lot for a man who spent a big chunk of his life as a diplomat.

[shyamd]

^^Agree with above assessment on Tharoor. I think the reason he is there is because Tharoor is pretty well connected, especially in West Asia(he got a guy from kannur released from prison due to his peronal relationships with certain individuals) and other places (UN stint helps of course). Tharoor is handy to have in your govt.

Kangress is looking at other individuals like him, a dubai based IM may be in the running for Health Minister in the future.

[pgbhat]

Super long article by M K Dhar.

India has no access to the energy resources of Central Asia. If India happens to adopt a pro-active energy policy in near future it can tap the Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russian oil and gas resources along a pipeline running through Iran and consigning the product to India from Bandar Mahashahr or Bandar Imam Khomeini. This would require improving the quality of bilateral relationship with Iran and the other littoral countries. Iran is vital to India’s energy resources as well as a bulwark against Sunni jihadist thrust in India. Hopefully this grandiose idea would catch up with South Block sooner than later.
India’s inability to tap the gas resources of Bangladesh and Myanmar indicate that its energy policies have not coincided with foreign policy and the quality of bilateral relations with these two neighbours. Minor irritants with Bangladesh can now be sorted out taking advantage of a secular and democratic regime now ruling from Dhaka. India’s economic umbrella can get a boost in Bangladesh provided a broader foreign policy is pursued pragmatically. China, on the other hand has signed memorandum of understanding with Myanmar for tapping its gas and oil resources.

India is required to give assistance to the USA in curbing the Islamist jihad in its own geopolitical region, especially Afghanistan and Pakistan. If America and the allies withdraw from Afghanistan in 2011 and if Pakistan turns out to be totally unreliable ally against the international jihadists, India may have to collaborate more stridently with the USA. Spill over of the al Qaeda and the Taliban movement from Afghanistan and Pakistan would prove to be more disastrous than extending limited cooperation to America. This may also become a mutual necessity in near future with a view to contain China’s ambition in these Asian regions and its goal of achieving supremacy in the Indian Ocean region. To frustrate China’s policy of encircling India the US overtures for strategic linkages should not be ignored. But, all care must be taken not to get India involved in America’s global war against Islamic jihad.

[sanjaykumar]

Yes of course it won't do to have India fight its own wars, will it? Let NATO fight with its superior firepower and economic strength, India has illusions to maintain.

There may be a difference between prudence and freeloading. I hope Indians can tell the difference. Not to spare American blood and treasure, but for their own sake,

[shyamd]

Not sure where to post:

Chaos reigns at Indian embassy in Qatar

The Indian Embassy at Qatar was a revelation to me. Chaos rules the place. Spelling mistakes greet visitors upon entry and an over burdened and rude staff crowns the experience.
CJ: Armstrong Vaz

Sat, Jan 16, 2010 09:06:50 IST

MY VISIT to the Indian embassy in Qatar revealed some shocking details. The first goof-ups I noticed as I stepped in were regarding spellings—compensation was changed to compansation and complaints to comlaints, how this missed the eye of the officials and the Indian ambassador baffles me and the score of the Indians who visit the Embassy.

The language commonly used for communication is English, but then Malayalam is for all official purposes the other language used, and notices have been prominently pasted in the embassy premises both in English and Malayalam but sadly not Hindi.

Hindi can be read by scores of Indians from the entire north belt and also people from other parts of India and Pakistan.

This prominent use of Malayalam, people informed me, is due to the fact that the Indian ambassador, although hailing from North India is married to a Malayali woman.

Chaos ruled at the embassy despite the token system being followed, with people crowding around the counters and the security personnel watching passively.

Rude and arrogant would be mild words to describe the attitude of the staff at the embassy. It starts with the person at the help desk, who dismisses any queries for Indian visas by Nigerians, Pakistanis, Iranians and Yemenis with disdain.

“No visas for Pakistanis, Iranis, Yemenis and Nigerians,” he shouted at the top of his voice as he turned back a Nigerian student who wanted a one-year visa to study at the Osmania University in Hyderabad.
After going through the Nigerian’s papers for visa application, the help desk official discovered that instead of clearing the first year at the University, the student had contravened the provisions of the Visa and instead enrolled in another institute.
“This cannot be allowed,” he told the student. “You can do that in your country.”
Later talking to me, the help desk official confirmed that visa norms for all nationals have been tightened.
When questioned, if the greater terror threat and the recent David Coleman Headley fiasco had made India tighten up the visa procedures, he answered in the affirmative. Headley, a US national of Pakistani origin changed his original Muslim name to Headley to fox the authorities. He availed of a multiple entry Indian visa and was part of the cell which plotted the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
And, there is more bad news for Indians wishing to register themselves with the Indian embassy in Qatar.
The embassy no longer accepts hand written or email requests for registration as Indian nationals in the database of the Indian embassy.
One of my Goan friends involved with lot of social, cultural and sports organizations in one of the GCC countries wrote to me saying: “A simple email or fax to the embassy will do – just state the name, passport number, the company/employer you are working for, Your coordinates (telephone, mobile, fax, email), etc…..
Another way the embassy records you in is when you have a passport application (for renewal or fresh passport).
There is a column to state if you have registered with the embassy or if you are a part of an association/organization known to the embassy. In some GCC countries the Indian mission registers organizations (a few years ago it was one state, one organization) but this did not work out well, and it has been changed.”
The Indian help desk official, who reverted to me, informed that the practice has since been discontinued after the computerization of records.
“There is no need to compulsorily register oneself with the Indian embassy, whenever you come to the embassy for any work, your data will be entered in the database,” he informed me.
With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asserting that NRIs will be given the right to vote, the first step will be to register the new NRI voters and also the old NRI voters who have been wiped off from the electoral rolls.
Not only have some of the people who have spent some 27 years in the Gulf been wiped out from the electoral rolls but have on by their own account lost touch with the country. It will be a huge task to add the new NRI voters on to the list and if that task is entrusted to the Indian embassies then it will be overburdening the staff.

[JE Menon]

Armstrong needs a strong arm up his netherlund. What an idiotic article...

The use of Malayalam (and Hindi) is widespread in embassies across the Gulf because the majority (maybe the vast majority) of people who go to work there are Mallus, and many from the poorer end of the income spectrum. (Major national newspapers in the UAE used to have a Malayalam section of several pages - don't know if they still do). I have not heard this case of Hindi being completely absent in the Indian Embassy in Qatar, but I would strongly doubt that and if that were indeed the case, the ambassador needs to have his head examined pronto.

Now this: "This prominent use of Malayalam, people informed me, is due to the fact that the Indian ambassador, although hailing from North India is married to a Malayali woman."

The fool has managed to slander both north and south in one go. As if being married to a Malayali woman is enough to get the ambassador to change the language of government in an embassy, even if she said so - which is also debatable!!! But hey "people inform" him. That said:

>>“No visas for Pakistanis, Iranis, Yemenis and Nigerians,”

Maybe I should run back and get married to a Mallu woman!!!

[ramana]

Not exactly Foreign Polcy but Sunanda Datta Ray expalins the language of diplomats. Helps read between the lines of press statements and non papers and other verbiage.



LINK:

http://www.dailypioneer.com/232351/Grin ... hache.html

Grin and bear the toothache

Sunanda K Datta-Ray

The Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister’s churlish behaviour with the Turkish Ambassador, Mr Ahmet Oguz Celikkol, would have made sense only if Israel were preparing to wage war against Turkey. Sir Ernest Satow, the pundit of protocol who wrote Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice, defined diplomacy as “finding the right words when the sword might be the alternative”. He would have regarded Mr Danny Ayalon’s use of wrong words as only the precursor to hostilities.

That was not, however, the Minister’s objective. Mr Ayalon merely let emotion run away with good sense because a Turkish TV show had depicted the Israeli security forces poorly. Instead of returning the compliment via TV, he summoned Mr Celikkol, received him without smile, handshake or any sign of the Turkish flag, and seated him on a sofa over which his own chair towered. This was an insult in several languages. “Your head is higher than mine!” the King of Siam would have bellowed in The King and I. Koreans, Communist or capitalist, would have been equally mortified. At the Panmunjom talks after the Korean war, delegates of the North and South kept pulling out higher and higher stools to establish precedence. In Satow’s book, Turkey should have withdrawn Mr Celikkol for ‘consultations’. An ultimatum might have followed.

Symbol and subtlety are not Mr Ayalon’s forte. Nor does he believe that seeing is believing. Lest any of the Israeli TV crew he had summoned to witness the Ambassador’s humiliation missed the point, he explained in Hebrew that the snub was intentional. But though the episode made headlines round the world, it didn’t quite make history. Satow notwithstanding, diplomatic give-and-take has reached a lower — or higher — pitch in many countries over the years.

Subimal Dutt as India’s Foreign Secretary recorded the tantrum that Portugal’s Ambassador threw when he was politely invited to discuss the future of Goa, then still a Portuguese colony. China’s record was even more inglorious during its Cultural Revolution. Two young Indian diplomats, K Raghunath and P Vijai, who were declared persona non grata and expelled on trumped up charges, had to run the gauntlet of a howling mob of Red Guards who punched and knocked them down at Beijing Airport and spat upon them.

Spit is the ultimate insult. After leading Ashley Eden, the British envoy, a merry dance among hill and jungle in 1863, the Bhutanese not only spat on him but forced the spit-spattered envoy to sign a treaty in their favour. So far so good — for Bhutan at least — but then the Bhutanese unwisely let Eden return to Calcutta where the British promptly repudiated the treaty. They also invaded Bhutan, confirming how thin is the borderline between diplomacy and war.

International relations have changed greatly since then and even since 1917 when Satow, a British diplomat who spent most of his career in Japan, China and Thailand, becoming a well-known Asian scholar, wrote his Guide. It’s the nearest we have to an international code on how sovereign nations should behave with each other. Diplomatic loot (duty-free purchases to be profitably resold) seem more pertinent than diplomatic immunity. Fast communications and globe-trotting Foreign Ministers have rendered those grand personages — ambassadors extraordinary and envoys plenipotentiary — virtually redundant. Pragmatic Singapore saves money by appointing non-resident Ambassadors (retired diplomats or businessmen) who pay only periodic visits to the countries to which they are accredited. But no diplomat can afford to forget that the punctiliousness Satow recommends ensures that molehills are not blown up into mountains. That’s why the manual surfaced last year in a sixth edition of more than 700 pages.

The many editions prove that protocol matters. Diplomats draw distinctions between a ‘note verbale’, a ‘proper paper’ and a ‘non-paper’. Gestures have to be finessed, words chosen with care. When a reporter asked at the British Foreign Office before the Falklands war if the Argentinian Ambassador, whose car had been seen driving away, had made a representation, the answer was “No, he represented his country’s position.” Earlier at one of Mr Henry Kissinger’s Harvard seminars, I had observed while watching a Republican Party conference on TV that so-and-so had walked out. “There was no walk-out,” corrected the gravelly Germanic voice. “So-and-so walked out.” Apparently, he went to the loo.

{Maybe PC should have read this manual before MKN was accused of walk-out. He walked out not staged a walk-out!}

The hapless Mr Ayalon needs to study history’s famous snubs and learn how to disagree without being disagreeable. For instance, a diplomat who is seated below his rank at a formal dinner doesn’t smash the crockery or throw the cutlery around in temper. He sits quietly at his assigned place, the picture of propriety, but refuses to touch a morsel of food or sip of drink. The host is expected to notice and take note. Satow doesn’t say what the aggrieved guest should do if the host’s only response is pleasure at the food and drink saved.

The phrase ‘diplomatic toothache’ came into use in 1958 when Nikita Khrushchev pleaded a dentist’s appointment not to receive the visiting Harold Macmillan. Khrushchev was only copying Maharaja Hari Singh whose excuse for not seeing Lord Mountbatten in Srinagar just before the Pakistani invasion was that a stomach ache had confined him to bed. Mrs Indira Gandhi always turned her back on Harold Wilson at international conferences after the latter’s unfriendly remarks during the 1965 war with Pakistan were reported to her. When Queen Elizabeth and Ms Michelle Obama put arms round each other in Buckingham Palace, it was a sign of cordiality. But when Mr David Miliband put an arm round our Mr Pranab Mukherjee, it was seen as patronising.

The most famous snub in European history was in 1077 when Pope Gregory VII kept the German Emperor waiting in the snow for three days before granting him an audience. The Germans got their own back by invading Rome. Gregory died an exile.

Israel’s real problem will arise if and when it exchanges Ambassadors with a sovereign Palestine. Both envoys can expect to be regularly summoned by the appropriate foreign office. Members of both embassies are likely to be charged with conduct not befitting their diplomatic status and expelled. Both sides will make representations, present notes verbale and withdraw their Ambassadors for consultations.

The fun and games will raise no cavil so long as it averts a return to diplomacy by other means. That’s the purpose of diplomacy.

-- [email protected]

Wish he had written more about the problems Indian officials face in TSP.

[Jarita]

^^^

China’s record was even more inglorious during its Cultural Revolution. Two young Indian diplomats, K Raghunath and P Vijai, who were declared persona non grata and expelled on trumped up charges, had to run the gauntlet of a howling mob of Red Guards who punched and knocked them down at Beijing Airport and spat upon them.

Poor guys. The chinese have horrible bad breath

[Muppalla]

Is S.Korean first lady Indic?

See how the world leaders use historical references in diplomacy. Some members on this forum and also the fashionables in India gets twists as soon as we refer anything to pre-islamic history of India as though that is not even a reference point that we should use towards building India's future. Every reference is derided as some Hindutwavaadi.


India Is First Lady Kim's Ancestral Home

Korea's first lady Kim Yoon-ok is a descendant of one of India's royal families dating back two thousand years, according to the presidential office Monday.

The presidential couple arrived Sunday in New Delhi for a four-day state visit. It is the first visit to India by a Korean president since 2004.

The office said Kim is a descendant of Heo Hwang-ok, a princess who travelled from an ancient kingdom in Ayodhya, India, to Korea.

Heo arrived on a boat and married King Suro of Korea's Gaya Kingdom in A.D. 48, according to Samguk Yusa, an 11th-century collection of legends and stories.

The chronicle says Princess Heo had a dream about a handsome king from a far away land.

After the dream, Heo asked her royal parents for permission to set out on an adventure to find the man of her fate.

The ancient book indicates that she sailed to the Korean Peninsula, carrying a stone, with which she claimed to have calmed the waters.

Archeologists discovered a stone with two fish kissing each other in Korea, which is a unique cultural heritage linked to a royal family in Ayodhya.

The stone is evidence that there were active commercial exchanges between the two sides after the princess's arrival here.

The princess is said to have given birth to 10 children, which marked the beginning of the powerful dynasty of Gimhae Kims.

Members of both the Heo and Gimhae Kim lineages consider themselves descendants of Heo Hwang-ok and King Suro. Two of the couple's 10 sons chose the mother's name. The Heo clans trace their origins to them, and regard Heo as the founder of their lines. The Gimhae Kims trace their origin to the eight other sons.

An analysis of DNA samples taken from the site of two royal Gaya tombs in 2004 in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province, confirms that there is a genetic link between the Korean ethnic group and certain ethnic groups in India.

Over the past decades, there have been efforts to shed new light on the historical links between Korea and India. In 2000, a Gaya clan raised money to send a large memorial tablet to India and establish a park in Ayodhya.

[krithivas]

I used to work with Samsung engineers based in Seoul around 10 years ago, and have had extensive non-technical private conversations with them on culture. The technical lead of Samsung (Mr. Kim) mentioned that it was common knowledge that the Kim clan trace their lineage to India, and was very proud of that fact. They were so delighted of my visit to Seoul that there were three different welcome wagon at Seoul airport to welcome this lowly engineer

In general - The Look East policy espoused by BJP (and Narasimha Rao Cong-I) was going towards establishing Hindu culture based relationship with Indonesia/Thailand/Burma/Singapore/Malayasia was a master piece strategic move. A similar Buddhist centric approach with a non-communist China would have been equally preferable. Picking up on cultural strands with deep roots have real potential to go somewhere.

However with the advent of the Congress - Sonia, Look West has taken higher priority.

[svinayak]

The technical lead of Samsung (Mr. Kim) mentioned that it was common knowledge that the Kim clan trace their lineage to India, and was very proud of that fact.

What about the Korean EJ experience and their view on India

[krithivas]

I don't understand the question: But a general response would be Korean EJ can expected to be no different to Indian EJ; The primary goal of any EJ is to un-root you from your heritage. Communism and Islam are no different.

[Sanku]

I don't understand the question: But a general response would be Korean EJ can expected to be no different to Indian EJ; The primary goal of any EJ is to un-root you from your heritage. Communism and Islam are no different.

I suppose Acharya's question is, how successful have they been in Korea (based on your experiences) on the above and how has is affected their views towards old world, such as India.

[Prem]

A FRIEND IN DEED
- Shashi Tharoor’s visit to Haiti showed that India is a global citizen

Standing on the rubble of the United Nations headquarters building in Port-au-Prince 10 days ago, Shashi Tharoor removed a four-year-old stain on Indian diplomacy. The first Indian minister to ever set foot in Haiti, he told its president, René Garcia Préval, that New Delhi had not merely pledged five million dollars for relief after the devastating earthquake in one of the poorest countries of the world: it had already deposited the cash in the UN’s account in New York so that there was no delay in reaching help to those who needed it most in Haiti. For a change, there was little red tape when it came to responding to this natural disaster.
Nearly four years later, no one in New Delhi would have remembered that promise had not Tharoor pored over the files preparatory to his travel to Santo Domingo. As a result, the normally circuitous and time-consuming procedures for opening an Indian embassy in the Dominican Republic have just been expedited and the Union cabinet will soon approve the proposal. The Dominican Republic is at a crossroads of Hispanic- and English-speaking America: some of its people, descendants of freed slaves from the US, speak a dialect of English known as Samaná English. His most likely successor is Lima’s mayor, Luis Castañeda Lossio, who fêted Tharoor with an honorary citizenship of the capital city. Lossio’s only request was that Tharoor should persuade Ratan Tata to send that new symbol of Indian soft power, the Tata Nano, to Lima as soon as possible. It does not look like a bad deal: a few Nanos in exchange for 65 unexploited mines.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100203/j ... 057236.jsp

[Jarita]

Indian Army in Congo

Etiquette, deference, tradition and tea amid an unsung tour of dutyIn Congo, Indian troops make up the biggest contingent of the biggest UN peacekeeping operation in the world

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/fe ... oops-congo

[Philip]

Tharoor and India have done well.It has little been reported by our media.In fact in the aftermath of the tsunami,Indian relief to Sri Lanka wa stunning in its speed of rsponse and in restoring essential services to Galle harbour and the worst affected south of the country.When USA forces cam,they found they had no role to play at all other than sending their "missionaries" to try and convert the affected!

There is ahuge amount of assistance that India can provide at fractional cost to many nations in South and Central America and Africa too.We should reinvent our age old ties with Cuba which leads the world in health care and could use many Indian innovations like Tata's Nano,even the portly Amby,easy to operate and repair,to merge with Cuba's vintage limos.It requires imagination and an open mindset in the MEA.Perhaps the reason why there is so much of adverse media publicity about Tharoor is because he will change the system in a manner contrary to the cobwebbed minds that rule the roost and with a current minister who is a novice in the art of diplomacy and foreign affairs.

[rsingh]

Today I went to Indian embassy (in Brussulabad). Babu log were busy so Ihad to wait in waitng room. To kill time I took a magazine. And that is what I found





Wrong map of India,giving half of Kashmir to Bakistan
Pic of R. Gandhi who has no connection to NAM whatsoever
pic of P. Gandhi who has no connecton to NAM and is not in politics............this is May 2009 issue
caption SCOvsNATO ...........strengthen does not make sense

World's new equation.........................(between brother and sister ?)




OOPS in case we miss Rajmata



Now this is funny. None of the sentences in editorial make sense..........

Gurus please read carefully and see it yourself. It is possible that my long stay in Pindi and LMU has twisted my knowledge of English........but this is too much. If such bunch of idiots are editors ..............then we do not need donkeys in India. Even guy in Pic ( Non Aligned Movement I.E. neither Ruskie nor yankee) is siting with Russian flag


If anybody can make sense out of it I will send pack of best Belgian Beer

[rsingh]

There are 7 articles in this issue.

2nd article recommending that USA should make Indian action "more transparent "in Afganistan for peace in the region

3rd article is drumming how great is China and how other countries have duty to do everything to provide energy security.

4th article is singing praise of china.........development blah bla and how thakless dalai lama is. Author is Chinese. In the end China is given a slap on hand for being naughty boy which scared few monks.
5th article is about South China sea. Author advises not to mess with china in its bacyard by provoking its breakaway provence.....Taiwan

6 th article is about 34% rise in Indian defence force budget and how our forces are not able to spend it wisely.

In all one I felt like I was reading a Chinese magazine badly translated in English. Fact that GOI rubbish make my blood boil. I am going to protest. Acopy will be sent to every news papers in India, to PMO, and to opposition parties in India. Next week PR babu at Embassy will have an earfull from me.

[sum]

Pic of R. Gandhi who has no connection to NAM whatsoever
pic of P. Gandhi who has no connecton to NAM and is not in politics

The new lows INC and GoI stoop to.

Wonder why Priyanka's kid didn't get a look in?

[JE Menon]

There's time for that yet. One hopes

The degree of psychofancy in the Congress is beyond ridiculous... and NDTV should probably have a shrine image on the right top screen corner with a lamp permanently burning for Rahul. Terrible, and toe-cringingly embarrassing.

[SSridhar]

We all have heard of the Asian Relationship Conference that Nehru organized in early 1947 in Delhi. In this article, Shri L.C. Jain recalls that conference.

A very interesting article with a lot of nuggets especially on India placating the Arab delegation, Chinese objections, Biju Patnaik's daring as a pilot etc.

[Prem]

Africa’s needs are great enough for both India & China: Tharoor
http://www.livemint.com/2010/02/0823025 ... great.html

You have been travelling to Africa quite often since you took over as minister. What is the tangible progress in the relations between India and African countries?

I have actually made five separate visits to Africa in the last six months. Africa has huge mineral potential and many African countries are really significant. We are doing everything to get India special access to the huge amount of wealth under the ground. Also, agriculture is a very important issue. Agricultural land owned by Indians in a foreign country with captive markets locally, and as an opportunity to export to India, is of interest to us. That’s one thing I want to pursue in Latin America also. But we should not ignore the intangible benefits too; we are trying to get a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council

( Prooves Young blood can change the direction and preception of India with realpolitic and not hampered by colonised mind)

[Masaru]

Is S.Korean first lady Indic?

See how the world leaders use historical references in diplomacy.

Some more data points for reference of the forgotten past.

Tomb of Queen Suro

Korean memorial to Indian princess

Koreans want to nurture Ayodhya — birthplace of their Queen Ho

Quite interesting that all the research and interest seems to be from SK and none (at least in the articles) from the Indian side.

[Prem]

Masaru"]

Is S.Korean first lady Indic?

See how the world leaders use historical references in diplomacy.
Some more data points for reference of the forgotten past.
Quite interesting that all the research and interest seems to be from SK and none (at least in the articles) from the Indian side

And such a pathetic, tragic response from Indian side. They deny any such link.

[Carl_T]

The story Heo-Hwang Ok is also traced to the Ayutthaya city in Thailand though.

My korean friend was telling me that one argument made is that the korean script originates in India...

[ramana]

The story Heo-Hwang Ok is also traced to the Ayutthaya city in Thailand though.

My korean friend was telling me that one argument made is that the korean script originates in India...

How about Tibetian and Cambodian scripts?

[Carl_T]

The story Heo-Hwang Ok is also traced to the Ayutthaya city in Thailand though.

My korean friend was telling me that one argument made is that the korean script originates in India...

How about Tibetian and Cambodian scripts?

What about them?

[putnanja]

TENSE NEIGHBOURHOOD- India has not managed to create friendly surroundings as yet - Kanwal Sibal

[sanjaykumar]

Korean script obviously is related to Chinese caligraphically. It may be phonetically organised and rational as is Sanskrit. (A perhaps minor nitpick).

[Jarita]

Now why would Korea be so keen