By Sushil Kutty
The toughest foreign minister in the hemisphere, India’s EAM S. Jaishankar cannot suffer fellow foreign ministers who pour scorn on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, call him names and think they can make a clean getaway! And, if the erring foreign minister happens to be Pakistan’s, woe betide that gentleman or lady like Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari will testify in any court in Pakistan.
Bilawal, before he set out to attend the SCO Foreign Ministers meet in Goa, had willy-nilly divided Pakistan with more than half the country’s population dead against his Goa visit. On Friday, when he returned to Pakistan after the frosty reception in Goa, all of Pakistan rallied behind Bilawal in solidarity after Indian EAM Jaishankar left nobody in Pakistan in doubt that ‘Big Brother’ India’s streak is not a figment of Imran Khan’s fertile anti-India imagination.
True to conjecture, Jaishankar stood like a mannequin as Bilawal Bhutto came on stage with a tentative smile on his face. His Indian counterpart’s stony demeanour should have warned Bhutto. And, perhaps, it did, too. EAM S Jaishankar stood like a well-trained traffic cop indicating with an arm/hand gesture the direction Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari should take.
It was only later that Jaishankar went for Bilawal’s jugular. And Pakistan’s, too, stating in no uncertain terms that terror financing should be blocked to put an end to terrorism, including cross-border. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari listened as Jaishankar built on the premise and said don’t expect victims of terrorism to sit with perpetrators of terrorism and discuss how to beat terrorism!
Jaishankar said the SCO shouldn’t make the mistake of taking its eyes off terrorism. He mentioned the time when Covid-19 forced everybody to take their eyes off terrorism and terrorism-sponsors did not take a vacation. If Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari took the hint, he did not indicate with eye or gesture. Bilawal may be a late entrant to the diplomatic corps, but keeping a poker face isn’t one of his weaknesses.
EAM Jaishankar said all the right words and the evening talk shows lapped them up to spin yarns around Jaishankar’s tough-EAM image. In the pantheon of Modi-ministers EAM S. Jaishankar heads the group of “made men” which includes Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju and Union I&B Minister Anurag Thakur not to leave out the redoubtable Union Minister for Women & Child Welfare Smriti Irani.
At another time, and under another differently-ideological Indian government, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari would have been feted and invited for dinner with the Union Council of Ministers. And the Pakistan Foreign Minister is not a stranger to Indians. His mum and dad were familiar faces and his grandfather Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was one of the two authors of the Simla Agreement.
EAM S. Jaishankar should not have forgotten all these as he went about systematically humiliating Benazir Bhutto’s son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari. The Modi regime’s dislike for dynasts is threatening to cross the Wagah. But the border is protection for the Bhutto-Zardari dynasty and Modi’s central investigating agencies have no jurisdiction.
That being said, Bilawal shouldn’t have tarried and wasted time in Goa. What did Pakistan get in return for Foreign Minister Bhutto-Zardari’s diplomatic humiliation? Bilawal should have taken a Vande Bharat heading in the direction of Agra. The Taj Mahal is anyday a sight better than EAM Jaishankar’s stony face.
But what else did Bilawal expect other than homilies on terrorism? The presser with India’s suppressed/oppressed media was because of the beating India got in the World Press Freedom index! By now Bilawal must know that New India will take crap from puny Qatar, but not from nuclear Pakistan; that making fun of and casting aspersions on Prime Minister Narendra Modi tantamounts to War!
GCC has given Modi honour and highest state awards. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari called Modi ‘Butcher of Gujarat’, what did he think EAM S. Jaishankar would forget and forgive? Only analytical minds will have grasped that ‘New India’s’ diplomacy revolves around Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Covid-diplomacy was the best example.
The treatment Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari got is a lesson for all foreign ministers of all countries vis a vis India. The SCO foreign ministers’ Goa conclave made no difference to thorny India-Pakistan relations. Even Indo-China relations at the LAC remained locked in place with zilch progress made. If anything, China’s FM gave a warning and left. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari wasted time and energy, only to become the butt of jokes at India’s evening TV talk shows where EAM Jaishankar was the evening’s hero.
That said, the ‘Best of Bhutto’ was “Let’s not get caught up in weaponizing terrorism for diplomatic point scoring.” Did EAM Jaishankar take the hint? “When I speak on this topic, I do so not only as the Foreign Minister of Pakistan whose people have suffered the most in terms of number of attacks and number of casualties. I also speak as the son whose mother was assassinated at the hands of terrorists.” Disqualified Congress MP Rahul Gandhi would understand Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari perfectly.
But India’s foreign office helmsman had no time to go into the issue at all. Bilwal’s fate was sealed already for his remarks on Narendra Modi, just like the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. Is being humiliated by the Vishwa Bharati University through an eviction notice. It is not a coincidence that the chancellor of VBU is the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (IPA Service)
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