About two weeks ago when the Beijing Olympic flame was due to pass through Delhi, the Manmohan Singh Government was suffering a severe bout of nerves over the ‘Olympic torch’ which had caused it to come down heavily on thousands of Tibetans who had fled their home to India along with the Dalai Lama in the 50s, many of them born in India in the intervening years. Two days later young Tibetans had massed outside the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi and a handful of them had jumped over the embassy boundary wall, only to be nabbed by the waiting policemen. The Chinese embassy huffed and puffed; a protest was lodged, and far away in Beijing, the Indian Ambassador, was summoned to the Chinese Foreign Office, well past midnight, when she had retired for the night.
The Chinese had probably seen the Tibetan protest as message that the Chinese could raise diplomatic temperature, should India fail to sufficiently curb Tibetan protests in New Delhi.
An Indian Ambassador should respond to the summons of the host Government. Diplomatic courtesy, however, requires that the Ambassador of a sovereign country not be inconvenienced by being summoned at an unreasonable hour. Between friendly countries such conduct would be unthinkable. In conflict-ridden relationships, and especially during a crisis, diplomatic niceties are at times deliberately discarded and envoys subjected to personal unpleasantness, to signal extreme displeasure or to reinforce a tough political message.
The question arise is that why did the supine UPA Government in Delhi choose to crack down so heavily not on just the unfortunate Tibetan refugees but also on this capital city? Why was life in the capital and its adjoining sub cities like Gurgaon, Noida, Gbaziabad brought to virtual standstill for nearly eight hours, not to include the two-to three-hour traffic snarls that resulted once the Olympic torch had been safely restored to its Chinese escorts? All the major roads in the capital were blocked to traffic and it was the common man facing problems because of all this.
The incident at the Chinese embassy may have involved a minor breach of security but did it really warrant a midnight summoning of the Indian Ambassador when she had earlier that day assured the Beijing authorities about the stringent measures taken by New Delhi to prevent any untoward incident during the Olympic torch’s journey through Delhi with torch-bearers heavily escorted by Chinese and Indian commandos, carrying the torch a bare few steps forward before handing it over to the next dignitary. The torch rally was at the very best a fiasco, with no popular participation.
The torch fiasco, if anything, should convince our Government and its VIPS that our lives should not be held to ransom because of the oversized egos of a thousand puny men. The British and French Governments didn’t fall because protestors impeded the course of the torch relay. It is better to keep the politics of both the countries away from the spirit of sports.