Shankar respected his colleagues, as long as they were
bright. He had little time for ‘asses’ but was surprisingly
accepting of the pace of bureaucracy; he understood it as a given to be
worked around, which he did with skill and perseverance.
It feels strange to be writing about Shankar in the
past tense. He is, and always will be, part of my life here in India, my
life in general. Thank you, Shankar, for all you have done for me. I don’t
know what you thought of my life. I don’t know what you believed had
caused us, had brought about existence. You never seemed to probe these
matters. A good meal, a good wine, a good opera, were all more important.
And yet, though you cared deeply about your own
enjoyment of these things, you wished to please and to bask in the delight
of others.
Dear Shankar, I
shall miss you.
Nicholas Vreeland
Buddhist monk;
Abbot of Rato Monastery, Mundgod, Karnataka
FELLED by covid, because probably nothing else could.
At least, that is what we tell ourselves in the family.
Shankar’s last communication that I was privy to is a
picture of him in the ICU: a mask covered his mouth and nose, and in his
hand he held up a note complaining that his tea had not been made quite
the way he liked. Love of things gustatory, to the end.
His colleagues knew him as the consummate professional,
but what we in the family remember him most for was love of family – his
wife Meera, his sons, and his grandchildren and his large extended family.
He always made time for family. I mention it because it captures the
capaciousness of his existence, which few of us can match.
Shankar had a deep love of country and of his vocation,
diplomacy. Towards the end, he loved his country less – or more
correctly, what he saw happening in his country. At evening gatherings at
home, he would turn the conversation to the state of the nation and as we
rehearsed the same sad reflections about India, he would turn his
marvellously expressive eyes heavenwards. Which said it all.
His love of diplomacy was consuming, and it never
faltered. Max Weber famously wrote an essay on politics as a vocation. I
think Shankar could have written a fascinating and erudite essay on
diplomacy as a vocation. In fact, I have a sneaky feeling that the thought
occurred to him a long time ago and he probably composed it in his head
several times.
This tribute is really about Shankar as a diplomat and
his diplomacy. His friends and colleagues have very graciously written and
tweeted about him after his death – the bon vivant, the great host, the
chef (he said he had always wanted to be an architect, like his elder
brother, Durga, but his soul was gastronomic), the sophisticate, and India’s
top man in Sikkim, Islamabad, Beijing, and Washington. The portraits are
true and correct, and I won’t rehearse those attainments except to make
a larger point about his conception of diplomacy.
For me, three things stand out about him as a diplomat
and the diplomacy he embodied. The first is that he was a Realist. He
understood the place and sometimes the uses of international institutions
and norms, but he insisted that the play of power between countries was
fundamental and determinative. Over and over, he would tell me that Delhi
had simply not understood the centrality of power – what it is, where it
comes from, how it is to be used. And for its incomprehension, it paid the
price. Repeatedly.
Where did Shankar’s Realism come from? Given his
affection for the United States and his regard for American intellectuals,
you would think it came from the country that was almost a second home for
him. In fact, his Realism can probably be traced to Europe.
His father, Girja Shankar Bajpai, the first head of
India’s foreign service, and the only person in the bureaucracy who
could and sometimes did challenge Nehru’s views, was a great inspiration
for Shankar: Girja was the Realist foil to Nehru’s Liberalism. I
remember Shankar telling me that despite Girja’s Oxford and America days
(he represented India in Washington from 1941 to 1946), his father’s
Realism came from his reading of French diplomatic history.
Shankar also greatly respected Henry Kissinger and came
to know him personally. In 2018, during a trip Kissinger made to India, he
dined with Shankar. If Shankar became a purveyor of Kissingerian Realism
– and I think he did – that brand of Realism had European provenance
too. We should remember that the former US Secretary of State was German
by birth and wrote his doctoral dissertation on European diplomacy during
the Concert years, from 1815 to 1914. Kissinger admired the German
statesman Metternich, the astute Realist of continental Europe, and his
subtle balance of power approach to Europe’s geopolitics.
To finish the thought about Shankar’s European-ness.
He was good friends with one of the legends in the academic field of
International Relations, Professor Kenneth Waltz. Many years ago, Waltz
came to Delhi, and Shankar invited him to lunch. He also invited me to
that lunch. Waltz indulged me on my quarrelsome views on nuclear
proliferation – he was the author of a famous essay on proliferation –
and Shankar let me monopolize him on the subject for a while. Then the
conversation turned, but not to the theory of international politics. In
the flowing discussion that followed – the substance of which I cannot
recall – Indian foreign policy and Asian security were the centrepiece.
Shankar’s friendship with Waltz did not make him theoretically inclined,
and it did not turn him into a votary of his academic friend’s rather
arid and sparse Structural Realism.
The second defining feature of Shankar as a diplomat
was that he was a stylish and subtle representative of India. His
colleagues have written about him as a bon vivant, as a gourmand in his
love of food and setting a fine table, as knowledgeable about English and
American literature and being au courant with the latest in the world of
arts and letters, and as an articulate and charming conversationalist.
All that is true, but the important thing is that these
qualities were intrinsic to his diplomacy. One’s interests and passions
were not mere accoutrements. They were not affectations. It was not enough
to know your brief and every nuance of your country’s position on
various matters. A diplomat operated in the world at large. He or she had
to be worldly, to be in the world in its totality, to know it in
its complexity, its dangers, its beauty, its passions. A diplomat,
especially top-level diplomats, had to be able to connect the dots across
disparate fields and to demonstrate this to foreign interlocutors.
Shankar rarely if ever criticized Indian diplomats,
seniors, peers, or juniors. But now and then he would roll his eyes and
half-jokingly comment on an erstwhile colleague who typified the dour, the
narrow, and the mechanical in diplomacy. Not for him the hard-nosed
charmless technician, the coldly professional diplomat who had no other
strings to his or her bow: not because he was a Lutyens’ Delhi snob, but
rather because the narrow professional approach to India’s diplomacy was
too limited. It is not of course the case that Shankar was the only Indian
diplomat that exemplified this approach. But he was an, if not the,
exemplar of that school in the Ministry of External Affairs.
Perhaps another way of describing Shankar’s view is
that the man or woman is the message. He was convinced that the seemingly
superficial in diplomacy was not superficial at all. The way a diplomat
dresses, speaks, dines, decorates his home, and converses is a powerful
form of communication. Any diplomat can rattle off his or her brief and
hector and lecture the other side. But not every diplomat can convey that
the country he or she represents is sophisticated, mature, and creative,
and that it can play its cards with nuance and care.
Finally, Shankar’s diplomatic approach was marked by
an open stance, a receptivity to ideas even if they contradicted his. He
was willing to change his mind, alter course, and listen to others.
Listening: senior Indian officials are not exactly famous for their
attentiveness. Most of the time, like India’s politicians, they know the
answers before they have been asked the question. At family gatherings, we
always remarked that Shankar could connect to the youngest person in the
room – because he listened. He did not talk at young people. He was
formidable and could be intimidating, but he also listened, and he enjoyed
an intellectual tussle with whoever it was, young or old. He was not
dismissive. Some of the leading lights of the Indian foreign service
worked under him – and they were not wallflowers: Sati Lambah, Mani
Shankar Aiyar, Sudhir Devare, Hemant Kumar Singh, and Subrahmanyam
Jaishankar served under him.
Shankar is
gone. There are only a few foreign service officers who have outlasted
him: Perhaps an era of Indian diplomacy is closing. What these figures
brought to the conduct of India’s external relations is worth
remembering if not cultivating for the future. Shankar’s Realism, his
cultural sophistication, and his intellectual openness stand out. He and
his like will be missed as India confronts a time of many and dangerous
challenges.
Kanti Bajpai
Wilmar Professor,
Asian Studies at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy,
National
University of Singapore
