Diplomacy from the outside in

JNU professor S D Muni's memoir is an interesting study in how an academic can walk the corridors of power too

Dabbling in Diplomacy: Authorised & Otherwise, Reflections of a Non-Career diplomat

Author: S D Muni

Publisher: Konark Publishers

Pages: 264

Price: Rs 800

This is a compelling and lucidly written memoir of a distinguished academic who established himself as a diplomat and special envoy, turf usually reserved for career diplomats. S D Muni was appointed by Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral as India’s ambassador to Laos in 1997. In 2005, he became India’s special envoy and was involved in the complex diplomatic parleys of the faction-ridden domestic politics of India’s two key neighbours, Nepal and Sri Lanka. He describes meeting presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, and other high-level stakeholders in these negotiations, including rival leaders of political factions, with some understatement, as “dabbling”. 

How did a school teacher become a special envoy? He compresses this trajectory into one introductory chapter that ascribes his rise not just to passion and tenacity but also good luck. After obtaining an MSc degree he taught science in school in his home state of Rajasthan, sat privately for a Master’s in political science and subsequently made a career teaching political science and the geopolitics of south Asia at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

Professor Muni arguably is one of India’s most authoritative Indian scholars on Nepal and India-Nepal relations. He was able to leverage his scholarship to the cause of diplomacy, which he describes in the second and the third chapters titled “Nepal: Struggle for Democracy” and “Nepal’s Mainstreaming of Maoists”.  These chapters shed light on Nepal’s complex domestic politics, the entanglement of India and China and its bearing on Nepal’s relationship with India. He cultivated Nepalese leaders, cutting across party lines, including those from the Nepalese Congress such as the Koiralas — both B P Koirola and his younger brother G P,  and the Maoists.  Although he espoused India-Nepal ties and kept himself above party politics, he was labelled an Indian agent, an inevitable development perhaps in those turbulent times.

As an aside, Professor Muni mentions seeing Manisha Koirala, the Bollywood actor and the granddaughter of B P Koirala, growing up in their Varanasi house in 1985-86. JNU, where the author taught and from where he retired, was also a centre-point for the interface between Indo-Nepalese political engagement and academia. Nepalese  communist leaders who frequently met the professor at his JNU house included  Puspa Lal Shrestha, the founder of Communist Party of Nepal, and his wife Sahana Pradhan, who was Nepal’s foreign minister in 2007. Other leaders who shared an academic connection with JNU include Baburam Bhattarai.

These chapters highlight the fact that Professor Muni was not an armchair professor. Even as a young scholar on a field visit to Nepal in the 1960s, he acted as a point of liaison between the Indian embassy in Kathmandu, the royal palace, and the Koirala family of the Nepalese Congress. This at a time when the royal family and the Nepalese Congress were at loggerheads. His scholarly insights on Nepal’s political dynamics nudged Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to invite him for luncheon meeting with Royal Prince Gyanendra Shah in 1976.

In the fourth chapter titled “Sri Lanka: A Friend as the President”, the author revisits his close interactions with the island nation’s top political leaders, starting from Sirimavo Bandaranaike, President Ranasinghe Premadasa, President Chandrika Kumaratunga, President Rajapaksa, the indomitable Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar as well as prominent leaders such as K Pathmanabha, to discuss and resolve tricky issues. Professor Muni contributed towards building institutions such as the India-Sri Lanka Foundation for the promotion and better understanding of relations between the two countries. In recognition of these services he was awarded with Sri Lanka’s national honours in 2005.

In the fifth chapter, the author shares his experiences as India’s ambassador to Laos from 1997 to 1999. The two-year period was quite a challenging one for Indian diplomats around the world following the second Pokhran nuclear tests in May 1998 and also because of the Kargil war in May 1999. One additional interesting point in this chapter is his description of how Kirloskar water pumps imported from India helped Laos expand its paddy production, an example of the deployment of private-public cooperation in diplomacy.

Being a lateral entrant to the Foreign Service, Professor Muni laments the “turf consciousness of the IFS [Indian Foreign Service] community”, recalling how his appointment was delayed and the cold and inadequate customary briefings by the Ministry of External Affairs before an envoy is sent abroad. In the sixth chapter, he recounts his experiences as India’s special envoy and his other causal contacts in various Track Two diplomatic initiatives.

All in all, apart from offering fresh insights into neighbourhood politics, this memoir remains an interesting study in how an academic can walk the corridors of power too.

The writer is former senior fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, and also Indian Council of Social Science Research