I just finished listening to perhaps the most extraordinary TV debate I have ever witnessed on Indian television! The channel was Times Now and the moderator was none other than Arnab Goswami. The topic of the discussion was the apparent volte-face by the Pakistan government over the Sarabjit Singh release for which it had been feted not only on Indian channels but also on the local Pakistani channels and the media.

The debate commenced with Arnab interviewing Sarabjit’s sister, and she very vividly described the tribulations the family have been through all these years. They had already started the celebrations when they received communication from Sarabjit’s lawyer in Lahore who apprised them that the spokesperson from President Zardari’s office had announced that Sarbajit was going to be pardoned and released to India.

The celebrations turned out to be premature. Around midnight IST, another communiqué was issued from the same office. This time declaring that there had apparently been some error and the person who was scheduled to be released was one Surjeet Singh.

For those as ignorant as myself who had never heard of Surjeet Singh in a Pakistani prison, it emerged that this man had already had his death sentence commuted to life by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan long back. He was to be released anyway as his mandatory period in prison was already over. The legitimate question that arises is why did Zardari get involved here at all?

It was only through this debate I learned that there was a huge protest by two extremist fundamental parties, Jamat-ud-Dawa and Jamat-ud-Islami, against an Indian who has been sentenced to death being released. Their stated desire was to have this release linked to Ajmal Kasab. Following this, the government capitulated and this very implausible explanation was placed before the world. This probably explains the delay of almost 5 hours from the time the release was announced to the volte-face.

The Indians on the panel were Maroof Raza, former diplomat Leela Ponappa and Vinod Sharma, while the Pakistani panel comprised Sarabjit’s lawyer and a senior journalist and a government representative, Arif Chaudhry, and an analyst, Mr Peerzada. The unusual feature here was that the Pakistani panel was deeply divided. While Sarabjit’s lawyer took the official explanation with a pinch of salt, it was the government representative’s performance that made me really concerned about the Pakistani state as it stands now.

I have rarely come across a government spokesperson make a spectacle of himself the way Chaudhry did – and I have watched Indo-Pak politics for over 40 years. He was incoherent, uncontrollably intrusive, superlatively impertinent and irritatingly voluble with no trace of logic and evidence of knight’s move thinking! Because it was so difficult to stop him from spouting illogicalities (even by Arnab), the others could hardly get in a word.

I have seen Maroof Raza get angry during debates, but have never seen him get as exercised as he did during this debate. He ultimately shouted at Chaudhry and told him to “shut up” – something I have never heard on a TV debate before! Needless to say the defenders of the Pakistani government put up a supremely unconvincing performance.

My own assessment of this situation was identical to Maroof’s and Arnab’s i.e. the Pakistani government had indeed intended to release Sarabjit but developed cold feet in face of the opposition from a section of its own polity. This section being the fundamentalists who rule the roost and who hold the state to ransom vis-à-vis any overtures towards India – and enjoy the not so covert support from the Army and the ISI.

Why I am tempted to dismiss the Pak assertions today is because I have studied the polity of South Asia and known the diplomatic maneuvers which are over-activated in an attempt to give them a respectable slant.

The Indian government has made its own share of political goof-ups. Leela Ponappa pointed out how the CBI list of the names of criminals was sloppily prepared. Then we had Vinod Sharma (who for a change put up a dignified and measured performance) who pointed out that of the 35 people on death row who had their death sentences commuted by Pratibha Patil, one had already passed away.

Those were real goof-ups. But people of my vintage would recall a major incident where the Indian government is widely believed to have played a very unsavoury role, the consequences of which continue to bedevil and haunt us to this day. And this bears an uncanny similarity to the goof-up by the Pakistani government.

British and Independent India had till 1950 continued to state that China had “suzerainty” over Tibet. KM Pannikar was Jawaharlal Nehru’s appointed Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. On August 26, 1950, Pannikar told the PRC in an aide memoire that India’s Tibet-policy is one of “autonomy within framework of Chinese sovereignty”.

My overused volume of the Concise Oxford Dictionary describes “suzerainty” as:

noun, plural su·ze·rain·ties.

1. the position or authority of a suzerain.

2. the domain or area subject to a suzerain.

Origin:

815–25; < French suzeraineté, Middle French suserenete, equivalent

to suseren suzerain

The same volume describes “sovereignty” as:

noun, plural sov·er·eign·ties.

1. the quality or state of being sovereign.

2. the status, dominion, power, or authority of a sovereign;  royalty.

3. supreme and independent power or authority in government as possessed

or claimed by a state or community.

4. rightful tatus, independence, or prerogative.

5. a sovereign  state, community, or political unit.

Origin:

1300–50; Middle English soverainte  < Anglo-French sovereynete  (Old

French soverainete), equivalent to soverain

The readers can themselves make up their mind about the differences between the two terms.

Nehru then, himself, made a statement to the effect that he always intended to imply “suzerainty”, and Chinese “sovereignty” was never in his scheme of things. In other words, he squarely blamed Pannikar for this apparent goof-up. Rumours were fed to the media which supposedly spread like wildfire in governmental circles (and not just Indian) in the 50s that Pannikar was bribed by the PRC and other “extremely good treatment” was offered to him by the same.

But when we care to examine the facts, many would come up with a different interpretation.

It is clearly stated in many documents that the cable came wrongly worded to Panikkar from Nehru, and the astonished Panikkar reluctantly acted upon the command of his boss. Panikkar himself goes on record to say that if indeed he had done wrong, why did the foreign affairs ministry and Nehru not correct the mistake immediately? When the Tibetan parliament decided to appeal to the United Nations (UN) against Chinese aggression, India refused to sponsor it for fear of “upsetting the Chinese”. Nehru it would appear was not keen on criticising China regarding Tibet, in the hope that he might “play a more helpful role in mediating between Communist and Western powers” over the Korean War. He worked to defer consideration of the immediate concern of Tibet at the UN in order to obtain a ceasefire in distant Korea. India, which had a direct stake in Tibet’s future, acted unclearly about its own national interests at a momentous juncture in its history. The Indian representative in Lhasa was re-designated as consul-general under the Indian Embassy in Beijing. Indian diplomats bent backward to accommodate Chinese demands and conceded rights in Tibet that were inherited from the Shimla Convention of 1914.

The renowned historian, J Bandhopadhaya, is emphatic in his book The Making Of India’s Foreign Policy – “There is no reason to believe that India’s Tibet policy between 1950-1954 was not the result of deliberate decision making by Nehru himself.” (Page 234). (No matter what Nehru’s Man Friday, GS Bajpai had to say!)

And this diplomatic manoeuvre resulting from a similarity between the two terms, although a deliberate ploy, was presented as a “political goof-up!” Pannikar, a very erudite scholar who had ventured into diplomacy out of sheer love of his motherland was made a sacrificial lamb. And the People’s Republic of China got the message loud and clear – that India was not going to come out in aid of Tibet.

There may be a few readers who may regard this – the biggest foreign policy blunder by a democratic state in modern times which was entirely intentional and presented to the world – as a consequence of “secretarial error”.

I mention this incident as there is a tendency to link shenanigans of this kind entirely to the Pakistani rulers. I just wanted to stress that appraisal of our history would suggest that even we have not entirely been free of this tendency.