Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s eagerly awaited visit to Iran, carefully calibrated, carried a message to the region and the wider world: India was emerging from paralytic to active mode, beginning at last to start the process of transmitting economic and military power into diplomatic policy. It has taken the touted ‘all weather friendship between a jihadi-toting Pakistan and a malevolent and cynical China to awaken the powers that be in Delhi to take firm steps in the unfolding 21st century Great Game being played out like its 19th century mutant, across the Eurasian landmass. China has displayed its hand: an ambitious commercial corridor through Pakistan to the country’s port city of Gwadar as an outlet to the Persian Gulf and beyond. Beijing’s opposition to Pakistani-based jihadi Mohammed Azhar’s condemnation by the UN, and its refusal to allow India’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group is a diplomatic and strategic marker that brooks no denial. The regional kaleidoscope has attained a moe complex dimension with the Afghanistan government’s outright condemnation of Pakistani-sponsored jihadi violence in the country. Following a period of conciliation, President Ashraf Ghani censured Islamabad in no uncertain terms.
Mr Modi’s visit to Tehran, where he with Iran’s leadership, was to cement Indo-Iranian ties not simply with honeyed words but meaningful deeds Thus, India’s financial commitment to develop Iran’s Chabbahar port as an economic and transport hub is hugely significant. For a start, it will lead to a rail network into Hazara-populated Herat province in western Afghanistan, thereby foster India-Afghan trade and investment. Under present conditions this is impossible as Pakistan is resolutely opposed to such transit facilities. The Chabbahar agreement will enable India to circumvent this blockade. Critically, following the signing of the Indo-Iran deal by Messrs Modi and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani arrived to append his signature and make this into a Trilateral Transport and Transit Corridor linking Chabbahar with the Afghan road and rail network. Chabbahar will involve an Indian investment of $500 million. The India’s private sector – the Adani Group, for example, has vast experience in port construction, as has Larsen & Toubro - will be engaged in this infrastructure development. Beyond this, there were oil and energy talks and arrangements between India and Iran, much of which is still work in progress.
The Middle Eastern context must also be subjected to close critical scrutiny. It is riven by discord and conflict born of inter-state rivalry fed by primordial sectarian hatreds. Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf kingdoms are hostile to Shia Iran, so is Israel, for different reasons. Yemen is ablaze, so are Iraq and Syria, with Turkey also in turmoil. And then there is the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian. For India, these fissures require dexterous footwork. This is a formidable challenge, but one that must be faced and surmounted. The highest common factor rather than the lowest common multiple is what will bind India to these disparate partners.
That said, India’s transcending horizons stretch well into Central Asia, to the Caspian Sea and the Russian Federation – the Eurasian Economic Union, in a word. A rail head from Chabbahar, in the Gulf of Oman, to Astrakhan, notably home to a thriving Gujarati commercial community, thence to Russia’s heartland will save valuable weeks from the present detour via the Suez Canal onwards, to bring Indian goods to market. Strategically, it is a vital Indian security interest that Eurasia’s core area does not come within the ambit of destabilizing hostile forces, notably Islamic State or Taliban or their former Western patrons. India and Russia will be conducting high level military exercises on Russia’s Far Eastern territory, according to an announcement in Vladivostok, from July to December.
A fictional book by a retired British general with Nato set the scene for nuclear war with Russia in 2017. The book carried endorsements from other retired Nato generals and one from a former US Army chief. The lunatic fringe in West is clearly in good voice.
The stakes for India in this far-reaching diplomatic exercise against this combustible are high. India is the fulcrum of the Eurasian landmass.
Delhi’s brutality towards Africa
The death of a young Congolese man in Delhi following a dispute over an auto rickshaw fare, when he was set upon by a mob is a final wake-up call to the government, the city’s Aam Admi administration and the citizenry at large that something is terribly wrong in the general attitude and treatment of Africans. There have been outrageous incidents before, most notably when Aam Admi goons barged into an African household and molested the women residents. An uproar followed and steps against such an occurrence were taken, but is now clear that these have been insufficient. African envoys in the capital had made representations to the Ministry of External Affairs and they have done so again, much to the embarrassment of ministry officials gearing up for Mr Modi’s forthcoming visit to the continent for the India-Africa summit.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj issued the following prompt mollifying statement: ‘I would like to assure African students in India that this is an unfortunate and painful incident involving local goons.’ Maybe so, but the malaise of racism in the city runs much deep and takes different forms. Young people from India’s North East have been insulted and assaulted because of the facial characteristics, women of all ethnicities feel unsafe in the city, and Africans face problems of insensitive behavior almost every day of their working lives, whether it be on the Metro or other public places. Problems arising out of uncouth behaviour in Delhi stem in considerable part from a segment of its population with roots in its rural surrounds, where ways of life are frequently brutish. The plain truth has to be told and faced, however deep the pain and shame such admissions arouse. Better education and policing will help, but a media and general publicity blitz from roadside hoardings and public spaces, and more informed education on Africa and African culture may bring home to people the need for the proper courtesies to be displayed to guests and fellow citizens alike. Prattling on about Western colonialism with the blight of racism staring one in the face is the height of hypocrisy.
Unlocking a Hungarian scholar’s legacy
The Asiatic Society, set by British Indologists and housed in a prominent building in Calcutta in the early of the 19th century, is a heritage site today. Its treasures are the cynosure of all eyes interested in India’s classical past. One of its rooms – always under lock and key – is where Alexander Csoma de Koros, a noted Hungarian scholar and Indologist worked for a decade. His researches have been recognized by UNESCO as path-breaking. Recently the room was opened for a delegation from Hungary, led by the country’s Minister of Culture, Istvan Ffgyarto, to revive the story of this eminent but forgotten son of Hungary. Csoma de Koros believed through his linguistic skills and studies that the roots of the Hungarian language were located in Central Asia. He perceived linkages between Sanskrit, Tibetan and Magyar (Hungarian). Having travelled in Tibet, where he met the English traveller William Moorcroft, whose diaries are an indispensable source of information of this region in the opening decades of the 19th century.
The Hungarian began to be noticed following the publication of a series of scholarly papers and the first Tibetan-English dictionary and Grammar. Koros mastered 19 languages including Bengali and Hindi. He lived on a stipend from the East India Company and lodged in the premises of the Asiatic Society and became its first Librarian.
He started on yet another journey to Tibet to work on his early researches into the roots of his country’s language when he died in Darjeeling in 1842 en route to Lhasa. ‘When we received a letter from the Hungarian Embassy saying a mission from their government would be visiting the room where de Koros worked, we were thrilled,’ said Satyabrata Chakraborty, General Secretary of the Asiatic Society.
The delegation’s gifts to the Society were two books published by it and long out of print. Copies were republished by the Akademiai Kiado, Budapest. The second gift was a scroll highlighting de Koros’s contributions to scholarship. ‘We are looking forward to a collaboration that will centre around Koros’ unfinished work,’ said Mr Chakraborty. This project, together with the achievements of a truly remarkable man and scholar underwrites the cultural relationship between India and Europe at the highest level.
