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Jab They Met : Foreign policy and domestic politics

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
The holy trinity descended on the capital on Saturday evening – National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon and Atomic Energy chief Anil Kakodkar – seeking to win over a largely converted press to the advantages of the Indo-US nuclear deal. But the way they tied themselves up in knots over spelling out the detail! India...

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Lalu sells the nuke deal

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
Rank opportunism or cold blooded realpolitik? On Friday morning, as the UPA’s allies streamed out of a meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee laughed so heartily at his own slip of tongue (“we have just concluded a UPA-Left meeting”!) that it seemed quite clear that the Congress party had managed to...

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PM nukes Left, signals to IAEA

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
The sound and fury over the Indo-US nuclear deal over the last few weeks has resulted in such a complete breakdown of trust between the Left parties and the Congress-led government that yesterday’s secular allies have been reduced to, today, spitting fire and brimstone at each other at every opportunity. All day on Thursday, Left leaders gnashed their...

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The PM's victory hour

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
Barack Obama’s comments to a senior Indian official, a couple of months ago, that he would not make an “exception” for India on the nuclear deal if he came to power, was probably the last nail needed to convince Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the body in the coffin – in this case the nuclear deal – was already being prepared for burial. So when...

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The Robert Frost moment

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
The morning after the meeting between the UPA and the Left on June 25, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to be standing firm in his determination to take the nuclear deal to the next stage, that is, to the IAEA Board of Governors for approval. Meanwhile, the CPM Politburo is meeting on Sunday in a show of strength to support its general secretary...

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PM's gambit : Reaching out to the Left

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
If there’s one man Manmohan Singh must really miss these days in his loneliest hours on Race Course Road, his official prime ministerial residence, its his fellow sardar and wily friend and leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Harkishan Singh Surjeet. Both Singh and Surjeet are from the old school, but they couldn’t be further poles apart...

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The silence of Manmohan Singh

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
In all the sound and fury over the Indo-US nuclear deal over the last week, one fact seems to have been largely ignored : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s absolute silence. In fact, sources in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) tell me that the PM has given strict instructions not to deny a television story last week that said he has threatened to quit...

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Once upon a dinner party

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
I have let about a week pass before responding to a comment by Sanjay Mathur (the only one so far), to my post on the badly laid plans of the Press Office in the Indian high commission in Islamabad (Party poopers in Islamabad), about a party for Indian and Pakistani journalists to mark the visit of External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee’s visit...

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The Imran Khan school of Islam

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
Respect and humiliation, Imran Khan is telling me in his house by the canal in Lahore…in Islam we believe that you can get respect and humiliation only from Allah, no ordinary mortal can either humiliate you or give you respect. I’ve just finished interviewing Imran (check it out on youtube) and as he tucks into a large breakfast, he talks to me about...

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In front of the Starving Buddha

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
If Lahore is the jewel in South Asia’s crown, then the Lahore museum is a self-contained, little island located in the heart of the city’s bustling Mall Road, witness to the rise and fall of empire and ideology, not entirely a participant, but not strong enough either to have completely escaped the ravages of time. The museum is widely known, not least...

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A bottle of vodka

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
There was a great offer on Stolichnaya vodka bottles (buy two, get one free) at the Delhi airport Duty Free last week as I waited to take the plane to Lahore. I had heard somewhere that Pakistan forbids the import of liquor for its citizens (presumably because Islam doesn’t condone the vice), but on the other hand, several friends had taken up the state...

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Lahore vs Islamabad : the Wazir Khan masjid difference

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
At least in Lahore, there were auto-rickshaws everywhere. Actually, there were two sets of auto-rickshaws everywhere, the “green” ones with CNG that are allowed to move all over the city, and the other which use LPG and have to stay off the Mall Road. In Islamabad, public transport consists of truly old Maruti 800-type Suzuki cars, or mini-buses called...

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Party poopers in Islamabad

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
India’s abiding fascination with Pakistan is manifesting itself once again on this trip. For a start, more than 20 journalists have accompanied Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee to Islamabad, and since visas are ordinarily hard to come by, the blanket media coverage ensures that nothing is left to either chance or opportunity. On our first evening in...

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Allah, Army and America : Pakistan's alphabet soup

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
Pakistan may be the best-kept secret in the world, but is it also its own worst enemy? For most of its independent existence, Pakistan has been an alphabet soup of three As, Allah, the Army and America. And now there’s a fourth, one who encompasses the political order from A-Z. His name is Asif Ali Zardari, and in his capacity as Benazir Bhutto’s widower...

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Circle of life on the GT Road

Posted by Jyoti Malhotra at 
The harvest is being taken up in the fields as the taxi pulls away from Lahore and plunges into the plains of Punjab. The land is as flat as a chapatti. The air is heavy with dust the colour of sandpaper, which in turn bleaches the horizon. We’re on the highway Nawaz Sharif bequeathed to the nation when he was prime minister ten years ago, building...

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