summer vacations of kashmir

(crowd murmuring) - good evening and welcome to the marian miner cook athenaeum. my name is sarah sanbar and i'm one of the ath fellows here. india is one of the most populous and fastest growing economies in the world, with a population of 1.3 billion and a gdp of almost $8 trillion. as india's influence and power continues to grow

on the global stage, diplomacy is one of the most important tools it has at its disposal. joining us tonight is ambassador nirupama rao who served in the indian foreign service from 1973 to 2013. ambassador rao was the indian foreign secretary from 2009 to 2011, the highest position for diplomats in the indian foreign service. during her diplomatic career she has served in several posts including as the first woman spokesperson

of the indian foreign office, the first woman ambassador from india to china, and the first woman indian high commissioner to sri lanka. she has also represented india as ambassador to peru and bolivia and served as ambassador to the united states from 2011 to 2013. ambassador rao is currently a senior fellow in international public affairs at the watson institute at brown university.

although originally ambassador rao's talk was on india china relations, she has since changed to present on her career experiences and insights gathered from a lifetime of foreign service. ambassador rao's athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the keck center for international and strategic studies at cmc. as always i must remind you that audio

and visual recording is strictly prohibited. please join me in welcoming ambassador rao. (applauding) - good evening and thank you so much for those words of introduction. it's really nice to be back in california. i used to visit both los angeles, but never claremont, i must confess, before, and san francisco during my tenure

in washington as ambassador, so coming here has brought back a lot of wonderful memories. thank you for making it possible for me to be here today. i decided to speak on my life or a life in diplomacy because i felt that perhaps this audience has already listened to so many expert voices on foreign policy and on area studies and on major bilateral relationships and the role of multilateral organizations

and all the issues that concern us on the global stage today that i draw reference to context from my own life in diplomacy and just to illustrate how the world has changed and how i as a person grew along with it because of the experiences that i had. and therefore my talk is entitled a life in diplomacy. i hope you all can hear me, i'm not sure if i'm able to be heard at the end of the room.

so as females, diplomats have not been around for a long time, i wanted to start with that premise. because for those who assume that the female diplomat has been around for a long time, a study of history will reveal otherwise. the only women in the world of diplomacy until the early 20th century were the ambassadresses or wives of ambassadors. a new york times report in 1902 spoke of how

"in drawing rooms, courts, or at any royal function "which ladies attend, it is the ambassadress, "not the ambassador who has to be considered. "sometimes she is a touchy personage indeed." those were the quotes from the new york times. in fact, there's another reference from the oxford dictionary of national biography which said of lady dufferin whose husband went on to become the viceroy of india,

that she was regarded as the most effective diplomatic wife of her generation. these were not career diplomats but wives of powerful men who left a mark on history with their wit, their charm, their charisma, and ambition. but i come from a very different tradition. in 1933 it was stated in a debate in the british house of commons that the special virtues of women are singularly ill adapted to diplomatic life.

counted among womanly virtues were intuition and sympathy, the first regarded as absolutely fatal to diplomacy, tempting people to jump to conclusions, and the latter, that is sympathy, equally fatal since it caused people to identify with causes or personalities with which or whom they feel sympathy. together it was concluded these virtues would be fatal to that very balanced attitude which it is the business of the diplomatic service to preserve.

so you can understand the kind of stereotypes and prejudices that were applied to the roles of women of, as it were, taking on careers in diplomacy. since the pronouncement of these overarching gender biased (speaking quickly), women have come a long way in the diplomatic service of several nations. in india's foreign service, and i'm talking of people before me, those early days post independence, india became independent in 1947,

and the indian foreign service was established in october of 1948, so that saw the appointment, even in those early days, of pioneering women diplomats like cb muthamma, rukmini menon, and rama mata who set the stage for a succession of women entering the portals of the ministry of external affairs, as our foreign office is called. the mea, that's how it's usually referred to. they proved their worth as able officers

and in no way were lesser mortals than their male colleagues on serving the national cause with distinction. in fact, muthamma, the person i referred to who was the first indian woman to join the foreign service is remembered today particularly for a very landmark court case that she fought in 1979. it was called the union of india versus cb muthamma. and ambassador muthamma who was then a senior officer in the ministry of external affairs

went to the supreme court with a petition because she was denied promotion to grade i of the indian foreign service, grade i being the senior most level of the indian foreign service. and she said quite justifiably that it was because she was a woman that she was being denied promotion to grade i of the indian foreign service and that there was a stain of sex discrimination in this judgment or the decision of the government.

and she also went on to complain to the court that women in the foreign service were asked to quit if they got married. and that was again, a discrimination against women. and the supreme court heard her out, with sympathy in fact, and they criticized both these approaches of the government of india. but before a judgment could be pronounced, the ministry of external affairs reversed its decision

not to promote her and promoted her to grade i of the indian foreign service. so the case was dismissed as a result of that but i still remember the judgment, all of you, i would recommend that you should go online and read that judgment because it's a classic judgment, not only because it's a judgment, not only for the indians in the audience, but generally for women around the world.

i think it's a classic judgment, if you go on google you can google it, it's very much reproduced in full. and the judges dismissing the petition said we dismiss the petition but not the problem. and the problem being this whole issue of discrimination against women. so you can well understand that women in the diplomatic service, not just in india,

but all over the world i think come to this career with a lot of stereotypes operating and indeed, a lot of discrimination also. in fact, fighting the instance of britain, one reason advanced in the early days to establish that a career in embassies and consulates abroad was not fit for the woman was that they would be at an automatic disadvantage dealing with such categories as drunken sailors.

now this is reminiscent of an argument often heard in similar contexts, and i've heard this in the indian context, that women in embassies would be misfits since they could not go to the airport to receive dignitaries at night. you can understand where this was coming from. and a 1934 press report spoke of the main objection to women in the diplomatic service being that a large proportion of the 400 odd posts

are in unhealthy parts of the world. and women entrance to the british foreign service, even post world war ii did suffer from all these attitudes being applied. in fact india seems to have led rather than followed in regard to women diplomats entering the foreign service because our first woman diplomat entered the indian foreign service in 1948 when the service was established whereas mary galbraith,

the first woman foreign service appointed for britain, began her foreign service career in october 1951. and our first woman ambassador was miss muthamma, the same lady i referred to who became ambassador to hungary in 1970, whereas the first british woman career ambassador was dame anne walburton who became ambassador to denmark in 1976. so all this is recent history. of course world war ii opened the space for women

to prove their worth in many quasi diplomatic areas of functioning, as also in intelligence work and communications and that's how you see the gradual entry of women into the diplomatic service. and for all the criticism leveled against the soviet union for its political system it did lead the way with the appointment of alexandra kollontai as ambassador to norway in 1922. so that was way before any of the women

i spoke of became ambassadors. and you should also remember that outnumbered by their male colleagues, a tiny minority of four women affixed their signature to the charter of the united nations in 1945 and no record of those times can also ignore the impact of vijaya lakshmi pandit of india who was president of the united nations general assembly and the first woman ambassador worldwide

to the united states and also to the soviet union who left a mark on the diplomatic history of our young republic in the '50s of the last century, as also the countries where she served, particularly the united states where she was much loved. now the marriage bar as i mentioned earlier restricted the rise of women in the foreign services of countries like britain and india for years and it bore the stain of sexist discrimination

as i mentioned and our own diplomatic service lost many women stalwarts including, you may know her, surjit mansingh who's well known as an academic here in the united states today, who was a member of our foreign service and had to quit when she married an american academic in the '60s. by the time i joined the foreign service in 1973, the situation was like this, when i applied to join the foreign service i had to confirm

to the union public service commission which conducted the examination for the foreign service that i was not married because a married woman could not, was not considered eligible to join the foreign service. and that requirement was done away with almost very soon after i joined the service, so by the mid '70s, that requirement had been removed but there'd be the condition that the government could ask you to quit if it deemed

that you were not capable of carrying on with your duties because you were married, because of other obligations that you had taken on. that sort of sword of damocles still dangled over our heads. things have really changed since those days and a lot of attributable to that supreme court case that miss muthamma fought. the advance of women to posts of a sensitive nature and responsibility in diplomacy

has also been slow the world over. it's only in the last two decades that women secretaries of state in the united states were seen, and in india today we now have an external affairs minister, sushma swaraj, who is our leading diplomat today. and it was only in 2001, 54 years after independence, that our first, india's first woman foreign secretary, chokila iyer, was appointed, i was the second woman foreign secretary.

there is a tendency i think to hold women to a higher standard and i'd like to quote from a recent book by helen mccarthy called women of the world, it's really about females and diplomacy, "but even in the 21st century, "a woman wielding serious powers in the global "political arena is an oddity, a phenomenon to be explained "rather than taken for granted. "not only is her performance subject to closer scrutiny

"than her male peers but it often comes to stand "as the test of the ability of all women "and to reflect for good or ill the wisdom "of allowing a woman to do a man's job." so these are truths that must be acknowledged, however much the stages of women may have improved. now i'd like to speak a little about my own personal experiences in the service, i just wanted to give you the background

and for you to understand that i came from a generation when it was not really all that normal for women to pursue careers in diplomacy. and in fact when i got married after joining the foreign service and married a man who was not a diplomat, who was a civil servant, but who was stationed throughout his career in india and not abroad, you can well imagine the challenges it threw up for us in our personal lives

and also in terms of managing our careers. but it did work, of course, and i think we did adjust to that situation and there was a lot of mutual understanding which ferried us along the way. when the indian foreign service was established in the late '40s it was a very elite service, prime minister nehru, who was our leader at that time, took a special interest in the affairs of the foreign service and the work of the foreign service.

he was our first foreign minister in addition to being prime minister. and while we had an examination to recruit young men and women to the civil services, including the foreign service, there were a lot of lateral entrants, people were were appointed because they had to populate the service, it was a new service, and it couldn't have been just populated

with candidates who had succeeded in examinations. so a lot of people from various walks of life were appointed and we did have even maharajas and princess and minor maharajas, mostly, but they were there in the foreign service, there were generals, there were people from the indian civil service which was a very elite service in the british times, it didn't exist after independence

because after independence, the indian foreign service was constituted, the indian administrative service was constituted, and a lot of other civil services were also constituted but in the british days, we just had the indian civil service and the indian judicial service. and the political affairs department which in a sense was a forerunner of the indian foreign service.

but through the '50s, beginning from the mid '50s, and by the time i joined in the early '70s, it had become much more a people's foreign service, the people who entered the foreign service were from middle class families, people from all over india, but even in my time, i must confess, basically from the big cities. but today if you look at the foreign service of india it's become totally indian in character and outlook.

you have young men and women who come from the smallest towns and cities of india also who are joining the civil service so that it's not considered in that sense a service of elites. it is an elite service, but it's not a service of elites, or just populated of people who've been to public school and the best universities in the country, but very intelligent young men and women who come through a very competitive

civil service examination where i think about 300,000 to 400,000 people compete for about 140 to 150 seats in government of which the foreign service may be about 20 or 30 actual slots available. and the numbers of women have also gone up in the foreign service today. we have a very small foreign service and if you go online and listen or read what analysts and scholars write

about the size of our foreign service they always say for a country of india's proportions, the foreign service is too small. in fact i think the us has thousands of foreign service officers, the chinese have a couple of thousands, india has about 800 foreign service officers, and it's a huge country. so in 2014 18.5% of the foreign service of india

consisted of women, which is 135 women out of 731 total including men and women. so it's still a small proportion but gone up from the time i was in the service when it was about 11 to 12%, so the numbers are slowly going up. you may ask me about the nature of my career, and i think what stood out when i looked back at my 40 years in the service is being able to really see the first drops of history wherever i went,

having this ringside view of events and meeting people who are historic figures, being able to participate in negotiations that really, in a long term perspectives, could change the time of the fate of your country, the destiny of its people. in your own small way you're able to contribute, to make that input, and i think that's what makes a career in the foreign service to me

so relevant and so critically important for the country. i began my career in the city of vienna in austria because i was dispatched there by the government to study german, which i did, in a fairly short time. i love the language, i love the place, but once i finished i came back to india and i started working on something totally different. i started working on africa. and i was on the desk which handled southern africa

which dealt with the problems facing indians and black south africans in apartheid south africa which we ostracized, we had no diplomatic relations with, we did not recognize the regime but we interacted a lot with members of the african national congress, with all those, the name nelson mandela, i first became acquainted with his life and his history at that time, at the age of 27 or so

when i was dealing with southern africa on that desk in the ministry of external affairs. and the variety and the diversity of responsibilities that you undertake, that's another thing that stands out when i look back on my life in the foreign service because from dealing with africa, i was sent off to sri lanka, a neighbor of, this was much before i became high commissioner, i was a young first secretary in the indian high commission

in sri lanka from 1981 to 1983. and why do i cite reference to those years? that was a turning point, i think, in sri lanka's history. i went there, my responsibilities were very different, from dealing with african national congress members who came to india and assisting the cause of freedom and the fight against apartheid in south africa. i came to sri lanka to deal with the problems of indian plantation labor,

and i'll tell you the history of that. from the 19th century onwards, a lot of labor was sent out of india as indentured labor to work in the tea estates of sri lanka, the british were developing the tea industry in sri lanka and these people from the southern part of the country, namely from tamil nadu were dispatched to sri lanka to work on those estates in the central highlands of sri lanka, right in the heart of the country.

and their plight and their situation was terrible because after sri lanka gained independence in 1948 and this whole problem, this whole issue of inter-ethnic relations came to the forefront, it was the indentured indian origin labor who spoke tamil in the tea estates who became the target of a great deal of discrimination. today the world knows the inter-ethnic struggle in sri lanka as the struggle of

the liberation tigers of tamil eelam, the ltte versus the government in colombo, the whole history of the civil war which the world knows, i think in some detail. but in those days the discrimination being practiced was against these people in the plantations who, incidentally, were stateless, they'd been refused citizenship by the government of sri lanka, and that is my first encounter with the issue

of statelessness, of the lack of identity. what happens when you don't have the right to possess a passport or the right to travel? and you live in poverty and your maternal and child mortality levels are much below that of the rest of the country and all of you know how sri lanka is one of the best countries in south asia in terms of its human development indices but not as far as these people were concerned.

so you have these pockets of very low level development, even in countries like that, and so i started visiting the estates, talking to the labor, we issued documents to them, some of them to return to india so that they could be rehabilitated there and that's at a time when i was doing all that and traveling freely around the country myself to talk to these people and try and assist them in education, in health, in terms of their documentation,

that the ethnic riots of 1983 broke out in sri lanka and that was the turning point, that really marks the beginning of the civil war in sri lanka. some sri lankan soldiers from colombo were killed in the north of the country by the ltte which was just coming up, now that problem is very different from what i was dealing with because the tamils of the north of the country have been in that part of the country for 2,000 years,

they're not recent migrants who came to work on tea estates, they're people who have been in the north of the country for millennia, and they felt they were being discriminated against on language policy, education policy, employment policy, and you saw the rise of disaffected youth forming themselves into militant organizations like the ltte. so the ltte attacked this group of soldiers leading to the death of 12 soldiers

and when the coffins of these soldiers were brought to colombo and taken in procession through the streets of the city, rioting broke out and there was indiscriminate attacks on tamils, whether they were from the north or whether they were from the plantations, there was a lot of blood and massacring of these people going on, looting, burning of houses, and i was witness to all of that in my job as first secretary in sri lanka.

and i got my taste of working to help people in refugee camps, so the life of a diplomat, just to illustrate, is so different from what you imagine it to be, it's not just in chandeliered chancelleries talking to men in bow ties and beautifully attired women with champagne flowing, that's not at all, it's not that kind, or the congress of vienna kind of diplomacy, not that. you still have that from time to time, no doubt,

but today a diplomat's life is very much in the trenches. you have to get your feet soiled and you have to be able to speak to ordinary, common men and women, understand their problems, and i got a taste of that in sri lanka. and that took me back as high commissioner to sri lanka many years later, but more of that as i go along with my talk. and from sri lanka i got to start my work on china.

i came back to delhi and i was asked whether i was willing to work on china and to develop an expertise on the border problem that conflicts our relationship, the relationship between the two countries that led to a war in 1962 and i was completely new to china, i hadn't studied chinese like many people who come to work on china have. but i was interested in the problem, i was deeply interested in tibet and the himalayas

just as a person, i was drawn to that part of the world. and the prospect of studying issues relating to the boundary question interested me for (speaking quickly) and then that began a lifelong association with china, that was 32 years ago. and i'm still learning about china, i think, it's become so much a part of my life. so these twists and turns in your career. you think everything is set and graphed

and projected and programmed, it never works out that way. i never dreamt i would be with china and china then began, the work on china defined my career in many ways. so i was there just as i joined, started work on china the year indira gandhi was assassinated, so i was witness, i was in delhi at that time when she was assassinated and we had this high level chinese delegation led by vice premier yao yilin who came from literally the first generation of people

who had fought for china's liberation. and he came with this huge entourage. the relationship between the two countries was still strained, i'd say, it was only 22 years after the war, and while ambassadorial relations had been restored, things had really not moved and one should give mrs. gandhi, who was assassinated of course, the credit for having begun or set the ball rolling on normalization, she took the initiative,

she sent the ambassador back to beijing and the chinese responded. of course before that in 1970 there was the famous mao smile, mao zedong smiled during the october parade at our (speaking in foreign language) affairs in beijing, not that ambassador, but our cd smiled at him and said how long can we go on like this? and that triggered off a lot of thinking in delhi

about what to do but the war in bangladesh intervened and we were much focused on dealing with that situation. and then we had the indo soviet treaty signed also during that year, the chinese and the soviets were not at all friendly with each other at that time. so all that came in the way of moving on the normalization front with china. but by the late '70s, in fact by the mid '70s, 1976, the ambassadors had been restored,

ambassadorial level relations had been restored. and then when rajiv gandhi came to power, he took the initiative of visiting china in 1988, again an initiative from the indian side, and that really turned the tide. and the relationship, and i was part of that delegation, i want to say also that i worked on that visit and was able to brief the indian prime minister about china, about the border program, i'll never forget that experience

as a young officer having been given that privilege to brief your prime minister, literally holding the stage on this issue and him listening avidly to what you said. and i think in many ways the tone and the direction that was set during those years has defined the india china relationship even to this day. we've had more confidence building measures to preserve peace and tranquility in the border areas. trade resumed and then picked up and it's almost $70 billion

in total volume, very imbalanced, we don't export to china the amounts that the chinese export to us, but that's the story with most countries where china is concerned. but i was also witness to china being reformed. my first visit to china was in 1986. soon after i started working on china. i went with a film delegation, of all things, to china. the chinese love indian films and they would always talk

about raj kapoor who was one of our old actors who's no more, but even today every taxi driver in beijing will be able to hum songs from raj kapoor films and in the old days in the '50s when we hadn't fought a war, and we were still friends, a lot of impact of indian culture on china. but at the time when china was opening up and reforming and this is deng xiaoping's china in the '80s, droves of chinese were going abroad

to learn how other countries functioned and learn from best practices and believe it or not, a lot of them came to india to study the way our civil service functioned, the way our auditors functioned, the way our accountants functioned, the way our agricultural sector was organized, to study different aspects of indian manufacturing, and they wanted to learn from everywhere in the world

so i recall a time when we had delegation after delegation of chinese coming to india to interact with different sectors, different functionalities, different ministries of government. today it's the other way around. a lot of indians go to china to study what they've been able to achieve and try and learn from china's progress. and this was a time also, a very momentous time in china,

i was still working on the china desk when tienanmen square happened and it was before the digital age, there were only faxes as means of communication. there was no email, there was no instagram, no twitter, no instantaneous communication but through our embassy in beijing we learned about the extent and the seriousness of what had happened. and i remember going to beijing just a week after tienanmen square, a week or 10 days

after tienanmen square happened for some border negotiations and i'll never forget seeing the chang'an, the main avenue in beijing completely deserted. it was so surreal, there was not a single person, not a single vehicle on the road except our own entourage which had been provided, some police cover and we were going in a caravan to our place of meeting at the (speaking in foreign language) state guest house.

but that was again, a memory that has stuck with me. it was also a time when i went to tibet for the first time. i went to western tibet, i was able to trek across the himalayas into western tibet because we have a system of taking pilgrimages of hindus, hindu people from india to pilgrimage sites in western tibet, kailash and manasarovar. and that involves a trek actually. it's a one month long trek of going and coming back.

and the ministry of external affairs, that is my parent organization, organizes these pilgrimages and an officer from the ministry gets to accompany the group as a liaison officer. so i was a liaison officer for one such group, so i had to lead that group into tibet and be with them, make sure that they were okay, and in the process of course i got to see tibet for the first time,

an unbelievably memorable, memorable trip. and from china i went to washington, after working on china, and began to deal with press affairs, again talk about diplomats being jacks or jills of all trades. i started dealing with press affairs and my first exposure to the american media. again, this was 22 years ago, quite different from what it is today,

but i was really able to develop or begin an interest in the whole issue of communications, strategic communications, the deploying of soft power, how to make your reports and your outreach and your projection more effective. and i think that we had, we could learn a lot from the american system because we in india tend to operate more in the british colonial sort of genre as it were and slowly we've been slowly breaking out of it.

today of course the media scene in india is so vibrant with its 24/7 television and all the social media platforms and in all the languages also, not just in english. so we have a lot the world can learn from also today. except that at times it tends to get very raucous and the press tends to intervene i think too much in the business of just handling crisis situations because of the land power that they have and the ubiquitous nature of the media.

it just surrounds every ecosystem, operates within every ecosystem in india. i also had the opportunity to work in south america in peru and bolivia as briefly mentioned. and why do i think south america is interesting for india? usa, it's so far away from india, what relevance can it have? and i think to me, south america is particularly fascinating having lived in north america as they call

this part of the world in south america. they always say america del norte, as you know, which is not something i hear so much here. but that part of america, america del sur, south america is in many ways, they said in peru to me, it is america de los indios, america of the indians, and to me coming from india, it really resonated. it really resonated for me, of course when they refer to indians they meant native americans,

whether they were south or north, but america de los indios resonated very much with me and i said there is a lot of commonality in terms of our histories, in terms of our, even the ethnicities, the whole concept of mestizaje, as they say in spanish, the concept of mixture, racial mixture, inter-ethnic intermingling, is so much a part of the history of india. despite our cost system, despite our linguistic groups,

despite our different religious denominations, we are essentially a very mixed people and that to me was reflected also in the society i saw in peru and bolivia, for instance. very much so, it may not be the case perhaps in argentina, to a lesser extent in chile or in other countries in south america but in peru and bolivia, certainly i felt that it resonated so deeply for me and i loved being there.

to begin with there was not much that i had to do as ambassador but the nice thing about being ambassador is you can also create new responsibilities, you can take initiatives, you can begin new linkages and draw people of the two countries closer together. you can be a people's ambassador and that's what i tried to do when i was in peru. and i'm hoping to go back there next month after a space of about 18 years just to reconnect with old friends

because i truly love that part of the world. i came back from, i went from peru to russia as deputy chief of mission, it was a huge mission, we had 800 people in that embassy and as the deputy chief of mission, and this is a relationship, a very time tested friendship, very strong defense partnership, very critically important tie ups and technology, cutting edge space technologies for instance.

and it was very different scenario from what i experienced in peru but this was a time when russia was going through a state of flux and the ruble had crashed, yeltsin's government was on very shaky legs, putin had not yet of course come to power. but it was russia of the oligarchs, a people who had made fortunes after the collapse of the soviet union and moscow was a beautiful city, it was beginning to be spruced up

and it was just the culture and the feel of the place to me, coming there for the first time, was fascinating, and also the opportunity to travel across the length and breadth of the country, right up to the asia part of russia, to vladivostok, to irkutsk and places like that, completely eight hours flying time from moscow and almost as many time zones, it was really, just to tell you, i mean even after the disintegration

of the soviet union, i think russia retains the core of its identity and russian values of what essentially had populated the soviet union also. and today they say russia is a diminished power. in many senses it is a diminished power, but i don't think the russian spirit is so diminished, and i think in many ways russia wants to have its voice heard in the world, in a powerful way, and i think a lot of its actions abroad would suggest that.

putin is of course much loved in russia regardless of how he's perceived outside the country. and one should keep that in mind. they prefer a tradition obviously of strong, macho leadership. i went back to india from russia and sometime after that i became the first woman spokesperson of the ministry of external affairs. now the job of spokesperson has been a male preserve

through the years because again it was thought only males can handle journalists and it's a very, it's about sort of really man to man kind of world filled with cigarette smoke and liquor flowing, that kind of stereotypes have been built up about dealing with journalists. so these questions were asked also when i was being considered for the post but we had a foreign minister, (speaking quickly) i think who was,

who really looked far ahead and who didn't really, he wasn't swayed by those opinions and i got to be the first woman spokesperson. a very coveted post in the ministry of foreign affairs, i must say, there were a lot of people who angled for that post because it's a very high profile post and you're very much in the public eye and your career can be made that way because of the kind of prominence you come to enjoy

because you're in every prime ministerial visit, you sit in on very important meetings, you get briefed by every head of department in the ministry because you're supposed to be well informed. so the amount of exposure you have and the knowledge you are able to absorb i think is really immeasurably valuable. and i was spokesperson after the ministry went, the ill-fated agra summit with pakistan

was held in the summer of 2001, just before 9/11 in fact, and it was a complete, it failed, the summit failed, but it was, i could write a book really about the preparations for that summit, the proceedings of that summit, and the collapse of that summit. it's a story in itself and too long to recount here. but suffice it to say that when summits of this nature happen between india and pakistan,

you go into it with a lot of hopes despite the fact that our relationship with pakistan is so fractious, so complicated, so difficult, so tragic. i think every time we have a meeting we start all over again with hopes and aspirations and the best intentions and i believe from both sides. i'm not saying that the pakistanis don't have good intentions but in their situation or in their case, there are a lot of other complex factors

that operate and you all know the role of the army and the intelligence in pakistan which are not essentially in favor of a solid, stable relationship with india. but that's as i said another story. but we started out with best of intentions and then found that the whole issue of how public opinion was managed became a terribly complicating factor because after a few days of meetings in delhi,

both delegations decided to repair to agra for what was dubbed as a retreat. now you assume a retreat is something where the two delegations and the principals retire and they are not troubled by media and they can negotiate in complete confidentiality, nobody intrudes on that space, but that's not how it happens in south asia, i'm afraid, not just in india but everywhere in south asia.

what was labeled or billed as a retreat became a complete carnival because you had about 500 to a thousand members of the media coming to agra at the same time as the retreat and they were there waiting, literally with every breath that the delegation took, they wanted to be briefed about what happened, so that illustrates to you the difficulties of normalization in the context of relations between india and pakistan.

because there's so much of media overreach, i would say. trying to document, trying to telescopically intrude into every little meeting room. it's like you're conducting foreign policy in an amphitheater and there was just no way that the negotiations could proceed because we had had certain grounds at meetings and then sushma swaraj was not the foreign minister of india, who was the minister for information in the government

of prime minister vajpayee at that time was asked by some pakistani journalists about how the meeting had gone and she in a very pollyanna-ish way said everything is going superbly and we've really made progress and then the question was popped to her, did you discuss kashmir? kashmir, from the pakistani side. and she very innocently said no, we didn't discuss kashmir. everything's been going so well.

and that became the issue that broke the summit because the pakistani press went to town saying that there'd been a sell out by the pakistani delegation led by general musharraf, who was president musharraf by that time. he had not discussed kashmir, that there'd been a sell out, that the indians had taken over. and general musharraf who as seeing the taj mahal at that time when all this happened

goes back to his hotel room and sits down in his sofa, switches on television and this is what he sees. and that same evening in pakistan, all the talk shows are talking about how the pakistani case has been betrayed literally by their delegation. the next morning general musharraf has a breakfast for editors of the indian media who as editors would do, flocked to that meeting because they expected

to get some new information about what had happened. so he speaks to them saying that kashmir is the only issue that we are really interested in, and that's the issue we're focused on. the indians want to discuss terrorism but really to tackle the problem of terrorism, you really have to tackle the problem of kashmir. so all that is said and it has been recorded on video by the pakistanis and their information department was.

at the end of the breakfast, one of our editors asked president musharraf can we use the video of this breakfast meeting, can i air it? and general musharraf said of course you can, so the editor in question took the tape, it was by videotapes those days, and ran to the studio and aired the whole proceedings of that breakfast where you know he's talking of kashmir, he's talking of the focus from the pakistani side,

and the india media went ballistic over it, and so did indian public opinion. and that was that, there was no summit after that. the summit just collapsed, there was no joint statement, no joint communicate, nobody could agree on the text. and by 8 o'clock in the evening, general musharraf just stomped out of agra saying that we're going nowhere on this. and i got manhandled by some pakistani journalists

who said you have thrown out our general this way, is this what you call democracy? it was was the only time in my life that i've been actually manhandled, it was terrible, those pakistani journalists were awful, actually, a couple of them, but the others apologized, of course, for it, but you can understand the risks and that the spokesperson faces. it can be very nice, very glamorous, very high profile,

but you're also literally working in the trenches. and so likewise and after that i went to sri lanka, the tsunami of 2004 happened at that time and again i got into the relief mode because we had to provide relief all over the country. and i got to visit the civil war infested areas also. there was a ceasefire operating at that time, but nobody had been visiting areas like jaffna and the northern part of sri lanka and i went there,

was able to mix with people there, understand the feelings of people who felt that they'd been neglected by india all these years. there was a lot of negative feeling towards india which i had to take in my stride and try to explain where we stood. and i was also the last person to meet the then foreign minister of sri lanka, lakshman kadirgamar, a wonderful diplomat,

before his assassination. in fact he and i, i was a chief guest at a function that he was chairing for some publication, foreign policy publication and we said our goodbyes and two hours later, he'd been shot dead by a tiger, a tamil tiger assassin. and that was the kind of life one led in sri lanka. it was like i did not go anywhere without armed guards. i traveled in a mercedes benz, armored mercedes benz,

the doors were this thick i think, one could hardly close those doors one's self. i had armed paramilitary forces from india who would guard me wherever i went, even when i walked in my garden at the residence. so that's how risky sri lanka was for an indian ambassador at that time. things are very different now of course after the civil war ended.

i was also witness to the election of president rajapaksa and why do i say that? at that time i felt, and i predicted that rajapaksa would win, contrary to everybody who said that his rival would be, sounds familiar in the context of what happened last week here. but the fact was mr. rajapaksa came to power, he was a man who was literally unknown to the sri lankan public, he'd been prime minister

but a very ineffective prime minister in the shadow of president kumaratunga, the woman president who was stepping down. and he came to office and he was really the man who won that civil war because of his very draconian approach to it, but he won that war, i don't think any other man or woman in his place would have been able to see the civil war finished except mr. rajapaksa. but having finished the war, i don't think he won the peace,

and i think his role really was of no use to the country after the war was finished in 2009. but again, i was witness to these first drafts of history in sri lanka at a very critical period in its history. and then onto china as ambassador. and again, i came to this relationship, started dealing with this relationship after a space of about 14 years because i'd dealt with many other countries.

and the relationship had grown but it had not really grown in terms of the promise everybody felt it had after the visit of rajiv gandhi, prime minister of india in the late '80s. a lot of things had intervened. india's own growth, its aspirations, its rising prestige in the world, our becoming a nuclear weapons state, the growth of china's relations with pakistan,

the fact that our border negotiations had stalled in a sense, they did not really more forward. all these things complicated the relationship with china so the mood was civil and the dealings were very correct, but i think the warmth and the real texture that goes with a solid relationship, i feel were absent. but all the same i think being in china at the time of explosive chinese growth, the time of the chinese olympics, which i was witness to,

and then the disturbances in xinjiang and tibet which told you that china's politically is still quite unstable and there's the whole question of minority treatment and handling that still, i think, are issues. but this is before xi jinping came to power but i was able to meet xi jinping on a number of occasions, he had been named as a potential successor to hu jintao and had assumed his duties

as vice president of the country by that time. so he was coming to meetings, i was able to see the way he conducted himself, how he spoke, and form initial impressions, because there was no indication to suggest that he would become the strong man leader that he has become, or the supreme leader of china today. it was from china, i was in china when the mumbai attacks took place, the pakistan based terror group,

lashkar-e-taiba did that attack on the taj hotel and other places in mumbai in november of 2008 and i was quite impacted, i would say, by the chinese reaction to that. there was literally no chinese reaction to condemn what had happened and similarly i think also, this was a time when we were seeking an exemption in the nuclear supplies group for the taking forward with our nuclear deal with the united states,

the civilian nuclear cooperation deal. and there again the chinese were holdouts til the last minute, they didn't really help the opinion that indians have of chinese and i think really stuck in the throat as it were. i went from china to be foreign secretary at a time again, a very interesting time, handling all these relationships that i dealt with in the course of my time in the foreign service

and as ambassador and from there of course, to the united states as ambassador. i want to stop here because i know you have questions, and all of you must be getting restless. we can talk about my time in the us and also i think there were some questions on feminist foreign policy, since i started about women in diplomacy we can end with that, thank you. - [sarah] if there are any questions please

raise your hand and michael or i will come to you. - [woman] hello ambassador, thank you so much for your talk. with the recent ceasefire violations-- - could you also tell me who you are so i know who-- - [woman] oh, i'm so sorry, hi, hello, i'm (speaking quickly) i'm a freshman this year at cmc. so with the recent ceasefire violations across the borders, how do you project the-- - from where?

- [woman] across the kashmir borders with pakistan. how do you project the foreign policy of india and pakistan will go ahead in the next five years? - it's actually the line of control in kashmir. there's no border, there is a border, an international border that india claims, and there is of course the pakistani claim. but there's a line of control that divides the pakistani side of kashmir

from the indian administered side, the two sides are separated by this line of control. and that's where these ceasefire violations, these violations and these attacks are happening. and that is complicated, the climate of relations that has stalled dialogue, the prospects of dialogue, between the two countries so the government of (speaking quickly) has taken a very firm stand on this whole issue of dialogue with pakistan

pending the cessation of such attacks. and also the use of terrorism against india. as you know, mr. modi called pakistan the mothership of terrorism recently. so i think this complicates the relationship. and i don't see the dialogue commencing so smoothly or so easily because public opinion in india is very exercised and today we live, but one thing i wanted to mention,

the foreign policy is not just conducted in ivory towers or in closed chambers as you might imagine. everything is, it's like as i said, in an amphitheater, particularly where india pakistan relations are concerned. and the public and the political spectrum across political parties is very exercised about this and feels that government cannot afford to be soft on this issue. it's not that everybody's hankering for war with pakistan

or with a surgical strike, the so-called surgical strike is welcome but the fact is the mood is not conducive. and i think legitimately, there are legitimate reasons for that, it's not that the indians are belligerent or they want conflict with pakistan. but they just feel that we've tried and tried and nothing has come of it so it's not in a good place at the moment. - [woman] thank you ambassador for being such an inspiration for the women of india, i have to say.

but my question is primarily we've seen the rise of hindu nationalism in india that affected domestic politics. how do you see that-- - international what, sorry? - [woman] we see the rise of hindu nationalism that has affected domestic politics. and how do you see that as affecting foreign policy in south asia and beyond?

- i don't think mr. modi's foreign policy by any measure can be defined in terms of hindu nationalism. i think it would be more indian nationalism, maybe being more assertive about india's interests and india's concerns but if you look at his neighborhood policy i think he started on a very positive note when everybody was invited to his swearing in ceremony and then of course you have the problems with pakistan but the relations

with other neighbors are generally okay, i don't think there's been any deviation from the past. in fact with bangladesh for instance, the land boundary agreement and all that are very signature achievements and he's visited, been the first india prime minister to visit sri lanka, for instance. so and then his whole indian ocean policy, i think you can describe it more in this propensity

to speak out for india, really, and not to be hesitant about expressing india's interests or defending them. but i don't think it's hindu nationalism, hindu nationalism in india, yes perhaps, but i don't think that has been a factor that has completely, that is deviant, that is signaled as if something different has happened in terms of foreign policy.

foreign policy is essentially moving along the tracks that have been set in the past. - [man] hi, thank you very much for your very inspiring speech, and i'd like to know how has climate change affected your various diplomatic relationships with other countries and whether or not you believe that multilateral diplomatic relationships like the paris climate treaty can have any positive effect.

- well i think the mood concerning the paris climate agreement is very different from what i saw in copenhagen in end of 2009, i think it was, or 2010, when they had the summit. when the divide was so great between the us and its cohort and countries like china, brazil, india, south africa. today i think the paris climate agreement, a lot of cracks have been either joined together or papered over, however you may look at it.

and mr. modi, his own international solar alliance, this whole stress on renewables, on these new sources, energy from solar, energy from wind, the need for technology, adaptation technologies, mitigation technologies, he's much more willing to work with the outside world and between india and the us this has become a huge component of cooperation. this is the unsung story of india us relations in many ways

in terms of renewable energy cooperation, in terms of green energy, green building techniques, wind and solar energy generation, and new research in these fields. all that, i think multilateralism is a good thing in this area and i don't think we can deny the existence of climate change, we cannot deny the existence of global warming, we cannot deny the pressure of population

on our limited natural resources, so that's my view. - [man] hi ambassador, thank so much for coming to speak. i want to ask about china's one belt, one road policy, particularly about their string of pearls from the mainland china to port sudan, (speaking quickly) ports in sri lanka, and your view is that perhaps of a threat or opportunity for the indians, because i know there's some tension around that area.

thank you very much. - yeah, the obor is different of course, from the string of pearls, the string of pearls is this whole theory of how china is building, not bases or at least places around india, in the indian ocean and that there's a kind of ensettlement that is happening as a result. the obor of course has been conceived as xi jinping's pet, most important project as it were.

both the land route as well as the sea, silk route as he calls it. india's view is that it seems to be of course a completely chinese led initiative and it's obviously designed to bring benefits to chinese economic interests, companies, contractors. and in the process, built for china a position of advantage beyond its borders, in other words to project china's influence and to enable it to achieve

the positions it aspires to on the global stage. so there's no dispute about that. i think where the problems arise is this lack of sufficient inclusion in terms of what do the other countries in the region think about it? except for pakistan of course, china pakistan economic corridor, but pakistan in many ways functions as a very loyal friend, supplicant of china, it's not going to really go out

and speak on global platforms questioning it. although there are reports in the pakistan media of people who question whether all this is really good for pakistan. i hope it'll be good for pakistan. if pakistan's economy improves and there are more jobs created and more livelihoods helped as a result of this, it's not a bad thing but where this route goes through occupied kashmir territory,

pakistan occupied kashmir, that is where the objections from india arise because if you have territory in dispute like this, what does this mean? does it mean that china has completely bought pakistan's case on the issue which then is very different from what it has been saying all these years. right, so these are questions that remain unanswered. but this whole issue of where does the region comment on these things?

does china decide what's good for the region? or you have an inclusive, consensual method of deciding how we go forward because it's not that india's against development or connectivity or better transportation and trade linkages. we would like that, but we would like them to be developed in a way that does not raise disputes. this doesn't settle disputes, rather it keeps them alive. - [sarah] that's all the time we have left for questions.

please join me in thanking ambassador rao. - thank you.