EVER spared a thought for the stable boys who clear horse droppings at magnificent parades, for example, at the majestic forecourt of India’s presidential lodge in Delhi? To enforce India’s social blinkers, the stable boys who mostly belong to the lowest layer of the caste heap, are required to keep a lower profile than their messy job permits.

The president’s bodyguards astride their thoroughbred beauties are a regular feature of the British era display at state visits. The stable boys on their part shine in their craft by remaining invisible and unobtrusive at the parades as they deftly remove any embarrassing eyesores from public view.

Indian diplomats, like most others, though they belong to the upper social deck, and live in relative opulence on foreign duty stations if not at home too, are in several ways akin to the stable boys. Occasionally their lot is worse after a high profile parade. Not only are they required to clear the diplomatic mess left behind by a visit, worse, they also must interpret the metaphorical droppings, not unlike the way hakims regard the morning samples.

What did President Obama say and what did he mean to say in his last public engagement in Delhi after finishing with Prime Minister Modi’s bear hugs? This has become the subject of heated discussion. Did Mr Obama say what he meant to say and also mean it? Did he say the same thing in Delhi and Washington but by some sleight of hand mean entirely different things? Indian and equally so their American counterparts are scratching their heads to mask the truth.

The more serious problem for the diplomatic stable boys in Delhi and Washington stems from what sounded like a parting shot by Mr Obama.

Separately, or perhaps in the same vein, what was the fine print in the deals Mr Obama supposedly signed, or agreed, or only discussed (which was which), with his host? Also, does Mr Modi on his part always mean what he says and says what he means? Let’s start by considering the last question first, albeit in a different context, closer home.

Step back to his April-May election campaign. Mr Modi the candidate made a few lofty promises. He claimed he could get back all the black money supposedly stashed in foreign banks by unscrupulous fellow patriots. He also went on to promise he would distribute Rs1.5 million per head to as many Indians as there were who needed it. Mr Modi the prime minister has since concluded that getting black money back to India was not easy at all.

Last week, during the Delhi elections, his closest aide and handpicked party chief Amit Shah was asked to explain if the prime minister was sincere about sharing the black money largesse with the hoi polloi. Mr Shah did not pause. He told the bewildered TV viewers how Mr Modi often speaks idiomatically. “Who in his right mind would take his words to mean he would really distribute all that money to the people?” he chortled.

Given the fraught state of play, Pakistan’s former national security advisor Mahmud Durrani appeared in Delhi last week as a high-stakes poker player. Has he read it correctly to reportedly assert that the moment was right for India and Pakistan to “cash in” and restart their stalled dialogue. He was speaking to The Hindu evidently after meeting India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar last week.

Mr Durrani’s reported impression is that Mr Modi would actually “like to move forward” on the dialogue, but would rather not pick up the old format of the composite dialogue process. “Mr Modi is a different man with a different mind and a different thinking from the previous prime minister,” said Mr Durrani the clairvoyant. “I think he will probably engage with Pakistan, but he would like to do that in his own way.” Any embassy in Delhi that wants to glean the truth in Mr Modi’s words and what they mean should hire Mr Durrani, but only after the dialogue resumes.

The more serious problem for the diplomatic stable boys in Delhi and Washington stems from what sounded like a parting shot by Mr Obama. His last act in Delhi was to give a well-timed tutorial in religious tolerance. It was not a parting shot, said the US diplomatic corps. What was it then? An editorial in the New York Times didn’t help either side.

Mr Obama’s comments on Thursday that “acts of intolerance” experienced by religious faiths of all types in India in the past few years would have shocked Mahatma Gandhi followed an attempt by the White House to refute what he said in a similar vein in Delhi.

“Michelle and I returned from India — an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity — but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs — acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation,” Mr Obama told the high-profile National Prayer Breakfast.

Other than the fact that the NYT editorial was forthright there was total convergence with Mr Obama’s views.

“What will it take for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak out about the mounting violence against India’s religious minorities?” the paper asked in its edit on Feb 6. “Attacks at Christian places of worship have prompted no response from the man elected to represent and to protect all of India’s citizens. Nor has he addressed the mass conversion to Hinduism of Christians and Muslims who have been coerced or promised money.

Mr Modi’s continued silence before such troubling intolerance increasingly gives the impression that he either cannot or does not wish to control the fringe elements of the Hindu nationalist right.”

The stable boys will need to work overtime into the foreseeable future.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2015

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