Gifts are to foreign leaders what Latin is to a translator. Decipher the syntax and grammar, catch the nuances, and win friends and disarm foes. But watch for the hidden pun. Diplomatic gifts are tokens immortalised by photo-ops for the moment, only to be consigned to shakhanas as the indifferent booty of conflicts and concessions. Gifts have no ideology, only ideas of grandeur. But of late, the foreign policy tea leaves indicate that the size, shape and source of official presents indicate domestic compulsions, geographic and even electoral moxie.
Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi came bearing gifts to the G20 pow-wow in Bali. Modi has a rep for thinking out of the box. Though there were 19 heavy hitters at the three-day summit, only Modi’s gifts expectedly made headlines in the Indian media. Prezzies of Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Rishi Sunak were just editorial spam. Everything Modi does is pregnant with meaning, and Indian babus ensured that their master’s voice reached the domestic audience loud and clear because his viswaguru trope is South Block’s mandate—vocal for local. Did the maestro of metaphors take his election campaign in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh to Bali, once an ancient Hindu kingdom where Hindu temples still abound? In June, Modi’s gifts to G7 luminaries in Germany were handicrafts from Uttar Pradesh, where he had rowed the party to the shore of a massive victory. The Gulabi Meenakari brooch and cufflinks Biden received came from Varanasi, Modi’s constituency. Varanasi was also the subtext of the lacquerware “Ram Durbar” the PM gave his Indonesian counterpart.
Modi’s presents smack of nationalism that butts the colonial narrative. They bear his imprimatur: after he won the 2014 election, Modi received the customary congratulatory phone call from Barack Obama, who invited him to Washington. For Modi, it was sweet revenge—he had been denied a US visa previously. The prime minister is an artist of analogy; his gifts to Obama emotionally connected with America’s first Black president— digital recordings on the “Visit of Reverend Martin Luther King to India”, “Visit of Mrs. Coretta Scott King to Accept Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding to Reverend Martin Luther King (Posthumously) for the Year 1966 in January 1969”, and “The Spirit of Mahatma Gandhi”. Mixing Gandhi and Luther was a significant strategy because Luther was inspired by Gandhi and is Obama’s icon. But Modi didn’t sidestep India’s heritage: the Obamas received a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and ‘Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi’. India won the day— later, Obama presented Modi with a rare edition of the World’s Congress of Religions in 1893 that featured Swami Vivekananda. Ironically, the present signifies the past. Often leaders choose gifts to remind their guests about their past connections with the host country. Modi presented the late Queen Elizabeth rare photographs of her first visit to India in 1961, Makaibari tea from Darjeeling, organic honey from Jammu and Kashmir and Tanchoi stoles from Varanasi. He has significantly altered the message with his medium of gifts. Not for him the predictably secular and politically correct presents; his goodies promote India’s Hindu heritage and Gujarati culture.
The ideology of Modi’s largesse is in stark contrast with the diplomatic lagniappe of the Gandhi-Nehruvian era when official gifts reflected the eclectic vision of secular histories like Gandhian memorabilia and Mughal symbols. On his first US visit in 2004, Manmohan Singh gave Obama a white, orange, blue, red, and green round marble table top inlaid with red, coral, malachite, lapis lazuli, mother-of-pearl, turquoise and agate flowers. In 2005, Singh went all Ravissant: a silver box relocating the floral designs of Diwan-e-Am and the Red Fort in a quilted design. He knew the personal likes and dislikes of American leaders. Since Hillary Clinton, as Obama’s Secretary of State, was influential in foreign policy, he gifted her a boat-shaped silver purse. The diplomatic fruits of success became allegories of accord when President George Bush visited India in 2006 and asked for Indian mangoes, which were duly served: “The US is looking forward to eating Indian mangoes,” he had said. India had banned the export of mangoes, which was promptly lifted. The first consignment of Alphonso and Kesari mangoes landed in Washington soon, and trade policies and agreements for agricultural research projects got green signals. Indira Gandhi and son Rajiv were enamoured by Indian textiles, which some close friends had advised would make good presents that reflected the Indian native aesthetics. According to their confidantes, they never considered geographical, historical or cultural accents while choosing gifts. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s charm was a gift by itself: during his last US visit in 2003, he presented Bill Clinton with an exquisite silk carpet—his way of rolling out the red carpet for the historic vision document, perhaps. Donald Trump’s largesse to chosen world leaders was evident: a Tiffany brooch to Queen Elizabeth, an expensive book set to Theresa May, a cricket bat to Imran Khan, a $2900 tea set to Xi Jinping, and a pair of $2000 boxing gloves to Shinzo Abe. Obama was happy with $500 watches.
Then some gifts may be cruel jokes and exhibit one-upmanship. For example, during the Cold War, the exchange of gifts between Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and President John Kennedy were imbued with sarcastic aggression masked as ritual politeness. In 1961, Khrushchev gifted Kennedy a pup named Pushinka from the litter of Laika, the first dog the Soviets sent into space, beating America in the space race. Kennedy vowed to Khrushchev that the US would put a man in space before Russia. But Pushinka didn’t become a Cold War victim, having found a happy home in the White House with the Kennedy children; she even had puppies. During Richard Nixon’s historic China visit in 1972, Patricia Nixon revealed her fondness for giant pandas. Chinese premier Zhou Enlai promptly sent two to Washington. However, such donatives haven’t made significant changes in the lust and quest of superpowers for global domination. At best, gifts bring a momentary smile, and a warm handshake, the euphoria disappearing before the wrapping has faded. They languish in government strong rooms while their recipients try to strong arm each other. On the geopolitical course, instead of looking at a gift horse in the mouth, the leader who rides it wins the race.
PRABHU CHAWLA
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com
Follow him on Twitter @PrabhuChawla