“Created Huge Headaches For India”: Congress MP Jairam Ramesh On Late Former US Diplomat Henry Kissinger
Commemorating the late US Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger, the Congress leader and Member of Parliament Jairam Ramesh on Thursday said that Mr Kissinger had created huge headaches for India in 1971. “President Nixon and he created huge headaches for India and thought they had us cornered”, took the Congress leader on X (formerly Twitter). Henry Alfred Kissinger, the man who crafted America’s Cold War history, died at the age of 100 on Thursday. He earned the ‘controversial’ Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973 for his actions negotiating the ceasefire in Vietnam.
Mr Kissinger was an American diplomat, political scientist, geopolitical consultant, and politician who served as the United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Remembering him, Mr Ramesh said that he was “immensely consequential” and “hugely controversial”. The US diplomat in his lifetime went both celebrated and was also condemned. Mr Ramesh had no doubt of his intellectual brilliance and charisma and acknowledged that he positioned himself as a great friend and supporter of India for the last three decades. “But this was not always so and in 1971 especially, President Nixon and he created huge headaches for India and thought they had us cornered”.
Henry Kissinger has passed away. He was as immensely consequential as he was hugely controversial. In his long and eventful life he has been both celebrated and condemned. But there can be no doubt about his sheer intellectual brilliance and awesome charisma.
For the last three…
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) November 30, 2023
According to Mr Ramesh, the former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Mrs Gandhi’s principal secretary PN Haskar proved more than a match for Mr Kissinger. He also noted the book named ‘The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and a Forgotten Genocide’ written by Gary Bass and pointed the followers to remember how the US diplomat’s role in the events of 1971 led up to the creation of Bangladesh.
PN Haksar, while an admirer of Kissinger”s intellectual prowess, felt that he lacked moral fibre and sensitivity to democratic processes. The two never struck a rapport with each other.
A quarter of a century later in November 1986, Haksar was to meet Anatoly Dobrynin, then a…
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) November 30, 2023
Mr Ramesh added that, even PN Haskar admired the intellectual skill of Mr Kissinger, Mr Haskar felt that the American diplomat lacked moral fibre and sensitivity to democratic processes. “The two never struck a rapport with each other”.
Meanwhile the Congress leader and MP Shashi Tharoor acknowledged the late US State Secretary as an “extraordinary life… a pivotal and a polarising figure”. Mr Tharoor knew him very well and expressed his amazement “how “Henry”, the architect of the US tilt towards Pakistan in 1971, could morph with such insouciance into the most prominent advocate of closer US-India relations three decades later”. “It helps to live long enough so people don’t remember your earlier statements and actions!”, added Mr Tharoor.
The end of, by any definition, an extraordinary life. Henry Kissinger was indeed both a pivotal and a polarising figure, as this @BBC obituary states. For a few years in New York, I knew him well enough to be on first-name terms with him. I was still amazed how “Henry”, the…
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) November 30, 2023
