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UK envoy goes on secret mission: The Times of India
London, Oct 24: The Indian capital may not have noticed it. It may be news to Mumbai. But the British capital is in a ferment of admiration over its man in Delhi and his alleged propensity to Gandhian self-denial and Anglo-Indian bridge-building over the coarsest chapattis.
London, Oct 24: The Indian capital may not have noticed it. It may be news to Mumbai. But the British capital is in a ferment of admiration over its man in Delhi and his alleged propensity to Gandhian self-denial and Anglo-Indian bridge-building over the coarsest chapattis.
Sleeping rough, in diplomatic parlance, generally means doing without the Rolls Royce. But less than a month after Britain's new High Commissioner, Michael Arthur, arrived in Delhi with his goods and chattels, he has slept rough in great style. The true-blue style of the Mahatma, according to some commentators.
Arthur, who is said to have been keen to see for himself British efforts to deal with poverty, apparently went native sans sola topi and security detail, albeit only briefly.
In London, the British foreign office was starchy and unyielding. "We've spoken to Delhi and can't say anything about this, because the High Commissioner hasn't yet presented his credentials (to the Indian president)", a spokeswoman told TNN on Thursday.
But by all accounts, the 53-year-old Arthur in an unprecedented move, did decide to doss down, unannounced, unknown and unbidden in the home of a Kannadiga farmer near Bangalore.
Having ordered his Rolls to be left in Delhi, Arthur dispensed with the usual pomp and circumstance that goes with the job and instructed aides to leave him unidentified and undistinguished in the chosen village.
Arthur's host was farmer, Balandanappa Gundappa and his 14-year-old daughter. They shared their village home in Iradegera and their simple food with the under-cover diplomat, believing quite wrongly that he was a Western aid worker passing through, on a routine pilgrimage to the shrine of need.
Arthur ate with his fingers, slept under the stars on the roof of the house and built up street-cred for more dangerous assignments further afield.
At least one thrilled British journalist has reported the remarkable blowback of this imaginative bit of aangan-chaupal-taluk diplomacy. "He has done wonders to improve links with Delhi", said The Times , London, harking back to memories of an earlier, more aloof, ambassadorial style under the high-handed High Commissioner Sir David Gore-Booth. Arthur's Indian counterpart, our man in London, Ronen Sen, hasn't yet been noticed squeezing into the cardboard box of a homeless Briton. But, wags are already predicting a whole new phase of up-close-and-personal diplomacy.
For, in diplomacy, as in love, it is body language that talks.
Arthur, who is said to have been keen to see for himself British efforts to deal with poverty, apparently went native sans sola topi and security detail, albeit only briefly.
In London, the British foreign office was starchy and unyielding. "We've spoken to Delhi and can't say anything about this, because the High Commissioner hasn't yet presented his credentials (to the Indian president)", a spokeswoman told TNN on Thursday.
But by all accounts, the 53-year-old Arthur in an unprecedented move, did decide to doss down, unannounced, unknown and unbidden in the home of a Kannadiga farmer near Bangalore.
Having ordered his Rolls to be left in Delhi, Arthur dispensed with the usual pomp and circumstance that goes with the job and instructed aides to leave him unidentified and undistinguished in the chosen village.
Arthur's host was farmer, Balandanappa Gundappa and his 14-year-old daughter. They shared their village home in Iradegera and their simple food with the under-cover diplomat, believing quite wrongly that he was a Western aid worker passing through, on a routine pilgrimage to the shrine of need.
Arthur ate with his fingers, slept under the stars on the roof of the house and built up street-cred for more dangerous assignments further afield.
At least one thrilled British journalist has reported the remarkable blowback of this imaginative bit of aangan-chaupal-taluk diplomacy. "He has done wonders to improve links with Delhi", said The Times , London, harking back to memories of an earlier, more aloof, ambassadorial style under the high-handed High Commissioner Sir David Gore-Booth. Arthur's Indian counterpart, our man in London, Ronen Sen, hasn't yet been noticed squeezing into the cardboard box of a homeless Briton. But, wags are already predicting a whole new phase of up-close-and-personal diplomacy.
For, in diplomacy, as in love, it is body language that talks.