Buddha and the Bomb
INDIA CERTAINLY did not choose an auspicious day for its 11 May nuclear tests at least as far as its 69-percent Buddhist neighbour, Sri Lanka, was concerned. The blasts were set off on Vesak day (Buddha Purnima) marking the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha.
Four days later, on 15 May, the predominantly Indian foreign press corps accredited to Colombo gathered at the watering hole of the Foreign Correspondents´ Association (FCA) at the seafront Galle Face Hotel in squally weather for a luncheon meeting with Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar. Predictably, India´s nuclear experiments and their impact on the region as well as Sri Lanka´s own just-published reaction were the main topics of discussion.
The urbane, elegantly suited Kadirgamar, who was once president of the Oxford Union, deftly fielded the questions taking a tack which one local newspaper called "national self interest". Colombo knows the worth of Indian support with the Tamil Tiger bomb very much on its lap. So the foreign minister was certainly not going to say anything that would displease New Delhi. China and Pakistan too are old and good friends. Kadirgamar therefore was liberal with the syrup but candid enough to admit that Sri Lanka´s statement was a deliberate understatement.
"It didn´t say much," commented the correspondent for the Chennai-based daily The Hindu.
"Statements are not meant to say much," countered the minister, "that´s what diplomacy is all about."
But we digress from the Buddha. Over a lunch of prawn cocktail, French onion soup, stuffed chicken and a calorie-laden dessert which Kadirgamar passed asking for fruit which took a long time to come, the minister was given an account of how news of the successful accomplishment of India´s first nuclear test in 1974 was broken to then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with the cryptic words, "The Budha has smiled".
"I was so embarrassed," said the Indian Express representative who is the president of the FCA.
Kadirgamar, coming from old Anglican stock, but with the Buddhist pirith nool (blessed thread) round his wrist (his wife is Buddhist), raised an eyebrow clearly under the impression that the smiling Buddha code, mind you on Vesak day, had been used this time also. "I will take it up with Mr Vajpayee," he promised not once but twice.