Walking With Lions by K. Natwar Singh

Author:K. Natwar Singh
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-9-3502-9899-2
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2013-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

27

High-level Municipal Diplomacy

After serving five years in the prime minister’s secretariat, I was appointed ambassador to Poland in May 1971. I was forty years of age, with eighteen years of service behind me. In the context of those times, it was not an insignificant post. Poland was the largest communist state in eastern Europe, and headquarters of the Warsaw Pact (an inadequate response to the NATO). Poland, along with India and Canada, was a member of the Indo-China Commission. Ninety-five per cent Poles were Catholics. It is not necessary to recall the percentage of communists. It was negligible.

Destiny inflicted a cruel geography and a tragic history on Poland. The Polish leader Wladyslaw Gomulka used to say, ‘I would sacrifice a quarter of Poland for a better geography.’ There was however no getting away from Germany in the west or Russia in the east. As for history, Poland was divided and partitioned more than once, and for more than a century disappeared from the map of Europe. It was the Catholic church which preserved Polish culture and language.

World War II began on 1 September 1939 when Hitler invaded and conquered Poland. Millions of Polish Jews ended up in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Immediately after presenting my credentials I went to Auschwitz to lay a wreath and pay homage.

The capital Warsaw was mostly destroyed by the Germans. It was rebuilt brick by brick after the war. The old city courtyard is one of the great architectural sights of Europe. Nothing remained of it in 1945. It was meticulously restored by consulting old records and maps.

Indo-Polish relations were cordial and unbroken. I had easy access to the top leadership. My having accompanied Mrs Indira Gandhi on her state visit to Poland in 1967 no doubt helped. Soon after my arrival in Warsaw, my wife was struck by cerebral meningitis. Not knowing the language did not help. But for the very best medical help promptly provided by the government, my wife would not have recovered without any permanent damage. It was not an auspicious start.

However, the longer we stayed the more at home we felt. The Poles are a warm people. They loathed the USSR and were not afraid to express their views after heavy gulps of vodka.

In a little while after my arrival, I discovered that the Warsaw city authorities had named roads after Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Rabindranath Tagore was well known and widely read. R.K. Narayan too. On 19 February 1973 fell the five hundredth birth anniversary of the most famous Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus. He is known for the Copernican theory of the heavens. His treatise, ‘De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium Libri’ (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), earned him immortality. The timid and cautious canon (that he was), Copernicus did not dare publish the treatise for fear of Rome. The first completed copy was placed on his bed when he was nearing death in 1543.

I am no astronomer or scientist, but as an interested layman I read a bit about Copernicus.

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